Conversation for Action now!

@kurtlaitner points to #PunkMoney. Yes! Brilliant hack. Definitely related.

But I don't want to rely on Twitter...

Another related hack: Reddit ChangeTip.

I like the idea. I can't commit to helping much until the last third of the year.

@simontegg - since you are the only person who has responded in any way so far, thanks! I'll take what I can get.

But really, what this needs is at least one project that already has offers, and at least one project that can do something with the agreements.

Among the projects that have shown up in Open Apps discussions, we (NRP) can do something with the agreements, but we don't have offers. TransforMap and Hylo have offers. I think Hylo can do something with the agreements, but am not sure.

Might be more that I missed...

This sounds a lot like what I've been thinking of as 'the marketplace app' for internal commitments and contracts.

I would love to collaborate but am probably 3 - 6 months away from having any capacity.

@joshuavial - sounds exactly like it, or at least one major use case.

I'd be interested in more of your thinking, however vague.

I'm mostly interested in growing internal 'rituals of commitment' where we can officially track what people commit to doing, by when and have the opportunity to give people feedback when they complete a commitment that acts as a store of reputation and a prompt for continuous improvement.

I think the opportunity to link up with other systems such as the hylo requests, trello cards or asana tasks would be really useful so we get a dynamic view of the work dependencies across a self organising system and a discovery mechanism for people to see what needs doing and how they can do it.

Thanks a lot. We're very interested in ‘rituals of commitment’, too. And linking up other systems is why we got interested in this in the first place.

Hmmm, I've been thinking of ActivityStreams, but I wonder if this is a job for a bot? See Reddit ChangeTip above.

@joshuavial you may well be more familar with this than I am, but I think it's a good link for context with your last comment here-- http://www.managementexchange.com/story/colleague-letter-understanding-replacing-jobs-commitments

@gregorycassel - that was a fascinating story! I had not read that before. Thanks.

The Morningstar model is really fascinating @bobhaugen . They're a big company with a long history. I quite liked this talk.

Regarding your OP, I'm another person who would definitely be interested in collaborating, but far from having any capacity for it at this time. Would like to keep track of stuff!

@gregorycassel yes, this is partly CLOU inspired though I am doing separate work around micro-roles which can be used to dynamically assemble and change CLOUs as people move between teams.

It feels like a marketplace and CLOUs (or micro-roles) complement each other well.

Hey friends-- I'd love to hear how you think we could add commitment rituals to Hylo posts--

We were informed by conversations for action from the start, and the direction we're going with Hylo posts is to build more sophistication into each one: optional rewards and bounties, commitments, price tags, event information, critical dates, context, location etc.

They are multipurpose shareable social objects that can be shared and aggregated in various ways, at various times. We'll build anything that is awesome! Would love to hear your thoughts on this--

@edwardwest - I'm finally a member of a Hylo community that ~might~ actually do something, although it hasn't happened yet. Might be able to do some experiments with commitments there. I'll ping you if the occasion arises.

@bobhaugen this sounds like a great idea, and I think your approach of JFDI with a vocabulary that should be used ASAP is the way to go, start simple, use it, iterate.

I'll keep an eye out for connections with groups/projects who have a specific domain in which a simple Offer/Request vocabulary could be used, but there are 4 that spring to mind immediately:

1) OSCEDays is getting a lot of attention and there are a lot of people engaged with it. Circular economies are chains of transactions where Offer/Request vocabulary might enable more/better chains to happen, with a clearer structure. They're also doing a global hackathon event in a couple of weeks and this could be a great opportunity to apply a simple vocab to real projects. Engage here: http://community.oscedays.org/ . I'll make a connection with an organiser if this is interesting to you
2) unMonastery is a community that wants to start mapping and connecting resources and facilitating unMonasteries. This will enable clear offers of spaces together with the conditions and properties of the offer, etc. Vocab would be very useful. Engage here: discourse.unmonastery.org
3) unSwat is a project from unMonastery that again aims to map resources and skills to make connections to facilitate sustainability projects to happen when the correct combination of resources and skills become available. It's still in development but also needs Offer/Request vocab. Engage through unMonastery discourse above.
4) MakerFox. MakerFox is all about collecting offers and requests and then finding loops where if all transactions happen at once everyone gets what they want and gives something they have. Matthias the author might be interested in building in a vocabulary to Makerfox (he probably already has half of it), and it might be a useful extension for him and the whole community for Makerfox to be able to expose all the offers and requests in a simple vocabulary. Let me now if you want a connection to Matthias, the author, if you don't have one already.

