Loomio - Review

@ristoalakaila will you lead this review?

I can give some comments about the user experience on behalf of our one year use with DiEM Finland DSC, but the more detailed features that are needed in the review are indeed to be made by Ville to whom I have passed the call.

Some existing reviews of Loomio:
https://www.getapp.com/collaboration-software/a/slack/compare/loomio/

https://www.opendemocracy.net/participation-now/alina-siegfried/from-occupy-to-online-democracy-loomio-story

Great @Ville, did you get the copy of @wesseldublin´ e-mail? He should invite you to Dem Lab Tooltesters -site ASAP, cause we really appreciate if you would have some time to leave your comments on Mats´ chart of features even though you have busy weekend with studying.

Ethercalc sheet of reviews:
https://ethercalc.org/o6ejym0y8bs5

It seems that best time for review meeting would be tomorrow at 18 o´clock CET, are you able to be around then? If not, please give an other suggestion here:

Time poll:
https://framadate.org/m57hXnDFoAccb2HW

I can discuss some of the technical aspects about loomio that I have experience of. However the dev team is working on and adding new features constantly, hence some of my knowledge is already outdated.

Beside Wessel´s links there´s are some existing reviews about Loomio also on the survey pages @davidbovill pointed out, where "we breakdown and quantify aspects of the software which make it suitable for decentralized Deliberation" which stays the most important category for me:

http://tools.progressivedemocracy.cc/view/welcome-visitors/view/loomio-deliberation-assessment (CC BY-SA 4.0.JSON.tools.progressivedemocracy.cc) Average Rating was 2.714, but doubt if we will come up any higher than that.

Here´s my (and theirs) ratings in different Criteria with some comments:

Connect to Members 3 (2)

Can be improved by chat integration (= Slack?)

Debate 3 (4)

Better possibilities to restructure discussions would help

Multilingual Deliberation 3 (3)

We have managed to facilitate the platform in Finnish

Topics and Groups 4 (3)

The roles in different Subgroups and Category tags can be moderated and delegated especially in more expensive pricing programs (see more about pricing programs below).

Augmented Video Deliberation 1 (2)

Can´t find any, that´s a must have one like zoom (which must be user friendly an is scalable enough)

Action Facilitation 4 (4)

Never used the time poll but shure is quite convenient to have integrated when facilitating any actions (instead of separated calendar apps like Doodle ext.).

Flipped Deliberation 3 (1)

Loomio seems to have built in a quite impressive facilitation guide along:
https://www.loomio.school/facilitators_guide/

My Average Rating in Deliberation Categoria: 3

Pricing programs:

Free ($0) For casual and community groups. Features include:
One group,
Discussions,
Decisions,
File attachments,
Participate by email or in-app,
Password free, secure login,
Community support

Gold ($19/month or $190 / year) For working groups and businesses. Everything in Free, plus:
Slack integration,
Subgroups Category tags,
Custom subdomain (yourgroup.loomio.org),
Customer support Data export (CSV or XLS)

Pro ($99/month or $990 / year). For organizations with multiple groups. Everything in Gold, plus:
Up to 10 groups,
Analytics report,
Premium support

@ristoalakaila thanks for this! Can you also add your review to the Ethercalc sheet? https://ethercalc.org/o6ejym0y8bs5

Alright, I managed to create a review for Loomio. Thanks @ristoalakaila for notifying me and for your reviews as well. Now back to reading for my monday exam on EU-decision-making :slight_smile: :wave:

@wesseldublin @davidbovill I also contributed one additional criteria for the review:
* Long-term support/Status of development

• My argument goes along these lines: These kind of software systems have complex codebases which inevitably also have bugs and issues that need to be dealt with. Also the environment is in constant flux, browsers and mobile technologies change, which requires updates and maintenance. They also have integrations with third-party codebases (OAuth for Google and Facebook authentication, Slack integration etc), and updated in those codebases require also adaptations to the software's own codebase, hence constant maintenance and development is a very desirable feature. I think that technically speaking it should be a major consideration/criteria for selection.

Hej Ville
Thanks for your very valuable input, as a developer I know these things like dependencies and integration-issues can jeopardize the stability and consumes a lot of attention and create frustration both for the users and those in responsibiity for the codebase.

Hejsan Mats, I'm glad to be able to contribute :) nice to see that there are interested people from Sweden here as well. A year back we were wondering in Helsinki about if there are people in Stockholm or elsewhere in Sweden interested in Diem, but it seemed like you didn't have dsc's or activity in Diem forums etc. We thought that it could be partly because of the eurocrisis and you guys not being part of euro, so those topics are not necessarily as politicised there