Using Loomio for spokescouncils
Danyl Strype PublicSeen by 79What we be great would be to have a 'spokecouncil' as a special type of Loomio group, which existing Loomio groups can affiliate to. The coordinators of a 'spokecouncil' group could have the option to choose between:
* open spokescouncil: any existing Loomio group can affiliate automatically
* closed spokescouncil: any existing Loomio group can apply affiliate, subject to a consensus of existing member groups
When an existing group 'affiliates' to a 'spokescouncil' group, their own Loomio group is largely unaffected, although there would be an area on the group page to list any affiliations (with links). But whereas their own Loomio group however would continue to have the same privacy settings as before, for the sake of transparency, all members of affiliated groups would automatically gain read access to the 'spokescouncil' group and any working groups set up as subgroups of it.
Starting new discussions, posting comments and proposals, and taking positions, would be done by members of the 'spokescouncil' group. But unlike in a normal Loomio group, members would be spokes, somehow nominated by the affiliated groups, who would use their own internal process to decide who their spokes are at any given time. The coordinators of the 'spokescouncil' could have the option to choose between a fixed number of spokes, or each group getting a number proportional to the number of members in their Loomio group. For a proportional representation system to work, there would have to be a fair amount of trust that affiliates weren't padding their groups with inactive members to disproportionately increase their number of spokes. Maybe some algorithm could be created to determine active members (accounting for both commenting and reading) as opposed to just raw member numbers?
Why would a spokescouncil group type be useful? Warning, this an essay ;)
In my experience, direct consensus works best among small affinity groups of 5-9 people (7 being the sweet spot), who interact regularly and build trust and familiarity. To handle larger networks up to about 150 people (Dunbar's number), and especially larger networks than that, 'spokescouncils' are often used. When a network-wide decision needs to be made, each affinity group chooses temporary representatives ("delegates" or "spokes") to communicate between their group and the 'spokescouncil' "meeting" (be it in-person in a meeting or conference or online using an email list, forum, or Loomio group). All members of all groups can attend 'spokescouncil' "meetings", and access any records (notes taken, recordings made etc), but only the spokes have speaking rights. The 'spokescouncil' structure offers a transparent way to make coordinating decisions for the larger network (not policy decisions as in an organisation or government), which people can still observe and participate in (by proxy) without attending all the meetings personally. This is especially helpful when there are some people who don't want to be in the same "meeting" as Group X or certain members of Group Y (for any reason from personal dislike or troubled history, to political or ideological disagreements).
Just to pick a random example, my understanding is that this is the way the Greens work, using in-person meetings, with local branches feeding back to party-wide policy and strategy conferences. Here's another example, perhaps more relevant to the 'spokescouncil' feature I want to propose for Loomio. There are a plethora of groups and organisations in Aotearoa who support some kind of "guaranteed minimum income" or "universal basic income" (UBI). Obviously these groups are more like to succeed in bringing a UBI scheme (or even a pilot/ experiment) into existence if they can work together, but there is a diverse range of groups and members, and reasons for supporting a UBI.
One solution is to set up a single-issue organisation, separate from all the existing groups, which any supporter of UBI can join. The problem is that all the members of groups supportive of UBI now have to separately join and participate in this new organisation, as well as their existing groups. Also, it requires all the admin work of setting up and running a whole new organisation, with all the attendant discussions on how to set up this organisation, how to structure it, what to call it, how decision-making should work etc.
In contrast to forming or becoming a branch or caucus of a formalized political organisation, groups can easily move into and out of a 'spokescouncil' arrangement, without having to first agree on and commit themselves to a "brand" or a leadership (real or perceived). A 'spokescouncil' can therefore be used as a "burner" organisation. Groups can start negotiating straight away in a fairly neutral, shared space, and engage in provisional decision-making about things like name, principle of unity, and strategic goals. If it turns out the network that emerges is not for them, they can shrug their shoulders and disaffiliate, with minimal impact on their group identity or the internal processes continuing in their own Loomio group whether they stay in the 'spokescouncil' or not.