@lewisjames - thanks a lot. I am not connected to OSCEDays, unSwat, or Matthias, although I did find some mentions of MakerFox in my email history.

We're on the road visiting family until next Wednesday, so how about if I ping you then and we make some connections?

@lewisjames - we're back. I'm studying your very relevant references. Might take me a day or so to digest. How do you want to start to communicate about them? Here? Email? Some other channel?

I'm thinking about how to get this conversation moving.

We have, especially with @lewisjames 's list of groups and projects, and our previously assembled multitudes, a bunch of separate systems that do something like conversations for action.

So I plan to try each of them (as much as possible), and hope other people will join me. And I'll try to engage the people behind the projects and groups as much as possible first. If they are not interested, I will skip them.

From those experiments, we (those who are willing) should be able to work out a vocabulary and protocol. And get those various systems interconnected, if they want to go there.

Loomio is an obvious contender, and here we are already.

Maybe @lewisjames could help us connect to his list of people and projects. I think Makerfox might already have a vocabulary and protocol, so maybe we could start with a conversation with Matthias.

Depending on how that goes, we can start engaging with the rest of James's list.

I'm already having a conversation with Steve Bosserman in Hylo, which @edwardwest is also connected to. I'll start a CfA conversation there later today.

@theodoretaptiklis - I just sent a message to YesAndEra about this topic. You've written eloquently about conversations for action among more than two people, which I really want to work out, so I'm hoping your app will help us think about it more concretely.

And I'm always open to better ideas.

Thank you.

@bobhaugen I'd suggest putting you in touch with someone from each project, and you make an intro about what it is you want to do and how, in terms relevant for the project and its users. Before doing that it might be worth a quick chat to double check that you're thinking what I think you're thinking, so I can make good intro's to relevant people.

@lewisjames - let's pick one to start with. Your choice. Then we can start to learn what communicates (or fails to communicate).

How do you want to chat to get our thinking synced?

@edwardwest - I went into the Hylo community where I am now a member and thought about starting a seed for part of this CfA effort. But a general CfA intention does not really fit that community, and "Create a new community" is not yet available.

Suggestions?

@theodoretaptiklis will set up a discussion group at YesAndEra to explore conversations for action using that software. But it's in beta, and he wants to know who wants to be in the group. I'll try a proposal where people can vote yes if they want in.

sounds like a good match

opp.io is interesting. Conversations for action using minimal hashtag-style markup.
@who should !do #what

Edit: for CfA, that could be:
@who !offers #what
@who !wants #what

Their business plan sucks (for me, maybe not for them), though. Funded by http://traction-tribe.com/ who say they "help European startups get acquired in the US".

I like the people and ideas, have had several conversations with them, but their app is a walled garden, and the ideas should not be so confined.

YesAndEra experiment voting closes in 1 day, it says.

So far, we got me, @lynnfoster, @orsans, and @stevebosserman as participants. And I assume @theodoretaptiklis will take part in some way as the host.

Anybody else?

By the way, for your entertainment value, this (including the vote) is a conversation for action. I'll wait until tomorrow to proceed.

I'm the founder and CEO of Intellitics, Inc. We're a digital engagement consultancy based in San José, CA (USA). I'd be interested in trying out Yesandera.

Btw, we maintain an online catalogue of digital engagement tools and services. I added an entry for Yesandera last week.

@richarddbartlett - thanks for the encouragement!

From my experience I would say that syncing up at the start and really committing to the process will deliver the best results :)

Thanks. We will follow your (and Teddy's) advice.

Doodle for when to start:
http://doodle.com/g8h3tbivkm5bp5rr

Short version: tomorrow, or Tuesday or Wednesday next week. If none of those days work, we can rethink.

@orsans asks, what time of day? I am not an experienced Doodle user, so did not understand that if you just select dates, it means "all day". Which I do not mean.

