Open App Ecosystem and Collaborative Technology Alliance

Exactly. :)

I was just about to email you and explain my thinking.
We seem to be coming from the same place and wanting the same thing but had made slightly different assumptions...
That's also why I questioned your objectives for an OAE website.
I don't think we need an OAE website, yet...
But we DO need a CTA website to act as a focal point for OAE work and to bring together the people who are building / will build the OAE.

Phew, so happy you started this thread!

One of the reasons I think we need the CTA is that lots of effort has been put into discussing how we might build an OAE, by various different groups, in different places, at different times, but clearly the OAE is such a big project it would benefit enormously from (possibly, requires) a more coordinated approach to its design and project management...

See https://www.hylo.com/p/23634

As I said in that other current thread, I am opposed to the CTA managing OAE. If we had a consensus vote on that, I would block it.

The objective of the CTA is to gather people that creates this kind of apps ?

The emphasis of the CTA was always more about platforms than ecosystems of small apps.

The emphasis of the CTA was always more about platforms than ecosystems of small apps.

That's very much what I experienced, yes.

To maybe be a little less negative on @olisb 's thoughts here:

clearly the OAE is such a big project it would benefit enormously from (possibly, requires) a more coordinated approach to its design and project management

I agree with that sentiment. The question is how? I am denying that the CTA can do it, or that management from above is the correct approach.

I don't think the CTA has proven that they can manage anything. And their focus has never been on anything like the OAE.

And I think we are trying to work out coordination by the people who are doing the work, which I think is the only method that will work, according to Conway's Law.

The basic idea of OAE in the first place was as an ecosystem of apps that could be developed independently by many people, but that would still fit and work together by means of standards and conventions. That was also the basic idea behind the Internet. As well as Unix.

Another thing brought up by Bob @bobhaugen that I would like to see kept in view is Conway's Law. The broader, perhaps simpler thought is that is matters how we do these things, as it actually affects what we are trying to do.

Maybe there is some agreement — I'm sticking my neck out here so I'm ready to be contradicted — that in order to allow better coordination, we need to find agreement not just on what channels to use, but what "business" to transact in those various channels, and how they interact.

To me, this is a mirror (thinking of Conway's Law again) of the OAE/CTA/DLC target space. On the technical level, we will eventually agree on a set of apps that interact in understood ways through commonly accepted interfaces. This will need to be mirrored on the human level, right here and now, where we need to agree on what work needs to be done, how it is to be divided up into coherent chunks, and how those chunks can be coordinated.

There's some systems thinking that might perhaps be useful here. Can we find a way of dividing up the tasks and responsibilities such that the coordination between those chunks is the least demanding? That is, where there is as much independence as we can get — always recognising that there is inherent interdependency, and it's just a question of minimising it, never removing it.

I'm also wondering whether anyone else would like to try out drafting a conceptual model of all this: what the parts could be, what the relationships between the parts would need to be. And, quick, I want lots of distance from the idea that this could ever be completed by one person alone. Rather, it would be the nub of a test case of whether we can do this in a consensus-oriented way, for the common good. How we do it is important. Every person, given a complex enough challenge, will try to solve it in their own personal way. But here, above all, it is not one person's personal way that we need, it is to find the common ground that makes sense to all. I haven't looked carefully, but I can well imagine that @gregorycassel's MOT might be a great starting point.

If we can manage this top-layer coordination well, serving as a way of bringing everyone into a workable consensus, then I would be very optimistic about future progress after that. The challenge I see right now is for (e.g.) @bobhaugen and @olisb to hear each other with care and consideration, and to come to agreement, initially just on how to discuss these matters.

So yes, much of what has been written in this thread is very pertinent. If the CTA (I'd personally tweak the title for this) or even the DLC could deal with the human organisational side of these matters, great; but we can't just say that without fleshing out rough, initial guidelines for what gets done where (to avoid duplication) and some clear enough idea of how the CTA or DLC coordinates with the technical builders (who may or may not be using the OAE label).

@asimong - I started to quote sections of your comment, but I like too much of it to do that.