The ability to 'fork' into groups with different specific focus or practices when appropriate is important, and Loomio handles it intuitively. I can easily just start a new group, or my group can hive off areas of work into "subgroups" as they grow. But while networks made up of affinity groups can and do evolve from small seed groups, as with the Greens, they more often emerge as a way of allowing existing, like-minded groups to work together on related projects or issues, while maintaining their own group identity and autonomy, as in the UBI example. Loomio does allows a network that has been established through in-person meetings and negotiations to setup a shared Loomio group with subgroups for each affilate and working group (eg Enspiral). But at present trying to use Loomio to actually create new networks, uniting existing groups that already have a Loomio presence, is often a frustrating chicken-and-egg process; the only way to create a neutral space to hold discussions about naming, who is willing to work with who, and so on, is to create a new group, which requires a formal name and a pre-decided set of participants (these can be changed but can still be seen as pre-emptive).
From a political point of view, this creates a tendency towards fragmentation of focus. It's easy to try to overcome the barriers to cooperation between existing Loomio groups by forming a new group intended to be a federation of smaller groups, but this risks a similar outcome to creating a new standard to bring together all the people working on competing standards (see the classic XKCD comic on 14 standards becoming 15). One can just end up with yet another small group to keep track of and try to participate in. Providing an intuitive way to use spokescouncil practice in Loomio is important, because it balances out this fragmentation, allowing groups to organically create and abandon (as required) larger networks of cooperation, using tools internal to Loomio.
This is wonderful. I participated in a very auxiliary fashion to the spokescouncil that was held as a one time event in the midst of the Wisconsin Uprising (a feeder movement to OWS; more or less the energy went Cairo=>Athens=>Madison=>NYC).
The spokescouncil worked pretty much as described above (though it was a synchronous, specific-duration event), and it enabled a 2 week occupation to emerge from the coordination between the Women's Rights movement, the Immigrant Rights movement, and the Labor movement - a historic building of bridges and a huge victory for our community.
One thing that I thought was an important design characteristic to the 'spokescouncil' in Wisconsin that is not listed above was a principle of "no agreements/partnerships can be made within the spokescouncil space". The intention was that the space be as neutral and safe as possible for as many individuals and groups to share their visions, intentions, and specific plans in regards to the state house; partnership agreements were to be made after the spokescouncil meeting (perhaps they did even in the same place).
I definitely think that spokescouncil in an asynchronous environment looks a bit different, and I'm really excited to see the collective Loomio brain start to think about what this looks like; thanks @strypey for getting this conversation started and having such concrete operational thoughts already!
[importance of how many delegates each participant group is afforded] will depend a lot on... [type of] voting to make its decision
Hmm. I'm still converting my Spokescouncil experiences from the WI Uprising into an asynchronous digital world, so forgive me if this doesn't make sense:
In my experience, the Spokescouncil was a space that had previous agreements around not making decisions or partnerships within the space; those types of decision-making could happen outside the space. The Spokescouncil itself had the intentionality of:
a safe, neutral space where groups could share their visions and plans in regards to (a) specific theme(s), movement(s), or collective action(s)**
[importance of how many delegates each participant group is afforded] will depend a lot on... [type of] voting to make its decision
That makes sense to me, although my understanding may or may not relate to what actually happened. :)
If people allow delegates to make decisive votes on their interests, then details such as majority/ supermajority/ consensus and quorum are crucially relevant.
well. upon re-reading my comment - twas very clear my formatting [fixed] didn't make sense; but I think we got it all together now :P
If people allow delegates to make decisive votes on their interests, then details such as majority/ supermajority/ consensus and quorum are crucially relevant.
definitely; I was also thinking about whether or not there could be a constraint that 'all agreements must be network wide'; that is, no agreements initiated that would not include all of the attendant members... this also gets hazy in asynchronous space - what's the timeframe of 'attendant members'? Is it all current and former participants? Do we look towards future participants?
I also think about the "no cross-talk" norm where people only speak to the whole group - no direct responses or speaking to a certain person - really more of a norm/ guideline piece that would be socially implemented, but I'd be curious how that could be reflected in Loomio-tech; also I should say that I have not heard this cross-talk norm introduced in relation to Spokescouncils before.
I believe that asynchronous comms should (ultimately) fully enable 'cross-talk' as well as speaking to the whole group, in a way which prioritizes the inclusive/ 'whole group' messages.
This can be done with a derivation of the "Reply" feature which is present in Loomio and some other systems. It would be important IMO to visually minimize the links to "Replies", but also to map them very clearly in connection to the stream of 'whole group' discussion.
Thanks @coopchange and @gregorycassel for your exploratory comments. Let me introduce a concrete example here, as it might clarify things a bit. The NZ Pirate Party currently has a Loomio group, and at least one local group also has its own Loomio group. We have discussed whether local groups should be subgroups of the whole-party Loomio ("branches"), but there are two major downsides of this, the most obvious being that large, active local groups could not set up their own subgroups.
