Introduce yourself to the Loomio Community

Welcome @laurensmith

Interested in social entrepreneurship, development and innovation. Keen to learn more about Loomio as a potential tool for ADC which is a NZ based charity that support a microfinance bank in Myanmar and Malawi.

Welcome to the community @williamchu! William, thanks for your lovely introduction message - great to have you here :)

"Hi, I’m a police dispatcher from Vancouver, BC. I love everything about what you guys are doing here (as well as at the Enspiral Network) and hope I can contribute any way I can. Unfortunately, I have little programming knowledge. But I have no shortage of ideas and motivation, starting with testing the website’s new features and spreading the word. I believe there is unlimited potential for a website that promotes direct/deliberative/liquid/e- democracy."

Lots of lovely people to introduce today!

Welcome @claudiumarginean, who is one of the people who translated Loomio into Romanian :)

Welcome also @micahdaigle1 , who is a wonderful friend of Loomio and super knowledgeable democracy technologist (check out the Upgrade Democracy community).

We're also joined by @ksenya and @mariela - feel free to introduce yourselves to the group.

Make yourselves at home and feel free to ask any questions :)

Great to be back on Loomio.
"...there is unlimited potential for a website that promotes direct/deliberative/liquid/e- democracy." - very nicely put by @williamchu, so I'm just quoting.

Welcome! Bienvenido!

@miguelvazquezmoren

Estoy investigando herramientas de debate. Pertenezco al Círculo Podemos Alcantarilla. Soy desarrollador de aplicaciones web y aplicaciones e escritorio.

@hubatmcjuhes

I am a member of the Pirate Party of New Zealand and we currently rely heavily on loomio. We are very much looking forward to version 1.0.

Hi,

I am working toward a dissertation in online-deliberative democracy, in Israel. I have a wiki about it here: delib-democracy.org

Cheers

Tal

Welcome @talyaron! Thanks for sharing your work - really interesting stuff :)

Welcome @jochenwalter !

Hi, I am Jochen, an engineer and one world promotor who is interested in transition and how people can get together making decision in respecting each other and using the most comfortable techniques - it doesn’t mean to me that there are only computer and internet to be used!

Welcome to some new members!

@pierreyves do you want to tell us about yourself?

@pabloredondo

Solicito pertenecer al grupo. Jubilado. Para colaborar en la aportación de propuestas.

@tomvanlooy

I’m looking for straightforward ways to interact and collaborate with people across companies on specific topics in Belgium

@croctemp

Hi, I’m Daniel from Spain. I belong to Democracia real YA!, the original group that organized the 15 May 2011 movement of ‘indignados’ in Spain. We are trying loomio as a powerful tool to organize better our nationwide group, and as potential hard users we would like to know and discuss improvements in loomio… Thanks!

@michaelaspangenbur

Really interested in using Loomio long term with some of the groups I am involved in and would like to help it develop further.

Hello,
I'm Pierre-Yves and I am a "Gentil Virus" from Belgium.

If you want to know what the Gentils Virus are and what's their message for real democracy, check our web sites :

http://www.le-message.org/?lang=en
http://gentilsvirus.org

We experiment loomio to discuss and decide together how to update our web sites.

Welcome @dianashand !

I am from ECO Environment and Conservation Organisations of Aorteroa NZ and the Exec Committee is using Loomio to organise discussions and Working groups. http://www.eco.org.nz/

I’m Daniel, I participate in Democracia real YA! Madrid, the group that started the ‘indignados’ movement back in 2011 in Spain. https://www.facebook.com/democraciarealyamadrid

Welcome new people!

@arturo3

Soy Arturo Esteve, estudiante de Ciencias Políticas en la Universidad de Barcelona. Lo que más me gusta de mi carrera es la teoría y filosofía política, la política comparada y el derecho, relaciones y conflictos internacionales. Soy trilingüe y actualmente trabajo en una cooperativa ONG de ayuda social en el barrio del Raval (BCN)

@stijndewinter

I am Stijn, from Belgium and I am following the OpenApp threads. I feel connecting on the Loomio front is probably useful as well.

@dylanbuckley and @cristinaarribas do you want to introduce yourselves?

Welcome @sionwhellens !

Recently set up and coordinating the UK Worker Cooperatives group and Solidarity Fund subgroup. Happy to contribute!

Welcome @janvonmulert !

