collaborative – P2P Foundation https://blog.p2pfoundation.net Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Tue, 29 Jan 2019 09:44:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.14 62076519 The la-la land in small scale collaborative communities https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-la-la-land-in-small-scale-collaborative-communities/2019/01/31 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-la-la-land-in-small-scale-collaborative-communities/2019/01/31#respond Thu, 31 Jan 2019 09:00:00 +0000 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=74096 This post by Tiberius Brastaviceanu of Sensorica was republished from Steemit Since 2011 I have been working almost full time on collaborative projects, with open and decentralized organizations. I can say that I’ve seen it all, but I am still trying to make sense of it all. I recently realized something that plagues a lot... Continue reading

The post The la-la land in small scale collaborative communities appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]>
This post by Tiberius Brastaviceanu of Sensorica was republished from Steemit

Since 2011 I have been working almost full time on collaborative projects, with open and decentralized organizations. I can say that I’ve seen it all, but I am still trying to make sense of it all.

I recently realized something that plagues a lot of small scale collaborative organizations. As strange as it might seam, it’s the good feeling that most of them nurture. To put it bluntly, often these type of organizations put the good feeling that members experience together, before work. Members of these organizations will often act to save the pleasure, the friendship, while they sacrifice work.

We all want to feel good in our work environment. But we need to realize that the primary reason people get together in open and collaborative projects is to achieve something, not to have fun. There are plenty of other opportunities to have fun. Fun can be a byproduct of working together, when everything goes well. But work is not always fun, it comes with responsibilities, sometimes we must do things that we don’t like, sometimes it generates stress, sometimes we need to confront difficult situations and difficult people.

The problem is that most informal, small scale collaborative communities lose their ability to deal with negativity, which cannot always be avoided. When a negative situation arises, very often people go into hiding, try to cover it up, put on the proverbial fake smile, simply ignore the situation, or take the wrong approach in dealing with it, avoiding at all costs making things personal, even when the source/cause is a particular individual. Some people, we know them as the straight shooters, the community guardians or the barking dogs, identify the issue, call it like it is, point the finger. Very often, those who don’t shy away from defending the community from wrong-doing find themselves attacked by other members for disrupting the good feeling. They become the problem, they feel victimized for having acted for the benefit of the community, they get frustrated, and some even quit. Such communities filter out these important individuals who fill the role of keeping things real, and attract people that avoid negativity. Some communities that I experienced feel fake, they are a place where everything is rose and must be kept rose. When the straight shooters and the barking dogs are neutralized, the community becomes a lame duck, widely exposed to abuse. What might happen, is that wolfs identify the widely exposed flock of sheep and infiltrate it. When they attack, the superficial sense of good feeling gets replaced with an overwhelming sense of insecurity, and the community disperses.

We also need to mention the tremendous amount of effort these communities spend to harmonize relations, which is not put into productive work. They are pretty heavy into forging a group identity and a sense of belonging. They spend a lot of time on training their members on non-violent communication. They heavily rely on face-to-face meetings to strengthen interpersonal bonds, which are costly (in terms of time and traveling), sometimes highly inefficient and excluding those who cannot be there but can still contribute.

Another important side-effect of too much bonding is the creation of collusion clusters, people that start protecting each others, covering each others up for their wrong doing to protect their friendship, even if that goes against the common goal. A strongly bounded community also develops a tribal mentality, which makes it less open to newcomers, who need to divert a large portion of their efforts towards gaining acceptance instead of doing productive work. There is an optimum of bonding in a collaborative community, beyond which things turn bad.

But it’s not just people to blame here…We need to understand the socioeconomic dynamic. These types of organisations that form around a cause and don’t generate (enough) tangible benefits for their members are held together mostly by good feeling, shared values and culture. People instinctively or consciously realize that in order to keep everyone engaged they need to keep everyone happy, they need to nurture a positive atmosphere. The game becomes: commit to some effort and you’ll be rewarded in good feelings. Peer pressure gets biased towards maintaining the good feeling.

So how can we escape the spiraling down towards the la-la land?

In my opinion, we need to realize that the game played within small scale collaborative communities is only first order, mostly driven by irrationality. People are almost unconsciously driven towards this good feeling and want to preserve it. They end up reversing priorities, putting the good feeling before the work. They almost forget why they are there, which is to achieve something together in the first place, rather than just having fun. Shying away from negativity is also a natural, mostly irrational reaction. Dealing with negativity requires energy and guts, which come with commitment, with the realization that we are there to achieve something, and that something needs to be protected.

Small collaborative communities need to add a rational layer on top of the irrational first order, which amounts to a work ethic. Members need to be reminded that they are together first and foremost to achieve something, that work might be difficult, stressful, that they might have to deal with insecurity, to put up with problematic individuals, etc. The community needs to nurture a sense of responsibility and commitment to the cause, not just to naively promise fun and good feelings until the end of the project.