So I added dates to the schedule. Unfortunately, I apologize, it deleted all of your previous selections. So @orsans , @stevebosserman , @lynnfoster , would you please redo your selections? Thanks. And one more sorry for my ignorance.

On the times: I don't know how timezone-sensitive Doodle is. I put the times down in US CDT (e.g. Chicago time). If anybody knows how Doodle does this stuff, please let us all know.

@bobhaugen In my limited experience, doodle will not translate time zones, we have to know it is US CDT, which I believe is UTC-5.

I wrote up some modest goals for the YesAndEra experiment here.

I shared it for editing with everybody on the participant list that I had email addresses for.

@timbonnemann - I did not have yours. But the document is open for commenting to anybody who has the link, and if you make a comment, I can probably add you for editing.

@theodoretaptiklis - we need you to set us up, right? If so, would you please put your available starting times in the doodle, too? Thanks.

Hello all, I'm excited to join this conversation. Perfect timing! My company is a 3-year-old startup that has developed a software app based on the "conversation for action" model developed by Fernando Flores. Bob referenced Flores in one of his introductory postings a few months ago. Our app is called CommitKeeper (www.commitkeeper.com). It's as easy as email, web enabled, and self administered. Users create requests, negotiate agreements, and track deliveries through acceptance. At a glance you can see who's got the ball and what is the next action to move the conversation along. It supports multiple participants, and It also supports easy linking of supporting requests/agreements so the network of dependencies can be tracked. I'd love to demo CommitKeeper to anyone who might be interested. And even if, in the end, the group does not adopt our application in its current form, we would certainly consider using it as a base for customizing an alternate version.

And I have one more note to add…a few earlier posts above described the work being done at Morningstar which I have also been tracking for some time. Just last week I demoed CommitKeeper to Doug Kirkpatrick who was one of the people who started the "self management" movement at Morningstar. Doug said it was a good fit with the Morningstar philosophy, and he has referred us on to several of his colleagues.

Once again, happy to be in the dialog.

@davidarella - happy to see you. I heard about CommitKeeper in another forum and was curious about it.

Can you pop a request to be an editor in that google doc so I can get your email address, and then Teddy can add you to the YesAndEra experiment?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A-D1bvCwpWXqy3_sGN4jYemWsFao_Dy03qcIeH6XiJQ/edit?usp=sharing

After that, I'd like to have a separate conversation about CommitKeeper. Got a bunch of questions.

Done. My email is arella@4spires.com. Happy to connect.

@ahdinosaur , @timbonnemann , @davidarella :
please add your available times to the doodle?
http://doodle.com/g8h3tbivkm5bp5rr

I'm giving everybody's emails to Teddy to get us set up.

I'm still getting the rules for YesAndEra, but if I understand what he said so far, everybody needs to sign in to start a session. So we need to agree at least on a starting date and time. (I think.)

@theodoretaptiklis - is that correct?

On timing: you need to say when you're all ready to start and what dates you want to set to finish each of the three stages. I've given Bob the considerations: allow 60 - 90 minutes for the work of each stage and recognise that everyone needs to reach stage completion before you can advance to the next stage.

But Teddy says everything is asynchronous, we just need to wait for everybody to sign up, and then everybody to complete each stage, but beyond that the timing is not quite so critical.

Right? (I know nothing, learning along with you...)

Hey Bob and friends,

Nice to see conversation for action take shape :)! I have been following here and there from afar. Looking forward to see where this is going. Not sure I could commit to the experiment, but will be glad to be kept in the loop.

PS: Are you in contact with Ben Roberts and Tom Atlee who are working on similar things.

@helenefinidori1 ! Thanks for popping in! The master of conversations for action!

I'll summarize the experiment at the end, and maybe others will, too.

Don't know Ben Roberts and Tom Atlee. But I do need to get out more...maybe you can introduce us some time?

Teddy clarifies more in an email: "if you set completion dates (say) a week apart, then you should allow yourself 60 - 90 minutes to do the exercises independently at any time during that week. Each person works independently and then reviews other people's work after stage completion. No synchronicity required at all."

@Bob this souned to me like a relevant doc is it?: https://fair.coop/?get_group_doc=50/1430309418-SWARMSTANFORDModelDCOTemplate.pdf