I totally agree with discussions now about technical and organizational architecture and how they go together. I sorta think those could be discussed separately as well as together. By separately, I mean we've had a lot of discussions about technical architecture among OAE participants before, and some of that could be brought together as a starter, but not much about organizational architecture.

Does that make sense to everybody?

To me, it's a question of what management, what coordination, is appropriate and effective. Not "effective" just by itself — in some contexts, dictatorship is effective. Effectiveness is essential, but the processes, procedures, conventions, norms (etc. etc.) of coordination and management need to be in line with our shared values — embodied in a shared culture.

I see Bob's "how?" as a good question. Greg usually has a good line on governance. Can we collectively get our acts together and start to answer the "how?" question?

Concretely, what needs to be managed? What actual open app ecosystem work is going on?

• @funkycram is working on a SSO app, and also set up http://cloud.openappecosystem.cc/ , and is also working on a website.
• @ivan116 and @lynnfoster and another person who is not participating in these discussions are working on the Kamasi app in the Fair Coop context, which wants to become part of an open app ecosystem, but is not quite ready for it yet.
• @tiborkatelbach , Lynn, and me, and maybe @robertbest are working on vocabulary translations, maybe with some people from the virtual assembly, maybe eventually with some people from the Data Food Consortium.
• @ahdinosaur I think continues to work on stuff that could fit into an OAE, but in the Root Systems context, not here. He and @simontegg who might not be around here anymore once created Holodex, which was probably the first OAE app.
• @jonrichter continues to do a lot of work in Transformap and other contexts that I think are tuned into OAE in one way or another, but don't surface in these Loomio discussions much.
• I think the Virtual Assembly people are creating work that could fit into an OAE, but are also not discussing it here.
• Loomio could have been an OAE app but has never wanted to support embedded discussions inside other apps, so they don't qualify.

Probably some other work that I am missing...what did I miss?

What management do people think is needed there, other than the mutual coordination among the people who are doing the work?

I don't think trying to get all of the people who are doing relevant work to congregate here in an OAE context is needed, by the way. Most of the people I know are aware that this revival of OAE is happening, and they'll congregate here when it suits their purposes.

"What management do people think is needed there, other than the mutual coordination among the people who are doing the work?"

Fair question, Bob @bobhaugen. To me, management is just all about mutual coordination. I would turn it round, asking, what mutual coordination would be helpful? It may not be as easy to answer that question as it first seems. Two sides of any potential coordination may have different views about what would be helpful. Some people (as we know well) see coordination as "you fitting in to my plans" 😃 Maybe other selfless folk see coordination as "tell me how I can fit into your plans". That's very kind of them.

And, no, I don't see the answer in some kind of central coordinating authority, telling people whose plans are to be prioritised. On the other hand, if no one talks about the relative merits of different incompatible plans, someone is going to end up wasting time, maybe a lot of time and energy, not to mention the frustration and sometimes discord involved (which I see as the main danger of "do-ocracy"). Here it is that I see the real challenge of working outside of hierarchical power structures.

I'm hoping for the wisdom of the collective to put in an appearance somewhere here. So, in turn, we need to nurture collectivity. That implies, to me, all sorts of very interesting things, to do with human relationships. Which, as I have suggested elsewhere, are an integral part of the "ecosystem".

I should probably add, that the Value Flows vocabulary is not yet finished. It's slow, patient work. If you want to help, this is a good place to get started:
https://gitter.im/valueflows/welcome

That (beyond mutual coordination among the people doing the work) is where we think standards and conventions fit in, for example, shared vocabularies and protocols.

@bobhaugen

I see a way to be more precise about the objectives about each action (OAE and CTA).

Everything related to the ecosystem of apps is OAE
Everything related to the people is CTA.

But maybe it's not a good idea, I can't tell.

Everything related to the ecosystem of apps is OAE Everything related to the people is CTA.

Problem is lots of people stuff will be about the apps work: planning, design issues, mutual coordination, wanting to get involved in actions, etc. Now happening in wekan, chat, and here. CTA would just add another channel and get in the way. I'd probably like to reduce the number of channels. I've seen a few complaints about being confused by all the channels.