Inject more rationality and objectivity into your community and you’ll avoid becoming a la-la land. Realize that your straight shooters and barking dogs are important assets. Nurture a work ethic of responsibility and commitment. All this should be enough to change the collaboration game to: commit to some effort and we’ll achieve our collective goal, and perhaps have some fun on the way. Changing the game will affect the composition of your community. You’ll most probably lose some people, those who have a really low tolerance to negativity, but you’ll retain other people, those who are more goal oriented.

Building a more goal oriented community is an important step, if you aim at creating a more stable and capable organisation, that can generate tangible benefits for its members. As members start to benefit in a tangible way from their collaboration (generate earnings for example), they will stop putting the good feeling before the work, the collaboration game will shift again.

For more insights, also read my post Developmental stages and problems for open communiti


The post The la-la land in small scale collaborative communities appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]>
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-la-la-land-in-small-scale-collaborative-communities/2019/01/31/feed 0 74096
Project Of The Day: The Operating System https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/project-of-the-day-the-operating-system/2016/09/05 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/project-of-the-day-the-operating-system/2016/09/05#comments Mon, 05 Sep 2016 21:24:56 +0000 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=59547 When you read about Fab Labs or Maker spaces, what picture comes to mind?  3D printers? Aquaponics? Robotics? Hackathons? How about art? Third-party corporate platforms for artists are ubiquitous – from Soundcloud to Deviant Art to Create Space. Artist cooperatives have been in existence for over a century.  Combining the two into an open source... Continue reading

The post Project Of The Day: The Operating System appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]>
When you read about Fab Labs or Maker spaces, what picture comes to mind?  3D printers? Aquaponics? Robotics? Hackathons?

How about art?

Third-party corporate platforms for artists are ubiquitous – from Soundcloud to Deviant Art to Create Space. Artist cooperatives have been in existence for over a century.  Combining the two into an open source publishing platform seems inevitable.

But rather than a platform, Lynne Desilva Johnson is creating The Operating System.


Extracted from https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/yes-and-the-operating-system-2-0#/

We’re an arts and education organization that’s taken a page from the tech community’s Open Source and Peer to Peer initiatives, approaching the act of publishing with the belief that the documentation, distribution, and archiving of creative practice (understood broadly) can be revolutionary for individuals and organizations — and indeed for our society as a whole.

In addition to running workshops, facilitating conversations and panels, curating exhibits, and gathering free, open learning resources from all over the world, we also publish online and off: we’re best known for the small press that operates under The Operating System umbrella, which has published over 20 books to date (and which will publish 20 more in the next 18 months).

We facilitate many of these books from their onset, working closely with collaborators from a wide range of disciplines, backgrounds, and countries. The ultimate goal, though, is to cross pollinate not only between different disciplines within the arts but also within different industries, in the service of peer to peer learning both immediately and in the future, via the development of open source / archival materials.

http://www.theoperatingsystem.org/mission/

The name “THE OPERATING SYSTEM” is meant to speak to an understanding of the self as a constantly evolving organism, which just like any other system needs to learn to adapt if it is to survive. Just like your computer, you need to be “updating your software” frequently, as your patterns and habits no longer serve you.

http://www.wavecomposition.com/article/issue-11/an-interview-with-lynne-desilva-johnson/

I learned a big lesson about modeling, which is something that entrepreneurs often talk about: I realized that it would be really helpful to have a model of something I could do within my means that could serve as an example of the type of things that we could make, the type of things that could be possible in new ways, before really starting to move into the big ideas, because developing awareness of these models – and awareness of my approach (and of me, the fact of my existence, to these people that didn’t know me from Adam)—would start to build trust.

While we might be known best for our publishing projects, in fact we are a hub for a wide range of programs which seek to cross pollinate not only between different disciplines within the arts but also within different industries, in the service of peer to peer learning both immediately and in the future, via the development of open source / archival materials; in addition our own process has been transparent from day one, seeking to model possibility for others rather than competing with them.

While we’ve already published 20+ books and this campaign will support the publication of the next 20 (already slated for release through 1/2018), the impact of this funding is far greater: for our mission of facilitated creative documentation and archiving is achieved not only through our books but also through outreach, education and community programs on the ground, as well as via the continued development of online and multimedia resources.

http://www.theoperatingsystem.org/submissions/

OPEN SUBMISSIONS: WEB

The Operating System is always in the process of resilient reinvention. This platform was designed as a hub for forwardthinking, proactive creators — individuals and groups who wish to become more than the sum of our parts, together.

Current webcontent streams of production derive from all corners of The OS’s geographic and virtual community landscape – here,  collaborators, partners and contributors have an always available opportunity for online publication and dialogue, whether in a sustained fashion or in a single post.

This online home offers exclusive online content from artists, filmmakers, musicians, performers, and writers, as well as in depth profiles of the Awesome Creators who make up our global community, across a wide range of disciplines. This content aims to explore the processes that inform and facilitate creative production, valuating and documenting models for further dialogue, exploration, and co-collaborative discovery on and offline. It is meant as an archive, not a newspaper – this content remains searchable and viable for personal and public use from its inception, and it is hoped that it can become a teaching tool both for institutional use and autodidacts alike.

The post Project Of The Day: The Operating System appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]>
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/project-of-the-day-the-operating-system/2016/09/05/feed 1 59547