AP Letting go of the requirement to use Loomio for decision making

@Daniel KleinI think what happend is that the discussion on Telegram was going well (actually moving stuff along), day to day doocratic discussion. Then there was a kind of announcement- 'Theres a meeting on Monday about a specific working group' which people said - 'the community should know about this'.

Who is meant to communicat these small decisions to the community, and where is the community?

I think for sure people can get on with doing what they want, wherever they want, and then when it looks like it needs "everyone" to know about it e.g. 'will we move site to option B', we bring it here.

@Daniel Klein Without Emily there would be no celtic burn at all, so please check yourself before you wreck yourself.

I wasn't aware there was a comms role. since I have not seen any comms about a meeting last night or otherwise.

a part of organising a burn is to create accessible, democratic, open and transparent processes for collaboration. we are worldbuilding. it depends on those who care enough to go through the terrible faff of using a project management platform to manage this project across countries as a team.

it's not complaining to disagree, especially when the ideas come from experienced event producers who have been building this community from scratch for many years. all ideas are welcome, debate is inevitable and decisions will be made by the engaged collective.

(Ugh, I had typed out a long comment but accidentally clicked back and lost it… hence another difficulty I have with Loomio.)

I was going to say I agreed with Sam B about Loomio being clunky and preferring something with an app, as Loomio requires me not missing updates in my messy email inbox (my problem but I would find an app much easier).

Also feel that big decisions should happen in a singular place and that people should not have to wade through tons of chat for it. and agree with Adele’s point about the opinions of those not willing to put in effort. Thus why I feel it’s important there is clarity on where to go if it’s important to people to contribute on a given issue.

@Rachel I have the opposite problem wrt email: i don't want another separate app that i have to check all the time. I rely on the email notifications from Loomio to let me know when there are new APs to discuss and to give me a weekly summary of ongoing discussions otherwise.

@Burning Hedgie fair enough, but you can get email notifications for activity within an app, so it could functionally be the same and you wouldn’t have to check the app if you didn’t want to.

I also still find it quite frustrating losing my typed out comment due to loomio only being accessible on my browser and thus there being more chance for an accidental click meaning anything written is lost.

I think the "directing to Loomio" that has been happening on Trello has been a bit over played. I don't think big decisions are being talked about there. I dont think everyone has to "be there" to be involved with whats happening.

The last thing that happend was that we said- let's have a meeting to get the ball rolling on site search. I didn't think to "advertise" that meeting because... I dont use the other place anymore (FB). But I think that's kinda fine because site search feels more like a working group. When we have a propper comparison, then the decision should come the the wider comunity.

Fox, you and I started Telegram group as a Scottish Burner community tool, to be a place where the "comunity" could be and organise easily.

We don't really have centralised "coms" to get messages out there to the "comunity" in many different palces. I like that someone doesn't have to do that job. But it means that we need a third party place that the decisions take place at. I want to keep this way of working - a specific place that's seperate from advertising, or coms, or chat etc for decisions, especialy big ones. We tried to get everyone at least signed up to Loomio to find the ticket purchase link.

Coms'ing out newsletters is a bt clunky and requires a job to be done and updating mailing lists etc. Telegram is too chat like, unless theres a new dedicated CB AP group, but still, making more phone use- bad. Is there a good mobile Loomio like app? Trello could have a AP decisions column, but we kinda made the distinction that big community affecting decisions and day to day shit should be different. I'm even thinking the dreams platform could go and come to a Trello column...

Big values for me:

There's an online place where local community can be that's not FB. Telegram is working a dream for that.

People can get stuff done when they want to and not everyone thats ever thought about Celtic Burn has to see it and vote on it.

Everyone that likes Celtic Burn can easily see whats happening and follow if they so choose.

Link to what our laws say, especially the bit about big vs small decisions - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NiQDR9zmb__a1s5HoW1uFAn59hsdqFB6fPvja_ExLNc/edit

The problem with organic discussions happening elsewhere is that when they impact the wider community they need to be presented to the whole community for discussion. We have a designated process for that, and it seems to have worked for organising CB two years in a row. I'm disinclined to "fix what ain't broke", and I think the benefit of using a community organizing platform over a corporate social media site that folks might have ethical objections to participating in (FB, Telegram, Discord, whatever) speaks for itself.

I agree that there's a fuzzy boundary around when something needs to escalate to an AP versus the day-to-day process for organizing, but I do think the distinction is important. The community has all read one document explaining how and where decisions get made and they shouldn't be blindsided by decisions being made elsewhere (something which has not happened yet, i think, but could happen if we don't maintain clear documentation about how and where decisions get made)

I don't necessarily like Loomio but for accessibility Loomio sends me an email digest which I find helpful. It's once a day so I only check it once, input if I want, and that's me.

Other platforms can become continually reactive which can be overwhelming and thus for me, greatly limits my engagement ie I barely look at it once a month.

Since this decision hasn't been made yet it's also news to me that other conversations are happening around these decisions elsewhere. They should be here (not general views I know, but information that's helpful to others related to said decision) to allow others to not repeat themselves, and see what other ideas are being posed to form their thinking.

Does Loomio also have the advantage of being more easy to see previous decisions and how they were reached?

For me it's also that Loomio is just for CB, for me anyway. Telegram, fb and everything else I have other interactions with groups/friends on which adds to the overwhelm when I open it.

Was it ever considered to use Trello for decision making? Or is anyone aware of something else that would maybe be more easy to interact with than Loomio but is still just ideally a standalone for decisions?

LB x

I am certainly not a loomio evangelist! It's far from perfect. But for me the biggest question is: what is the alternative?

Telegram - I very firmly disagree with all organisation running through it. It's not suitable for big conversations, especially for record-keeping - no one wants to scroll for ages to find a record of an important conversation. Also, I agree with others who fear the tone could be more reactive. I think responses would be less considered. I've sat down with a cup of tea to write this out and have properly thought about it - on a mobile phone chat group you'd hardly ever really think it through to this point and typing it out would be a pain. Also, for me personally I was hesitant to even get it as I am struggling with having my mobile phone be less of an umbilical cord for me and yet another chat group adds to the struggle. It sounds like others also have the same experience - the level of noise on that kind of media can be very overwhelming.

That said for organic chat flow and generally connecting people Telegram seems to be doing a fab job as we are getting some things moving way out of season - including ironically this loomio thread which I think, hilariously, is a great example of when a platform such as loomio works quite well - email notifications, easy to read responses, no nonsense posting platform.

As I said above in response to a different thread - why can't the two coexist? They are not mutually exclusive. Loomio feels like a bit of a neutral discussion place seperate from other big platforms.

Issues with Loomio - 100% exist as others have said so won't bother repeating. Personally I despise slack so wouldn't be too keen on that, I don't think it would help. We could see if someone would make us a custom, simple website with in-built message board (or even just link to loomio, although the linktree is kind of that) - which would make it easier to find and therefore engage with. Discord is an option but also kind of annoying. All alternatives are a fair bit of work though and I'm not sure the system is broken - engagement has gradually crept up over the 2 years of the event and we've settled a few big decisions on here.

I guess the TLDR is I like the low level of "noise" that loomio has - discuss a big decision or GTFO. Perhaps it can even synergise with new comms platforms for the group i.e. telegram to massively boost participation. If there is a convincing alternative I am interested to see it but so far I am not aware of one.