I don't know yet what the CTA wants to do, or even if it wants to be revived, although I am seeing a lot of interest in a revival. But if it comes back to life, I have no idea what it will become. I don't think anybody really knew the first time, either. It was a happening, it just evolved. Lots of people met each other and discussed their projects, which was useful. I think more about outreach than actual collaboration.

Anyway, I don't think that formula is accurate, or will work. Need a more clear separation. I might misunderstand what you meant, of course, but if so, it still needs a more clear separation.

I clearly don't know what is the best (CTA or not). What I know : if CTA is recreated, it needs a concrete objective and connections with OAE. According to me, if @olisb wants to recreate it, he may do it, and see what happens.

the way I see it,

OAP is a practical project,

CTA is a meta-project, trying to make sense of the eco-system of which OAP is an essential part, and promoting cooperation and interoperability of commons technology. It could organize conferences bringing various people together to foster cooperation, looking for funds that could be invested in the more important projects, etc..

Michel

@bobhaugen

"CTA would just add another channel and get in the way."

I seriously hope not - in fact I hope it could do the opposite and unite a larger group in order that we can focus in on more productive, effective, collaboration than we are achieving through all our disparate channels...

Personally, I REALLY struggle to keep up with all these various groups Loomio, the mailing lists, the newsletters, the emails, my work which pays the mortgage, and having enough time for my loved ones...

I imagine others feel the same?

When i do have a few hours to put into working on the OAE, I'd like it be be on focused, productive work which I know is contributing to a much larger, well planned goal... As opposed to trying to catch up on all the various threads - like this one ;)

So one idea, which I'm not sure came across in my Proposal about launching the CTA, is that the CTA helps manage the various 'streams' and 'conversations' of subgroups which occasionally 'report back' to the wider community with their progress and findings, and call on the wider group for input into larger, more 'organisation-wide' decisions.

That way, we could all knuckle down and really get into the bits of work we are especially passionate about, whilst working with real autonomy, without having to worry that we are missing something important elsewhere, since the channels we need to monitor would have been reduced by the structure, decision making protocols and reporting practices of the CTA.

Make sense?

I got no problem with information from OAE work being reported in CTA. The idea of the CTA "managing" OAE work, or even making decision for the OAE, fills me with dread. I remember the endless discussions about whether the CTA should be open source or not, leading to something so wishy-washy as to be meaningless.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the CTA, but it was not an effective organization, nor did it even try to be. I'm not claiming tha OAE has been an effective organization, either, but a lot of work that spins in and out of the OAE has been done.

Lynn reminds me that there is already a thread aboout technical architecture.
https://www.loomio.org/d/C0V8UDqg/ecosystem-technical-architecture

I'd like to have the OAE continue to manage itself, as best it can, among the people who are doing the work. We some work scheduled for this coming week on the vocab translations, let's see if we can coordinate.

I would also like to see something like the CTUG proposed recently, but I agree with several comments in that thread that we should wait until we got something to show.

Hey @olisb and others, great work on the collaborative.tech site. I'm just trying to sign up but I prefer to sign up or login to sites using HTTPS (to prevent MitM attacks on my passphrase or data), and I notice that you don't seem to have HTTPS working. This can be set up using gratis HTTPS certificates from Let's Encrypt, and there are bots you can use to automatically update your certs just before they expire (see our experience with this at CoActivate).

I note that RiseUp recently joined the Association for Progressive Communications. Is the CTA reinventing this wheel? If not, what makes CTA different from APC?

To be clear, although there are sometimes benefits to pooling resources, and avoiding fragmentation of effort, I don't think it always helps to throw all cats in one sack ;) Groups or networks can sometimes work in a similar space, while having very different goals, priorities, rules-of-engagement etc. But if that's the case, it's good to be clear on both the difference and areas of overlaps, both so people can choose the appropriate venue for their participation, and so different organizations can work together as appropriate.

I'll give you my opinion (based on my opinion of the original CTA).

APC says,

The APC mission
APC's mission is to empower and support organisations, social movements and individuals in and through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to build strategic communities and initiatives for the purpose of making meaningful contributions to equitable human development, social justice, participatory political processes and environmental sustainability.

