This first event of OPEN 2019 covers the ideas behind The DNA of Collaboration and Harmonious Working Patterns to explore ideas which might help all the people, communities and organisations working on creating a new, decentralised, regenerative economy collaborate better to produce more impact.

Panelists:

• Indra Adnan from The Alternative
• Nathan Schneider from the Platform Cooperativism Consortium
• Matthew Schutte from Holochain
• Laura James from Cambridge Computer Laboratory
• Josh Fairhead, author of Harmonious Working Patterns
• Oliver Sylvester-Bradley from The Open Co-op

Follow along with the chat below the video and dig deeper – there are some valuable links to other articles on catalysing collaboration and related subjects.

Notes from the chat during the discussion:

16:47:37 Nenad Maljković : Interesting article in this context (4 minute read), for later, of course  https://medium.com/enspiral-tales/a-trickle-becomes-a-river-64893418a769
16:52:47 Trevor: Economies of scale and division of labour
Nenad Maljković : This makes very much sense from the permaculture (and living systeems) point of view!
16:57:37 From vivian : To me it sounds more like an argument for free markets, coming from the right of the political spectrum. the first is all about lots of autonomous utility-maximising agents (in an economic jungle) with no overall purpose
16:57:55 From vivian : Some of the interactions in a forest are pretty brutal!
16:59:13 From Nenad Maljković : Any group of humans is complex, adaptive system.
16:59:43 From vivian : Yes but many groups have a “purpose” and can plan together. That’s inherent in a democracy
17:00:53 From Dil Green : Forest participants and humans are different – because humans will always have some conceptually stated purpose (unless they are a zen master).
17:01:01 From Nenad Maljković : Vision, purpose… obsolete in groups that collaborate based on intrinsic values (first hand experience with transition town initiatives on the ground – they don’t waste time on defining purpose or vision
17:01:55 From Dil Green : For me, forests are fine (great!) in and of themselves – because the participants don’t have conceptual approaches.
17:02:40 From Nenad Maljković : For me (with permaculture glasses on) there is coordination >>> cooperation >>> collaboration succesion
17:02:51 From vivian : For me, defining purpose and vision are the most powerful democratic things to do in an organisation. In my experience, in groups where there is nothing like this going on, there’s usually one person or a small group in charge. Others might accept this for a time but it usually breaks down/
17:02:54 From Dil Green : It’s when humans try to act like forests that things get strange – because concepts cannot capture complexity – and complex relationships are what makes forests capable of building carrying capacity.
17:04:34 From Nenad Maljković : @vivian: group / team / organisatiom / network / “platform” / “ecosystem”… all are human systems, but different.
17:08:29 From Nenad Maljković : Oh… that’s not “community”…
17:09:11 From Ben Roberts : Re “Telegram hell:” “The small group is the unit of transformation” Peter Block
17:09:24 From Dil Green : @Nathan blockchain people obvs didn’t read the ‘Tyranny of Structurelessness’ in time…
17:09:58 From Dil Green : @ben nice distillation.
17:10:58 From Dil Green : Drawing appropriate boundaries and understanding that boundaries are spaces of exchange rather than barriers seems key.
17:15:40 From Nathan to All Panelists : @dil Actually at the meeting I was describing they were referencing “The Tyranny of Structureless” to describe their condition.
17:15:47 From Nathan to All Panelists :
17:16:03 From Ben Roberts : If we were sitting together, Matthew wouldn’t be on his phone like that!
17:16:17 From Nenad Maljković : Of course not – any mediated communication is 2nd grade communication… or worse
17:16:40 From Ben Roberts : And I wouldn’t also be working on a Google doc.
17:17:06 From Nenad Maljković : Focus Ben, focus!
17:17:13 From Simon to All Panelists : You think so ! ?
17:17:18 From Dil Green : https://medium.com/@joshafairhead/harmonious-working-patterns-2788d1523106
17:17:24 From Nathan to All Panelists : At the very least distract yourself with FLO software!
17:18:13 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : Harmonious Working Patterns: https://medium.com/@joshafairhead/harmonious-working-patterns-2788d1523106
17:19:03 From vivian : @Indra I like your analysis of how people interact with ideologies and the connection you make with concepts of identity. In the present political situation we have a classic case study of how people with insecure identities cleave to apparently powerful “ready-made” ones which are really crude vehicles for manipulation and control.
