Group Proposal Writing

In the far, un-planned future I'd like to explore having a collaborative document editing feature. But for now you'll need to find your own collaborative document editor and share the link within Loomio. Loomio's ux is best for approving or discussing the document as a whole from the wider group, where as integrated commenting on Google docs etc is best for a small group to build the document together before submitting it to the rest for discussion and approval

This would be a great addition Rob. Thanks

Robert thanks for your feedback. I would encourage you and the rest of Loomio's development team to work on this sooner then the un planned future. Even if building in some sort of Google Docs style software is too difficult or time consuming then please explore what it would take to be able to allow a Proposal to accept Amendments that can be separately voted on, and then the Proposal's Author can work those Amendments in off-line.

Our By-Laws committee is also serving as a Loomio test group for the Green Party of Florida. We are looking to move our Political Party's digital office space away from Yahoo Groups, and are considering Loomio as our new collaborative platform. We are looking to eventually establish a Loomio Gold Account for the Green Party and provide Loomio as a work space for our Board, Coordinating Council, Committees, and over a Dozen Local Chapters as Sub Groups of our Loomio Account. The ability to collaboratively write is essential, and the ability to have a Proposal Process that includes Amendment Capacity is also essential. Our goal is to have all of the digital office space, communication tools, digital storage and recorded keeping all in one place so we don't have to continue to maintain a digital infrastructure across platforms which is needlessly time consuming. Loomio is a very promising platform and one many of the members of our By-Laws Committee find useful but these tools missing is a serious challenge for us to overcome in recommending that the whole Green Party move to Loomio. Any focus in developing these tools and capacity on the part of your development team would be very welcome.

Hi Sean. Great to hear about your interest in Loomio and thanks for explaining how you'd like to use it. It's possible to run multiple proposals within a single discussion. Could that feature enable you to vote on amendments?

Robert that might be a working solution, are any of our Group Members able to make a proposal inside of a discussion thread or do you have to be a group coordinator/administrator to create a Proposal? Sorry for the dumb questions.

If any group member can make a proposal inside a discussion thread then the discussion thread can be the proposal and then the proposals could me the offered amendments.

Sean

Revolution For All:

For People, Planet, and Peace over Profit,
Sean Declet
www.facebook.com/sean.declet ( http://www.facebook.com/sean.declet )

By default anyone can start a proposal. That's an interesting idea, I'd be keen to learn about how you get on!

I totally agree with Sean. I am part of a start-up of a 50 member worker-owned for-profit that has a lease on an old theater we are remodeling into a community arts event space, restaurant and bar. We are committed to making decisions by consensus and just last night made a valiant attempt to come to consensus. It was a very good beginning; we couldn't get enough voices (the term we use instead of "vote)" to satisfy quorum. The back and forth between Discussion thread and Proposal was powerful, and could have really benefited from having the ability of making amendments. We broke the original proposal into two parts and have 2 new proposals closing in 5 days.

The University of Melbourne is researching and creating a tool for creating "consensus" documents. It would be good to incorporate what they are doing in Loomio.

Sounds interresting ! Could you give more info?

I think the best way to understand it is to ask to become a participant at https://www.swarmproject.info/. The tool is based on the honeybee democracy ideas. In particular how a swarm chooses a new place for a hive using a consensus algorithm.

Thank you Kevin, I will have a look.

@robertguthrie it would be important to move this discussion into a subgroup that is not HELP as it is obviously something that is not existing feature of Loomio (and I also do not think it should be ever...at best it should support existing solutions as extention)...no?

@robertguthrie and the Loomio team.

I'm working with a number of organisations that are at different stages of adoption Loomio as an online office space as our friend from the Green Party put it.

My focus has been on adoption by the board, as Loomio fulfils a strong current need (more deliberation without more meetings!, keeping better records of decisions, having all discussion in one place, dealing with periodic absenteeism etc.) and with the current Loomio set-up, it works most of the time.

But I hear what Séan was saying about the myriad different iterations of a decision-making tool could be demanded by the structures of different organisations. The more formal the decision-making structures become - board sure, but think General Meetings! - you can see the need for more specialist functionality - proposed amendments to proposals, proposers + seconders (this is something we are hacking at the moment, but a requirement for a valid decision in our organisation), and plenty of procedural bits and pieces.

Now I know that Loomio in its current form is targeted at the smaller groups, and at the more flat, consensus-based organisation - but their is potentially an opportunity to foster a democratic revival in more traditional organisations from co-ops, to political groups to trade unions and professional societies.

They question becomes... what is the business case? And the answer may lie in exploring having a more 'enterprise' (sorry, can't think of another term) version of Loomio - with a potentially higher subscription - that includes some of this extra functionality, that let's face it mainly required by more mature / larger / better funded groups.

I think that tools like Loomio have the potential to shake-up a whole host of stagnant organisations that, in principle are democratic + open, but are in practice very closed. Tweaking the Loomio experience for these organisations (as a more tailored version) would be very impactful - and may even be good for the Loomio.org bottom line (hell, maybe all three :D ).

Thanks for your comment!

I (and the team here) are really open to exploring new decision making features. The biggest hurdle for me is understanding in detail what you want. I'd love a glimpse of how you're hacking Loomio to support ammendments and seconders (maybe you can send a few screenshots or a loom video to rob@loomio.org). Or a sketch or whatever. I really just don't know what it is I need to build for you yet.

Infact I'd be happy to jump on a call if you think that would help - and I think it would help me. I just don't quite get how ammendments should work, and what is a seconder?

@robertguthrie - I've added it to my to-do, so I'll post something here when i have a minute. See if it warrants a VOIP call :) - it's not critical thing incidentally, but one of those little things that together may be useful for certain, more formal organisations.

Me (and I am sure others) would love to feedback more into tweaking the (wonderful) decision tools that you've all developed. I suppose it is really about focusing on sending you really clear and demonstrable use-cases.