The original CTA seemed to be more about software; in particular, software platforms and software development groups. And often about people seeking help or money for their software platform projects.

Some people and organizations in CTA were interested in social justice and the other goals of APC, but it was not an explicit CTA goal.

It just hit me, like a bolt of lightening from the blue, that this might be one major reason why the CTA keeps petering out. If we focus on building collaboration apps targeted at people building collaboration apps, the whole thing is at risk of becoming an inward-looking circlejerk. I totally support free code app devs eating our own and each other's dogfood, for software freedom reasons amongst others, but maybe what we really need to inspire effective collaboration is some use cases from outside the app dev world to get our teeth into.

For contrast, look at what Drutopia are doing. Their tech (a Drupal 8 distro aimed at not-for-profits) is still in alpha, but already they have active partnerships with organizations who are eating their dogfood for real world purposes, like running an election campaign, or websites for worker-owned coops (on main street, not online one). Maybe the CTA needs two types of membership; developer organizations and user organizations?

Very useful revisiting of these issues, thanks @strypey and @bobhaugen
One thing that I can imagine helping greatly is for people who really understand the different organisations / group / alliances / movements / whatever actually talk with each other in depth. The kind of reflective listening that has the very best chance of each party being and feeling heard by the other, and hopefully, understood. That's the kind of basis, as I see it, for each group to move to more clearly articulated collaboration, with the distinct roles clarified, and the methods of collaboration explained and perhaps even planned out a bit.

This kind of depth knowledge and understanding should go way beyond a superficial approach with speculative ideas on any division of responsibility. It's too easy for any of us to imagine what someone else's responsibilities "should" be, and then to feel critical that they don't take on what they have never even agreed to.

So is there anyone central enough in APC who might be willing to engage at that level? I'd really enjoy getting beyond our "readings" of mission etc. towards genuine current appreciation.

Hi @strypey - thanks for your encouragement - and yes https would be a good addition... I will fix that when i can find time... or any other collaborator would be welcome to too!?

But you're right - whilst i don't always condone putting all cats in one sack ;) i do hate re-invented wheels... and since CTA progress has stalled so much I wonder if it does make sense to try and roll it up with https://www.progcode.org/ and http://opensupporter.org/ and other similar ventures like http://www.civicstack.org/ and https://diglife.com/

- although obviously that's easier said than done and encouraging true collaboration between groups is often, imho, as hard as trying to herd cats into a sack.

Hi Oli @olisb -- yes, that's what I'm trying to get at: it can be like herding cats, but when people actually talk deeply to each other suddenly and magically the cats transform... I've seen it happen in our cohousing community, so why not out there in the wider world?

Hi @asimong - I totally agree, and really appreciate your efforts to make us all realise that a bit more. The hard part is getting those talks set up - I'm struggling to even get email replies from progcode and opensupporter - I'd love to have them at https://2018.open.coop to try to help initiate the kind of discussions you describe in person - which might make further online collaboration a bit easier... @all feel free to help encourage that to happen too - if you think it's a good idea!? :)

@olisb I think the order of operations you laid out is pretty sensible. The "holy trinity" concept is bang on IMHO, and I agree it's good to have a critical mass of collaborators before making formal choices about collaboration tools.

But, having been involved in global networks since the late 90s, I'm pretty sure that if all groups have to do is pledge to do some collaboration at some undefined future time, you'll never get that critical mass. I suggest that the pledge needs to include a clause along the lines of:
"we pledge to provide at least one person from our group to actively liase with the CTA mothership, at any given time."

I suggest the forum for ongoing, informal chat among the liasons be an email list, hosted by a suitably neutral party (RiseUp? Disroot? CoActivate?). Reasons for that:
* it's a fairly neutral tool, everyone already has an email address, and knows how to use it
* it's asynchronous, so it's not too demanding or distracting from everyone's main projects, especially if everyone knows how to use folders and filters (or set up a separate email account for the CTA work)
* an email list serves as a point of focus that scales up or down easily with the group energy, unlike a web tool it doesn't get as overloaded and overwhelming if discussion heats up, or look sad and abandoned when there's a thoughtful pause in activity
* because we all know how bad email is for decision-making (hopefully), we will focus on what it's good for; relationship building and divergent discussions on possible strategy and tactics, recruitment, partnerships and alliances etc

The other thing we could try, as a CTA flagship project, is to set up an instance of Mastodon or Hubzilla, with an account for the reps from each member group (ideally with SSO so folks can use their existing collaborative.tech credentials to sign in). This would allow us to have informal, asynchronous discussions, but in a public square, where people from other orgs and projects can watch and chime in, from their own fediverse homebase. I'd be happy to help set this up.