17:20:21 From Nenad Maljković : Hear, hear… (coming from an oralist)
17:20:50 From vivian : Arguably many externally-defined forms of identity (countries, brands for example) fall to a greater or lesser extent into this category.
17:21:31 From Dil Green : @Vivian Agreed
17:21:44 From Nenad Maljković : By the way, some good practical tips on… collaboration… here (there’s also part 2): https://medium.com/the-tuning-fork/hierarchy-is-not-the-problem-892610f5d9c0
17:22:06 From Nathan to All Panelists : I love that article, @Nanad. Thanks for sharing it.
17:22:06 From Dil Green : @Nenad – great stuff.
17:22:33 From Nathan to All Panelists : A corollary of mine: https://medium.com/medlab/co-ops-need-leaders-too-c78a303cd16ea
17:22:49 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : Thanks!
17:22:58 From Nathan to All Panelists : Sorry https://medium.com/medlab/co-ops-need-leaders-too-c78a303cd16e
17:23:19 From Dil Green : Rich and Nat capture something that panellists here are not talking about – which is scale. ‘How many people in the group?’ ‘What is the right size of group for this intent?” seem to me to be very important early questions.
17:25:38 From Nenad Maljković : What Matthew describes is how things work anyway… We are all associated – as individuals – with more then one “organisation”, etc.
17:26:50 From Dil Green : @Nen – I think he is saying that the protocols for collaboration in those forms of org are over-conditioned by the learned cultural modes of top-down hierarchy.
17:27:06 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : Cohesion – steer towards average position of neighbours
Separation – avoid crowding neighbours
Alignment – steer towards average heading of neighbours
17:27:13 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : https://open.coop/2019/03/07/defining-dna-collaboration/
17:27:23 From Simon to All Panelists : Is this aimed at corporations . . . who pay fat consultancy fees?. Personally can’t we just close them down?
17:27:37 From Ben Roberts : Never mind the GHG emissions associated with in-person meetings!
17:27:40 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : lol!
17:28:31 From Nenad Maljković : Extroverts and introverts keep their differences on video too
17:28:56 From vivian : @laura vulnerability is strength! (although I’m conscious I’m just sending text messages and you’re the one on the video! )
17:30:04 From Ben Roberts : So interesting to hear Laura say she “hates video.” The three ways of connecting–in-person, live virtual (video/audio), and asynch/text– each have benefits and limits, and each appeal/repel different people in different ways. Deep collaboration will leverage all three and have them synergize in ways we are still just starting to figure out.
17:30:21 From Ben Roberts : Yay NEC!
17:33:56 From Nathan to All Panelists : Thank you Laura for sharing that.
17:34:59 From Nenad Maljković : If viewer is focused enough on video listening can be as good – it’s a skill to acquire, in my experience.
17:35:20 From Laura James : Great point Indra about tech privilege. Virtual environments, especially without video, can be empowering for people with disabilities whose voices are not heard in the same way in face to face meetings. For scale we need to centre inclusivity
17:35:25 From Nenad Maljković : Live video is not the same thing as watching TV
17:35:29 From Nathan to All Panelists : One board I’m on requires members to stay unmuted on calls to enforce attention.
17:37:59 From Nenad Maljković : @laura: yes, fully agree + what Ben Roberts wrote above: “The three ways of connecting–in-person, live virtual (video/audio), and asynch/text– each have benefits and limits, and each appeal/repel different people in different ways. Deep collaboration will leverage all three and have them synergize in ways we are still just starting to figure out.”
17:41:34 From Nenad Maljković : Voting is out of date. We use consent decision-making (not even consensus, that’s also out of date).
17:44:57 From Nenad Maljković : Re. foking in collaboration – doable even without devices!
17:45:57 From Dil Green : imho democratic tools have appropriate and inappropriate contexts. So that voting can have its place (a quick workplace decision among 50 people as to a wildcat strike), consensus can have its place (a group of three choosing where to go for a meal), deliberative democracy… and so on.
17:49:40 From Nenad Maljković : @laura: thanks for sharing this, very useful!
17:50:49 From Matthew Schutte : Gregory Bateson’s critique of Conscious Purpose:
17:50:50 From Matthew Schutte : http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/Gregory_Bateson.pdf