But the more important downside is that it would make the local groups subsidiary bodies of a top-down Party, instead of the Party being a bottom-up federation of local groups. To unpack this a bit, imagine each local group had their own Loomio group, and the Party was a 'spokescouncil' group to which they all affiliate (as described in my OP).
* If a local group is unhappy with what is happening in the Party, they have the option of disaffiliating, without losing all the work and institutional knowledge they have put into Loomio as a local group
* The disaffiliated group would have the option of continuing as an autonomous local group, or they could affiliate to another spokescouncil, for example if the Internet Party also had a spokescouncil group, a local group could shift their support from the Pirate Party to the Internet Party (or vice versa)
* In theory, a majority of local branches could disaffiliate from a dysfunctional Party spokescouncil, and create a new spokescouncil, either as a replacement for the dysfunctional one, or as a new Party.
The key point is, this way of working protects the autonomy of small groups using Loomio, while still allowing them to easily federate and work with larger networks/ organisations, without fear of assimilation. Knowing that all the above is possible, it's more likely that participants in a spokescouncil group will make a serious attempt to work towards proposals that truly represent the interests and will of the affiliated groups. In constrast, in vanilla Loomio groups with hundreds of members organised as subgroups, local groups can't vote with their feet (so to speak) without either losing all their threads and proposals, or manually transferring them all to a new Loomio group (possible but impractical, so unlikely to happen in practice).
@coopchange
I was also thinking about whether or not there could be a constraint that 'all agreements must be network wide'
Sure, decisions that only affect a subset of the affiliated groups could be handled in a separate spokescouncil that only that subset affiliate to. Keep in mind that if the spokescouncil uses consensus, affiliated groups have the option to disagree, but stand aside, allowing the majority of groups who do agree to proceed. As usual, where a majority disagree, decision-making is likely to continue until a more inclusive proposal is found, but a decision can still be made where there is disagreement unless there a legitimate 'block'.
this also gets hazy in asynchronous space - what's the timeframe of 'attendant members'? Is it all current and former participants? Do we look towards future participants?
I think the simple answer would be that "attendant members" are those Loomio groups currently affiliated to the spokescouncil. Groups forming spokescouncils would be sensible to agree on criteria for membership, a simle process for accepting new affiliate groups (even if that is "we accept them automatically"), and a simple process for disaffiliating groups whose delegates are consistently obstructive.
I also think about the "no cross-talk" norm where people only speak to the whole group - no direct responses or speaking to a certain person
This is impossible to enforce in code, but it's a good rule. When I find myself involved in heated conversations on Loomio (and online in general), it's usually the case that I'm communicating in a group forum (not a one-to-one medium like private email), but addressing my comments to a person(s), rather than to the group. When I notice this, I often make a conscious effort to move back to addressing the group, and referring to the person I've come into conflict with in the third person (if at all).
@gregorycassel
If people allow delegates to make decisive votes on their interests, then details such as majority/ supermajority/ consensus and quorum are crucially relevant.
Definitely. It will depend on what the spokescouncil group is being used for. If it's about coordinating time-bound actions (eg "should we all protest outside our local Silly Party electorate office on Saturday or Sunday"), then ultimately, each group and each member can decide whether or not to cooperate with a spokescouncil decisions. In that case, using consensus process in the spokescouncil makes more sense. However, an organisation like a political party or trade union will often have to make binding decisions about things like structure and policy, decisions that can be quite contentious, and which will remain binding until reviewed and formally changed. In these cases achieving consensus is still the ideal, but supermajority is often necessary, and there does need to be easy ways to establish when a binding decision has been made, or changed.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
I should say that from the OP I thought the idea sounded great, and you definitely got across the idea that Loomios could (dis)affiliate with Spokescouncil-Loomios, though you made that even clearer in this last post above.
My comments here, I think, are mostly to explore the possible design decisions that you, or the individual Spokescouncil-Loomios if given the option, might encounter.
Loomio already has the ability to set vote-types; are there quorum capabilities?
In regards to managing quorum & consensus needs - is it possible to make a member 'inactive' after some time of inactivity or other triggers?
See @gregorycassel 's Agreement-Based Org. Framework for more on toggling active/inactive
These Spokescouncil-Loomios could get quite messy IMO, esp. if there's not the good decision-making culture to support them... are there good ways to mitigate human conflict that might arise from a second-tier of complication to the decision-making process? Spokescouncils are complex :) Learning curve might be harsh... how can we onboard people to a healthy internetworking process?