EDIT: divergent, not convergent, crucial difference!

I love this reply @strypey - thank you so much for taking the time to actually read the proposal :) and for thinking about it - and replying - that's awesome :)
I'm ok with a mailing list for a while - and whatever tools - but I'm not sure we need to set more stuff up - we're all already talking here (albeit intermittently and without much progress!) - really I think your comment about "an inward-looking circlejerk" is bang on and unless we can do more of what Simon is proposing - actually meeting and really talking with each other and working out how we can genuinely collaborate so that "magically the cats transform" - it's never going to work. Hence my immediate focus being on the conference. In less than a day I have now made connections with people in 4 different countries that are all trying to build "shared cloud infrastructure" - I wrote this https://open.coop/2018/04/03/making-of-the-coop-cloud/ and am now trying to link all of them up and get them to London in July to meet in person - it's the only way I see anything real happening... unless somehow we can magically get better at online collaboration... which doesn't seem especially easy :(
Thanks again for taking the time to read and feedback - it's really encouraging.
And the valuable history update from @lynnfoster is useful too - it would be great if we could learn from what has happened before!

I agree that informal chat here is valuable - we have to start somewhere. However, a) Loomio is hardly a neutral platform (if you like I can write more about why I think this is important), b) the PAE group is not a focused CTA space, and c) in my experience formal delegates/ spokes communicating consistently and feeding back to their collectives really can accomplish more organization-building than self-selected groups (although these are also essential for looser network-building).

That 'Making of the Cooperative Cloud' article is fantastic! This, more than anything else is what we need more of; structured playbooks that allow us to learn from other teams' experiments, and vice-versa. Open source applied at the platform level, not just the app level, or maybe just the collaborative aspects of scientific method applied to community software deployment.

Absolutely agree that F2F can accomplish in hours what text-based, online comms can take weeks or months to achieve. I'm in the process of talking my wife into making London one of our holiday destinations in July ;)

if you can convince her, you can have a free ticket :) - In fact, if anyone here in the OAE / CTA group/s has something to contribute to the debate and can definitely be in London (i.e. wont waste the place) on 26th + 27th July this year - please email info@open.coop explaining who you are what you do and we will give you all free tickets - on a first come first served basis, whilst stocks last - :)

Wow! Sounds great! My wife has been involved in setting up community currency projects, and wrote a Phd on alternative economics. I think she would be able to make some great contributions from a non-geek user-organizer perspective.

that sounds great! email me some blurb / a link or two pls - we have a specific session on that subject which would benefit massively from some female input!

Funny that I saw this today, as the DigLife call was about the ubiquity of the challenge of collaboration at scale ...

We can invite several people from the above-mentioned groups, and others, and host a virtual open space (@asimong would love to talk with you soon if you're interested... :) ) like the one we did in Feb, still listed here:
https://diglife.com/open-space/

spot on remark I think!!

In case it helps frame any future discussions you all can get going, I can share what I distilled out of extensive discussion in the original CTA around values and the purpose of the CTA. It took awhile for this to emerge clearly at the time, as we talked past each other. Had to dig deep for understanding to emerge over disbelief or indignation.

There were two basic goals people had for the CTA.
1. People who wanted to create software for groups working towards change on the ground. This was the social justice / next economy crowd. Software was a means towards these ends and people thought we should figure out the best way to create software that could be easily combined and easily implemented and used by these groups. And in fact was wanted by these groups and would be created in collaboration with these groups. More of an external focus, providing software as infrastructure and tools/.
2. People who wanted to create software for whomever, but create it self-organized in collaborative relationships with each other, with attention to fair internal governance and mutual support among the creators. I believe this was based more or less on inspiration from Enspiral, and was more of an internal focus.