17:51:49 From Matthew Schutte : And published yesterday: Gregory’s daughter, Nora Bateson’s article on “Tasting Textures of Communication in Warm Data”
17:51:49 From Matthew Schutte : https://medium.com/@norabateson/eating-sand-e478a48574a5
17:53:54 From Matthew Schutte : Nora’s wonderful recent 8 minute video that touches on the challenge that humanity faces today and the different ways of THINKING that may be required to actually surface solutions:
17:53:55 From Matthew Schutte : https://vimeo.com/310626097
17:55:20 From Nathan : Join us later! https://ethicaledtech.info/wiki/Meta:Inaugural_Edit-a-Thon
17:57:49 From Wes, Somerset UK to All Panelists : Really great session, thank you everyone!
17:59:13 From Dil Green : These ‘names’ are nicely captured by the concept of ‘patterns’ – identified recurring conditions in complex systems which are recognisable – although each instance is unique (in space and time), we can nevertheless useful name them.
17:59:49 From Ben Roberts : I’m not with you fully, @matthew. Sure, you can note how any boundary is permeable, or even arbitrary. And yet collectives DO exist in nature and are essential building blocks for its complex capacities for collaboration.
17:59:57 From Dil Green : Pattern languages allow us to trace systems of relationship between patterns that embody the complexity of the interactions.
18:00:13 From Simon to All Panelists : Interesting that Oliver insisted that everyone start by explaining ‘how they make a living’, & that Matthew lived in his car. Progress will be made when we don’t have to make these ridiculous choices. What will that take?
18:00:28 From Ben Roberts : It’s not just about giving something a “name.”
18:02:11 From Dil Green : @ben agreed – understanding a pattern and being able safely to interact with it design it requires a great deal of investigation, learning, documenting, mapping connections to larger and smaller contexts…
18:06:08 From Nenad Maljković : “Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.”
– Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, 1977
18:07:00 From Nenad Maljković : Might work in similar way in social systems… I think.
18:07:47 From Dil Green : Thank you Nenad! Chris alexander student/practitioner here.
18:08:38 From Ben Roberts : Here’s a pattern language for group engagement that I love to use in various ways: https://groupworksdeck.org/
18:09:00 From Dil Green : I am working on building pattern language authoring tools for all sorts of domains.
18:09:47 From Ben Roberts : There’s a new pattern language for “Wise Democracy” too: https://www.wd-pl.com/
18:10:58 From Dil Green : know the group works one, but nice to have this democracy one. Thanks
18:11:08 From Matthew Schutte : An interesting blogpost on Dyads and Triads (similar to some of Josh’s comments) by the co-creator of SSL the most widely used security protocol on earth:
18:11:08 From Matthew Schutte : http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2013/04/dyads-triads-the-smallest-teams.html
18:11:14 From Ben Roberts : One of its categories is Collaboration
18:11:29 From Ben Roberts : I can speak to one version of an answer to Nenad
18:12:11 From Ben Roberts : Cooperation is another C word to include
18:16:52 From Ben Roberts : I can also answer Nenad’s question re the various C-words with a story about what we’ve learned in the Thriving Resilient Communities Collaboratory
18:20:13 From Nenad Maljković to All Panelists : Maybe give Ben a chance to answer my question?
18:20:14 From Matthew Schutte : Yes! We need to give ourselves and one another AUTHORIZATION to show up as full humans — with the complexity of other contexts — not just as our “role” in the organization!
18:20:53 From Matthew Schutte : Nora Bateson has designed a wonderful process called a WARM DATA LAB to foster this kind of experience — and result in transformative shifts.
18:21:57 From Ben Roberts : I’m eager to try a warm data lab with Nora using Zoom (and maybe some asynch tools and perhaps even a network of in-person groups too).
18:22:28 From Matthew Schutte : Nora spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco yesterday. That recording should be on NPR radio stations around the US (and elsewhere soon) and will probably be available online in the next few days:
18:22:29 From Matthew Schutte : https://www.commonwealthclub.org/videos
18:25:10 From Dil Green : Ben this is fascinating – thank you.
18:26:10 From Nenad Maljković : Thank you Ben!
18:26:14 From Dil Green : Is this documented / described anywhere?
18:26:25 From Indra : share your links Ben?
18:26:25 From Ben Roberts : www.thrivingresilience.org
18:26:27 From vivian : Thank you Oli!
18:26:32 From Dil Green : thanks!
18:26:51 From Nenad Maljković : Thank you all + Oliver and Dil
18:27:04 From Trevor : Thanks everyone!