Hi, Ive started using Loomio through policy incubator for the Internet Party(quite an experiment!). I’ve come across some threads discussing the short comings of loomio for the kind of collaborative decision making the policy incubator is trying to achieve. I would like to make sure the gripes/ideas coming up in the policy incubator get fed back to the loomio developers. If there is a better place to bring this information please let me know.

We're always happy to hear feedback :) Please make sure you check out the Roadmap to see what's already in the backlog. Put new suggestions in Feature Ideas.

welcome @rathy !

I’m a teacher who’s interested in incorporating e-democracy into my classroom, to co-direct lesson content and negotiate a student-centered timetable. Loomio seems like an incredibly powerful tool to achieve this end and I’d like to learn more about it!

@mixirving might have some thoughts for you :)

Bienvenidos, @ofelialemavillar !

Pertenezco al Círculo Podemos A Estrada y Loomio se está probando con una herramienta fundamental en las comunicaciones y vías de votación entre los miembros del Círculo.

Bienvenidos @joseantoniobarbas

Actualmente hemos abierto un grupo y desearía unirme al grupo para solicitar (y en lo posible) aportar ayuda y experiencias.

y @josebecerra tambien!

I want learn about Loomio.

Thanks @alanna ! For some added context, I recently started my own e-democracy site with my class through Your Priorities, an Icelandic open source e-democracy platform. My class are on their front page! Here: www.citizens.is

We've since been experimenting a fair bit with more horizontal forms of leadership and student-centred learning, and it has been such a positive experience! So much so that I've been reading more around the topic (I found out about Loomio through Micah Sifry's 'Big Disconnect') and can't figure out why this isn't a bigger thing!

If there's any other educators on here who also nerd out about this stuff, I would love to hear your thoughts!

@rathy Thanks for the site link. I am from Australia.
https://www.loomio.org/g/GRQl4yUT/senator-online-sol-australia
Senator Online is Australia’s first and only Electronic Direct Democracy Political Party.
(sorry, this group is open to see but closed to join) https://www.loomio.org/g/nzVv8a6F/senator-online-internal-governance
https://www.facebook.com/SenatorOnline/posts/836387449707779
www.senatoronline.org.au

Hi @lbjoum !

Yes, I'm aware of Senator Online and I think what you guys are trying to accomplish is awesome. :) Will there be anyone representing SOL at the auIGF?

auIGF? I don't know what that is but it sounds like we should know.

I see you have joined our loomio. Thanks. Please feel free to talk there.

Do you know any similar loomio groups?

i should say - the pirate party NZ are on loomio https://www.loomio.org/g/EatD8u7s/pirate-party-of-new-zealand.

Hi @rathy , I'm a developer and translation supported on loomio. I've got a background as a high school teacher (this amazing school), but unfortunately loomio hadn't been born while I was teaching. Super exciting that you're exploring this area in school

Hi! I found out about loomio via the Diaspora* wiki. I'm a supporter of enhancing democracy by IT. My hobbies include programming and playing the guitar.

Welcome new people!

@obanosnet

A tech guy interested in participation

@juanjose2

Hola! me gustaría formar parte de esta gran comunidad :-D

@luisdominguez

QUIERO FUTURO PARA NUESTROS HIJOS (UTPIA?)

@saullozano

Loomio newby but very excited about its capabilities. I’m colombian born, live in Germany for more than 30 years and love to create bridges between Germany and Colombia.

Bienvenidos @omarramosfernandez !

Voy a trabajar en el problema de la importación de contactos, que usted ha mencionado.

Welcome!

@edo

i’m a developer from Italy , i’m trying to use loomio in a local political party website as part of a bigger project to help citizen to collaborate and take decision. i hope to find some help and be useful to the community.

@chemafernandez

Soy un español cansado de tanto robo a mano armada y quiero un pais digno e igual para todos. Tengo 52 años y luchando activamente por la cultura mundial, no es la hija pobre. Sin cultura no hay vida.

Welcome new people!

@pintopastel

I need to understand how Loomio works as I need to create a group about Cinema lovers and makers. Pinto pastel is my own blog as I do draw with pastel and love it, but this group is just for research as I need to know if it´ll work with the other group

@katiemimnaugh

As administrator of a Loomio group, I would like to provide feedback on features and content.

@diogonunes

I’m a developer and I recently found out Loomio. I was developing a similar product, also in Rails, available at www.dcid.org/how. Your project is light years away from mine, so I decided to put mine away, donate to your crowdfunding campaign and join your community. I also joined the Portuguese-Portugal translation group. I want to get involved and help you develop Loomio ;)

Diogo, if you'd like to jump in and help with dev, please check out our roadmap and github, and get in touch if you need support to find what to work on.