A lot of my questions in previous posts definitely come down to norms which will be established by groups. Maybe there could be a feature where norms agreements would live at the top of a sidebar or something like that?
Norms being things like: Guidelines on how much each person should post (e.g. Three than me or Step up, step down), guidelines on speaking from personal I or speaking to the whole group as opposed to cross chatter, etc.
I personally think broadly in terms of 'guidelines' and 'rules' with an emphasis on non-coercive guidelines as the main IMO healthy social organizational force.
This isn't 100% on topic, but many previous topics have considered Loomio's technical capabilities for group-to-group relationships, including but not limited to:
SubGroups Pruning: Deleting Subgroups and Bulk Move of Discussions (< @strypey 's own thread, of course :) )
A function to allow multilateral, federal, multi-layered and convoluted networking relationships between groups and subgroups
subgroups of subgroups
Another sublevel of subgroups
Parent group ability to remove sub-group
Allowing users to join sub-groups, even if they are not a member of the parent group
Thanks for the directory.
Call for questions:
@strypey and others-
I'm talking to a woman, Harriet Rowan, who co-ordinated/organized two Spokescouncils in the ramp-up to the 2-week occupation that (concluded what) is called the Wisconsin Uprising; which was the movement that took place in the time-space between ArabSpring/Cairo=>Athens=>Madison, WI=>OccupyWallStreet.
I would love to bring any questions that you all might have into a phone interview I have with her around Spokescouncil... I plan to share resources/guides gathered within the frame of that question here.
re: @gregorycassel 's rules or guidelines, I am increasingly liking an idea (co-explored by Greg & I in a Spokescouncil-y convo) of having Guidelines as the Agreements of a convening, and then a second set of Best Practices as Norms or preferred Ways of Acting within the framework of the Guidelines.
It would be really interesting if someone tried a prototype of this using the Loomio API.
I'm thinking about how Hackfoldr extended Hackpad to collect a bunch of documents together. LoomioFoldr could create and manage the spokescouncil group :)
Some research on Spokescouncels via Professor Keith Weber of UW-Madison, who initiated, with journalist Harroet Rowan, 2 Spokescouncil gatherings in Mdaison, WI in the aftermath of the 17-day occupation (via Harriet Rowan):
some of the links Keith originally sent me when we were organizing the spokescouncil in Madison:
http://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Decision_Making_and_Democracy/Consensus/Consensus_in_Large_Groups.pdf
http://www.san.beck.org/NAH3-Group.html
http://uproot.info/actionhandbook/spokes.htm
http://www.uproot.info/actionhandbook/affinity.htm
Here is a link to the submission form for the project Keith was working on, which I think is still open for contributions (although I don’t think you can see the project yet):
https://uwmadison.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8HN0c9KJ84Qsvm5
In my mind it’s essential that we (humans) learn to collaborate with each other in ever larger forums of assembly. I would go so far as to say that someday we will very likely build a system/structure/process that allows us to scale our creative collaborations and decision-making to a global level inclusive of hundreds of thousands if not millions of individuals. We may not be able to achieve that dimension of coordination until we have some sort of AI to manage the complexity of it, but I think it’s imperative that we begin developing the foundation for it as soon as possible. I say this because it seems that accessing the massive, potential synergy and empowerment generated by a self-organizing-collaborative-global-organizm is the only hope we have in overcoming the mega corporate forces that are on the verge of gaining complete control of our global systems of governance. I think incorporating the idea(s) mentioned in this thread would be a great step in that direction. @strypey do you intend to develop this into formal proposal?
One more point about the number of spokes each group gets. The simplest system to start with is probably each group getting a fixed number of spokes regardless of size. One possible outcome of this is larger affiliates setting up new groups to affiliate, to increase their influence on 'spokescouncils'. How likely this is, and how much it matters, will depend a lot on whether the 'spokescouncil' mainly uses consensus or majority/ supermajority voting to make its decision. If it uses consensus, which makes more sense for a consultative body that has no actual power to enforce decision on affiliates, meeting stacking is less likely, and as long as any extra spokes are constructive members, could actually be positive.
Another advantage of the 'spokescouncil' model is that non-constructive spokes can be swapped out for other members of the same group who are more competent or compatible. If a whole group turn out to be non-constructive, there would have to be a mechanism for the other groups to agree on disaffiliating them.