The post Catalysing collaboration at scale appeared first on P2P Foundation.

When: Wednesday, 3 April
4:30 pm – 6:30 pm

Add to: iCal – gCal

(See OPEN COOP website for map and further detail)

Could we model a formula for organisational collaboration on three simple rules?

1. Cohesion
2. Seperation
3. Alignment

…and define a protocol to aggregate, visualise and disseminate the resultant murmurations?

This free webinar on “Catalysing collaboration at scale” is the first even of OPEN 2019 organised by The Open Co-op exploring ideas around The DNA of Collaboration and Harmonious Working Patterns.

We have convened a panel of community builders, technologists and collaborators to explore ideas which might help all the people, communities and organisations working on creating a new, decentralised, regenerative economy collaborate better to produce more impact.

Everyone is welcome to log in and listen to a discussion and participate in the Q&A.

We will be hearing from:

• Indra Adnan from The Alternative
• Nathan Schneider from the Platform Cooperativism Consortium
• Irina (Ira) Bolychevsky from Redecentralize
• Matthew Schutte from Holochain
• Laura James from Cambridge Computer Laboratory
• Oliver Sylvester-Bradley from The Open Co-op

The panel will explore questions such as:

• What examples can you give / have you seen of group and intergroup collaboration working well?
• What do you see as the key ingredients / tenets / requirements for successful collaboration?
• Once collaboration is working within our groups, how do you think we could encourage more inter-group collaboration to achieve wider systemic impact?
• Plus, the concept contained in the posts on The DNA of Collaboration and Harmonious Working Patterns and examples and ideas from the panels’ projects.

The webinar will be held on Zoom – you will need to download the Zoom package and then click on the link to Join the webinar – there is no need to register in advance.

Where: Online, Webinar, Zoom

Categories: Beginner Collaborate Discuss Intermediate

The post Catalysing collaboration at scale – The Open Co-op appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Her commitment is to grassroots politics that release the power of people and communities in ways that sustain the planet.

She is concurrently a journalist (The Guardian, Huffington Post), a psychotherapist (Human Givens Institute), founder of the Soft Power Network (consulting to Finnish, Brazilian, Danish and British governments), Buddhist, Futurist, School Governor and Mother.

Recent publications include Is The Party Over? and New Times, and e-book Soft Power Agenda.

Indra launched The Alternative UK together with author and musician Pat Kane in March 2017 with the support of Uffe Elbaek, leader of Alternativet, the fastest growing party in Denmark with 10 seats in Parliament after only five years.

A/UK produces a Daily Alternative of global socio-political initiatives, together with a weekly editorial which joins the dots of personal, social and global innovation – I, We and World. Together with artists, musicians and technologists of all kinds, they also design and host political laboratories which ‘enliven’ community meaning and belonging and reconnect people with their power and purpose at a local, municipal and regional level.