For example, one of the longest discussions was around should the CTA seal include a statement that all software would be open source. People in 1. above thought obviously it had to all be open source out of principles of creation for the commons and because otherwise groups on the ground would be taking risks of losing their tools. People in 2. above saw others not understanding what they needed in terms of flexibility to make their internally collaborative associations work as businesses in the real world.

The impression that CTA wanted to create software for themselves might come from the tendency expressed in 2. Enspiral does a lot of that, creating software for themselves which embodies their attention to non-capitalist internal governance, and which they then take out to other organizations who take in that experience embodied in the software.

Full disclosure: I was part of 1. I hope I have represented both viewpoints fairly, and that anyone part of 2. will correct me if not.

I appreciate the renewed vigor here regarding inclusive dialogue and design with users as well as devs. That reflects my priorities in many social contexts including The Library of the Commons, which is developing a particular focus on community-supported agriculture (i.e. producer/consumer coops). It was also a subject in my Dec 2015 essay The dialogue of social and information technologies.

I caution however that such inspiring talk won't get us much closer to practical progress and a functioning OAE or CTA. I think that making stuff happen, inclusively, will require (1) lightweight goals and (2) direct confrontation with basic issues of group governance.

Regarding lightweight goals: When CTA discussion was quite active around the start of 2016, I advocated the creation of a lightweight, low-cost standard and certification for software apps which meet all technical and ethical requirements, and (hopefully) some recommendations . @ishanshapiro particularly suggested a list (perhaps table or spreadsheet form) of desired traits which the governing agents (often devs) of each app could publicly confirm or deny.

I still think that's the best approach to actually making CTA and/or OAE happen: an openly licensed standard which can be self-assigned by the governing agents (sometimes devs) of specific apps, with some very lightweight, clear and practical conflict resolution guidelines for handling any apparent misrepresentation or misuse of the standard.

On governance: However, even that lightweight approach would require one or more agents to govern the development of the standard itself! Ideally, I think that the governing agent should be a diverse group of people who practice inclusive decision-making whenever they make official decisions. IMO, such decisions should happen quite rarely, and should require the consent of all (active) members of the governing agent.

I prefer the OAE name to CTA, but regardless of names, I'd love to make such an open ecosystem of organizing apps my main focus sometime soon. I often promote the OAE concept in many contexts including the Holochain community. Holochain certainly will have an ecosystem of apps-- directly accessible through an "app store" (distributed directory)-- and I'd prefer for most of them to eventually display an OAE or CTA label. I could work hard to make that a reality, if the OAE/CTA vision becomes practically fruitful.

Frankly I'm in a hurry & I'm throwing this in here without a clear call to action, but I'd be happy to discuss any specifics on how to move forward.

@gregorycassel we can put any of these in the DigLife ecosystem map, and add a governance view of the map. Ping me in holochain or diglife mattermost to set a time to talk about that. If you want to try adding a software project, go ahead, though we're updating the data structure right now.

https://diglife.com/our-ecosystem/

OAE work continues, but following what @strypey said in this comment upthread.

Some of us (@ivan116 , @tiborkatelbach , @lynnfoster , @mayel , and me) are working on some current apps and a proposed future project in FairCoop.

And as explained recently, @luandrovieira is doing an amazing community network project in Moinho, Brazil.

None of this is explicitly connected with reviving the CTA, but that revival might be able to fit in somewhere and even help.

I'm not sure exactly what a revived CTA would add to the working projects and these conversations in Loomio, though. Or maybe it would be something different. What it could add might be a reasonable discussion topic.

@bobhaugen

I'm not sure exactly what a revived CTA would add to the working projects

This work sounds fantastic @bobhaugen . My suggestion is that instead of simply being test subjects for well-intentioned developers, these user organizations could be invited to be formal members of the CTA. This could give them both recognition as co-creators of the software, and a more direct mechanism for feeding back into the development and governance process of OAEs (it doesn't seem to me it will ever be "The OAE"). If the CTA as originally envisioned is like a worker-owned coop, with each of the apps teams as aworker-owner, then my proposal would be like a hybrid coop in which ownership and governance is shared by both workers and customers (in this case user organizations).