@alanna Thanks for the introduction and the links. I'll give my best to assist your project ;)

Hey @paularossplata welcome to the community!!

Loomio ❤ Podemos!

Soy informática y soy de ‘PODEMOS’ en Mallorca (Islas Baleares, Spain). En nuestra organización social y política (muy nueva, por cierto) estamos utilizando muchísimo esta herramienta, pues nos parece MUY ÚTIL para poder desarrollar nuestros debates como organización asamblearia que nos planteamos ser. Por eso tengo interés en pertenecer a esta Comunidad, para estar al día con las mejoras de esta fantástica herramienta!! Y también por si algún día precisara hacer alguna pregunta concreta.
Acabo de ver vuestra reciente incorporación del ‘Not following’ y me parece genial!! Congratulations!!
Paula

I am computer and I am from 'Podemos' in Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain). In our (very new, of course) social and political organization we are using this tool a lot, as it seems VERY HELPFUL to develop our discussions as we considered asamblearia organization be. So I have interest in joining this community, to keep up with the improvements of this fantastic tool !! And if you ever do require a specific question. I just saw your recent addition of 'Not following' and I feel great !! Congratulations !!
Paula

Welcome!

@lewgrothe

I’m a developer and a member and supporter of a new private loomio group.

@nicoaumar

Hi! I think this software could be quite useful for groups to organize ideas.

Hi! Thanks for accepting my membership. I'm a developer (in C#) but I have no idea about open source; I'd like to learn about it. I've been using loomio for a while and I find it very useful.

Great! Welcome! Please see http://www.loomio.org/roadmap, where there are
also links to more info for developers who want to get involved. You might
also want to check out this recent blog post where one of our open source
contributors talks about why he got involved...
http://blog.loomio.org/2014/08/10/james/

Hi! Thanks for accepting my membership!! ❤

Welcome to the community @campesino! Great to have you here! And thank you for your brilliant introduction, and for the suggestions you've made so far - we are greatly appreciative!

I’ll take the chance to tell you that I am part of a quite large community of people using Loomio right now to participate in the build up process of a new political party in Spain called “Podemos” [we can] which has recently won 5 seats in the European Parliament, against all odds, and is now third or second position in polls, cracking our perennial bipartisanship! Quite an achievement for a political [anti]party which was a month old on the elections and with participatory/direct democracy and radical transparency as its flag.

So far Loomio is being used extensively for internal decision making in most local [territorial] and thematic [sectorial] groups called “círculos” [circles]. If you do a search of the word podemos or circulo in public groups you’ll get an idea of how many people are using it, a rough count I just made yielded 4 thousand, but this is growing still, at least until local elections next spring or general elections in autumn2015. This is because the IT Circle has been recommending it for maybe a couple of months already and is spreading. Every now and then I here things people say about it, mostly whether Loomio is suitable or not for what we need and considering other options. The suggestions I made are about the things I found most ‘annoying’, specially the lack of a system to categorize discussions and fully separate sets of them inside a group. As @robertguthrie suggested, labels could make the subgroup suggestion not needed anymore, or subgroups altogether. Labels for ordering and filtering. For me specially, dont know for others, it would be great also to be able to use a creation-timestamp order, for doing things like what I’m doing in a group I launched to debate and vote the 65 points of the Earth Section of the political program of Podemos for my Agriculture Circle. You’ll see they are numbered. Whenever somebody posts something the order is broken.

This ‘discussion’ on our main group, of which I’m proud, took me a while to make as it serves as an index with links to the 65 points/discussions in the group for voting the Earth Section [would’ve used a sub in our main group if it didn’t mix with the group discussions] The results of the votes for the 65 points will be posted here on each corresponding line in due time.

But Loomio is great even without the features I suggested! I congratulate and thank your team so much for making it possible for us to advance on this extremely exiciting political adventure we are in. I encourage you to keep working on it and listen to users.

Take care of yourselves

El texto no tenía ningún error gramatical. Pésima traducción.

Welcome new people!

@jacobgadikian

Hi, my name is Jake and I’m going to try to use Loomio to run a decentralized group of businesses, each with its own social goals. I think it’s possible for private enterprise to truly change the world for the better by focusing on only one theme: User empowerment. Think I can hang out with you guys? :)

Yes yes yes! Please hang out with us :) You might already be aware, but Loomio is part of the Enspiral Network which has similar goals to what you describe. Other tools focused on user empowerment are coming out of Enspiral, like Cobudget. Tell us more about your projects!