These laboratory processes give rise to citizens networks that develop culture and practice for the community, eventually giving rise to policy which will shape a living manifesto at the national level.

@indraadnan, @AlterUK21

The post Indra Adnan On Is Politics Broken? (And Here Is The Alternative) appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“As people explore new forms of agency online, where is the politics that can serve their growing sense of possibility?

For a little while now I’ve been waking up in the morning feeling ready for something. When people ask me “how are you?” the answer, is “Good. Excited”—though I can’t explain exactly why.

It’s a feeling that is laced with frustration, as if whatever I’m seeing coming isn’t coming fast enough. But frustration is fine: I know I can convert it into resilience and forward motion. That’s the spiritual deal.

How many of us are currently living in that twilight zone—watching the old world order dying while the new one is yet to be born? The revolution of global connectivity, and the movements and parties it has given rise to, have created a surge of expectation that change is on the cards. Not quite inevitable—after all as much can go badly as well—but the logic of the 99% means that at least the old orders will be challenged and, over time, may well fall away. The moment feels hopeful.

Anyone who has been involved in the rise of Podemos, Alternativet, or the Sanders campaign in the USA is getting the best of this. Surrounded by new friends sharing the same dreams, and bolstered by incremental victories, we can sustain our positive vision with a view to concrete goals. Yet when the moment of achievement—an election, an uprising—has passed, it’s hard to sustain the experience, as Obama, the Arab Spring, and even the SNP have found. Hope evaporates too easily.

Maybe because of that fragility, the political left feels more comfortable with putting hope in its place. So often exuberance is met with Gramsci’s warning to nurture a ‘pessimism of the intellect’ while retaining ‘optimism of the will.’ Does that do us a good service now?

Too often I hear the phrase used as a way to belittle optimism, to make it appear naive or at best secondary to what can be rigorously evidenced by the intellect.

Because of that we tend to accept hope and optimism as ephemeral feelings that spring up predictably but disappear when circumstances no longer look favourable. But why not look at them as a resource that, even more than the intellect, can be developed, strengthened and put to the service of our emerging futures?

To do that we would need to know where hope sits, not just in relation to our activities but within ourselves. Is hope an e-motion—a physical response to changes in the body, what’s sometimes referred to as affect? Or is it, as Antonio D’Amasio defines it in The Feeling of What Happens, the meaning that we attach to that emotion, denoting our spirit? And if it is the latter, can we forge it ourselves—can we actively cultivate that spirit?

As a political activist and campaigner most of my life, I’ve come across a significant divide: those who consider themselves spiritual and those who don’t. When the question arises, as it might do in the pub, the responses are more decisive than they might be in answering whether you are you in or out of the European Union, for example.

Non-spiritual identifiers often stress autonomy. They resist the idea of constraints, mixing up religion with spirituality as if a codified, hierarchical organisation is the same as something that has no boundaries. Or, at the other extreme, they allude to spirituality as fuzzy, soft, wishy-washy or lacking material agency—not knowing how much of a premium spiritualists put on clarifying, revealing the power of and making manifest the effects of their spiritual work in daily life.

From the other side, spiritualists often stress freedom—the urge to go beyond. They label their deniers with a lack of imagination or feeling, of having no sense of the sacred. They ignore the undeniably spiritual aspects of the arts, relationship, creativity, camaraderie, play which are the very fuel of progress. Or, in their frustration to bring everyone on side they make the claim that everyone is spiritual whether they know it or not.

There is some evidence, however, that this divide can be bridged, if not resolved. Jonathan Rowson’s study Spiritualise: Revitalising Spirituality to Address 21C Challenges does a ground-breaking job of bridging the material and spiritual, the rational and instinctual.