I propose having user organizations as conscious co-creators of OAEs for two reasons; morale and motivation, and user-centred agile methods. Let me expand on these points a bit.

Firstly, having people use and value the tools I'm building make it much easier to feel like it's worth the time, and the feedback I get allows me to feel confident I know what's finished, and what needs more work. If I try to finish the tool before I let anyone use it, there's a good chance that either I'll give up before I get there, or when people finally use it, only then will I realise I was barking up the wrong tree on a whole bunch of design decisions.

Secondly, if the only people who test the tools I'm building are my team, and other teams of geeks, I'll end up with tools that are really good for geeks. This has been one of the most intractable problems for open source software. It's great to see design-first practices start to replace the habit of engineering an awesome back-end, then bolting on a poorly designed GUI as an afterthought. The only way to bake in design decisions that make a tool work for Jane Average, or for the specific user communities I want to serve outside the geek ghetto, is to get those people using working prototypes as soon as humanly possible. This user-centred approach is expressed in at least half of the agile manifesto principles, particularly:

"[end users] and developers must work together daily throughout the project."

My suggestion is that instead of simply being test subjects for well-intentioned developers, these user organizations could be invited to be formal members of the CTA.

I don't think that is an accurate description of these projects. They are either collaborative efforts or we don't do them. The original desires must come from the people on the ground trying to do something that they think would be helped by some appropriate software.

Whether the organization on the ground wants to join something like the CTA remains to be discovered.

The only way to bake in design decisions that make a tool work for Jane Average, or for the specific user communities I want to serve outside the geek ghetto, is to get those people using working prototypes as soon as humanly possible.

Dear @strypey , you seem to be making a lot of stereotypical assumptions.

Please accept my apologies @bobhaugen . I was trying to do two things in that comment; a) respond to your quoted question, and b) use that as a diving board for jumping into some general comments expanding on my proposal to give user orgs a formal role in the CTA.

Rereading my comment after some sleep, I can see how you could interpret my general comments as implied criticisms of your projects, about which I know diddly-squat. Would you be willing to revisit my comment with all this in mind, and perhaps speak to how the user groups you're working with might feel about being invited to have formal reps as part of CTA governance? This seems important to me, because I'm not aware of any other tech association or standards body that explicitly includes users as first-class citizens along with devs; it's a point of different that could end up being the lynch-pin of the CTA's existence.

Would you be willing to revisit my comment with all this in mind, and perhaps speak to how the user groups you're working with might feel about being invited to have formal reps as part of CTA governance?

I think all such user groups I know are focused on their own organizational problems. A revived CTA would need to be pretty compelling and do them some actual good for them to get interested.

That being said, we would like them to internetwork more than they do. We want a whole new economic system, not just a bunch of isolated projects. I'm not sure yet what form of organization would help them collaborate more. The previous CTA was not it.

The previous CTA was not it

Clearly, which is precisely why I say that a) something needs to be fundamentally different if CTA 2.0 is to improve on CTA 1.0 and b) I believe that something, is including users as first-class citizens of the org stucture.

I should clarify one of my attitudes here. I think the original CTA accomplished quite a lot. Several people and projects got acquainted that did not know each other before. Some actual work started there and continued elsewhere. That it fizzled out does not erase what it accomplished, and that may also be why some people here want to revive or renew it.

I personally think it was bound to fizzle out - be a temporary org form - because it did not seem to be able to transition from people meeting to people doing something in the same CTA context. The work went elsewhere. That's not necessarily bad.

I also think that the stage of each project wanting to be the center of the universe, which characterized the previous CTA, might be - if not over - at least waning. People might be ready to actually collaborate without being the center.

People might be ready to actually collaborate without being the center.

That's very exciting. I just wanted to add that this is one of the main reasons I think the bootstrapping space for the larval CTA 2.0 needs to be on a platform that is not run by one of the CTA members. If not, then the org quickly come to be perceived (rightly or wrongly) as a pet project of whichever group hosts the bootstrapping space.