@roxupedroalvarezgo

I’m interested in Loomio and I want to join this community to learn and hope to help in some tasks.

@anita1

Grupo de coordinación. De podemos manzanares

@joshuanichols

I'm just getting started with loomio. I have created a group for the small town i live in. I think the project has huge potential.

Actually, hot diggitey damn! I had no idea about enspiral until just right now.

Can't wait :)-- I'll be joining their forums right now. When I saw Enspiral I thought it was referring to inspiral...... guess I was off target by a bit(http://www.amazon.com/InSpiral-Condoms-12-Retail-Box/product-reviews/B00014UK78). I had a feeling that my idea was too interesting & natural in an age of networks to truly be unique, but I could not find anyone else actually doing it. I can't wait to learn how you solve the various problems and how you leverage the strength of the model :)!

Cool! Happy to talk more about that @jacobgadikian - probably best to email me when you've had a chance to look into Enspiral a bit more. Definitely check out that link to Cobudget I put above - it also explains a lot about Enspiral.

I just hit the Enspiral homepage and gave it a detailed look. I want to tell you a little bit about the structure of 21C Dawn & how it differs from Enspiral. (Though, I agree with you fully-- it's quite largely the same concept)

Similarities:
1) Centered around coworking ("The Whiteboard" Coworking space will be our hub,
2) Diversity - The more the better including:
a) Linguistic - Since we are english speakers in China, a pre-requisite for non-native chinese speakers is a desire to learn Mandarin. Conversely, native Chinese speakers have a prerequisite of a desire to learn English.

b) Ethnic - in our ~10-20 person coworking space, we aim for a minimum of one person from each continent.

c) Geographic - We want to have a hub on every continent, too.
d) Economic - We aim to make each other better off through our work, but there are no financial requirements to join, and there is a system wide minimum wage that supports a basic lifestyle in Shenzhen and will go up matched to local inflation trends.

3) Corporate Model - We also use corporations in our structure. Our structure is a tad different from yours, however.

Differences:
1) Our "Guiding Org" (21C Dawn Foundation) owns 5% of all the companies associated with it.

2) There are zero employees, instead there are only owners.

3) No "paychecks" -- instead our companies pay dividends monthly and if that's lower than 3000RMB, it is boosted to 3000RMB by other parts of the organization. We do this because we feel that it incentives the individuals to help the organization succeed.

4) Profit - We feel that the profit motive is a powerful motivator and should be harnessed for good instead of eliminated. When companies are clear about their social values, and even how much profit they are seeking, we feel that they can profit so that they can sustain themselves and their employees without acting like members of the Bush Administration.

5) No real politics - We feel that politics has become a distraction from the local reality we live in. We aim to have an impact where we are. We feel that in time, men and women will evolve beyond the need for governments, while governments will simultaneously prove how dangerous they are.

Anyway, I felt kind of odd with all of the first person plural, but I'm pretty sure that I speak for everyone in 21C Dawn when I express my happiness at having found you. Something I considered almost immediately after beginning this conversation:

Do you folks think we are compatible enough to exchange 1%?

Best,
-Jake

Hmmmm I'm not sure I totally agree with how you've characterised the similarities and differences. Might be interesting to talk more though! If you want to find out more about Enspiral, start here: www.enspiral.com/faq :)

We are always super happy to find other aligned communities around the world. We collaborate a lot with diverse groups across the globe. If you want to talk more about Enspiral, hit me up on alanna@enspiral.com

@jacobgadikian Interested to hear more about the corporate structure of your co-working business group. Do you have a webpage somewhere with more information, Jacob?

Welcome to the community @sophiedavies! Sophie has provided the following introduction:

I am working for a Governmental Organisation and am looking Loomio for online decision making and just want to know a bit more about how it works

Let us know if we can answer any questions!

Welcome @tekarihoken! Care to tell us a little about yourself?

Hello I'm @tekarihoken, i am a member of a french political party called "Nouvelle Donne" and we are making some tests using loomio in order to see how it fit with our needs.

Hey @pedro16! Welcome to the community!

Soy el administrador del grupo Podemos Manises y me gustaría potenciar al máximo la colaboración en mi grupo la discusión politica.

Welcome to the community @nick4 - would you be interested in telling us a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, my names Nick Cooke I'm a member of the birmingham student houseing co-op and students for co-operation.