Employing neuroscience and cultural psychology, he makes the spirit tangible for anyone who is interested but lacks experience or models. In other quarters, mindfulness, once the preserve of the spiritual, has entered into policy debates on education, health and even political culture and behaviour. Drugs too: hallucinogenics from LSD to Ayahuasca are increasingly cited as offering direct experience of the spiritual body for those searching from a material base.

More compelling evidence comes from the growth of the internet and how we use it to express our ‘whole selves.’ Not just the emotional and relational selves that are performed on Facebook and WhatsApp, but that part of us that imagines and dreams. Twenty years ago—well before the internet became the tool it is today—US tech guru Erik Davis wrote Techgnosis. In it he described the spiritual nature of the digital world and a life online as the place to hone our alter ego. More than an extension of our capabilities, Davis saw the virtual life as a parallel existence, one in which we could be at play and explore our imagined selves.

While most of us would understand the fantasy aspect of this vision—the role of avatars in 2nd Life for example—others explore the symbolic: using the internet to amplify small acts into massive intentions. When the Pope visits Lesbos, sheds tears amongst the refugees being doubly punished by their oppressors and their saviours, and takes a dozen back to live with him in the Vatican, he is rehearsing a better life. These are not simply nice gestures but acts of symbolic militancy distributed along our virtual and neural networks. A thoroughly modern Pope, acting in the face of prevailing wisdom to help us re-imagine and then re-make the world: share and be transformed.

This ‘soft power’ is not the province of the ‘good’ alone. When Daesh use the same tools to rehearse their power over their oppressors—a severed head the symbol of America’s defeat—they do the same, offering their own followers a glimpse of a life in which they are no longer the victims. Like the Pope, they polarise the feelings of all onlookers; no-one can remain unchanged. In each case, the tools are mechanical but the effect is spiritual—nothing new is in our hands but our minds and bodies are transformed.

Playing directly to the spirit is traditionally something only the boldest or those with utter conviction are prepared to do—artists, activists, and the angry. Those on the receiving end are often helpless: unless we have a guiding philosophy, a practice or a belief through which to filter them, these assaults on our senses make us vulnerable. When we are vulnerable, we are easy to manipulate. As many have pointed out, brutal videos lead to knee-jerk militarism of exactly the kind that Daesh need to fuel their crusade. Where is the politician today who can name the spiritual attraction—the meaning and purpose—that Daesh offer their followers, and articulate a greater one?

When Barack Obama made a fleeting visit to the UK to wish the Queen a Happy Birthday, instruct us to stay in Europe and give our floundering youth a much needed injection of hope, the Guardian went overboard in trying to capture his impact, publishing numerous articles by awestruck 20-somethings. He dances, sings gospel and blues, cries, and cares for the elderly all whilst doing his daily job. It’s a performance of wholeness. What is charisma if not the ability to talk from the whole person to the whole person?

Yet charismatic leaders are not enough if they arise within a passive polity. Who holds them to account? To do that, people themselves must develop an emotional and spiritual intelligence which becomes the new ground of politics. Some say that this is a big ask given the work and consumption-obsessed lifestyles we have. I would say this is exactly what is being developed in this age of social media.

Using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snap-chat to name but four in a dense field of platforms, we don’t hesitate to reach out to each other, assaulting the senses and eliciting responses both financial and emotional—more intimately than we ever could in real time. And as we do so we comment and reflect, watching ourselves watch each other, co-creating the space for the new to emerge. It’s early days, but after 20 years of a neoliberal project that has required us to reduce ourselves to numbers, we are reconstructing ourselves piecemeal.

This understanding that politics is not simply a left-brain project of the intellect but also a right brain project of the soul is something that the left is still wary of. Understandably so, given Margaret Thatcher’s abuse of power. But we can’t let her forever define that sphere of agency.

Maybe it’s too much to ask of politicians who spend their lives defending the vulnerable to shift their mode of expression away from the scarcity of material resources to the potential abundance of emotional—even spiritual—resources.

But if we are indeed living in an age of, by and for the 99%, then democracy—evidenced through the increasingly efficient vehicles of public expression—will be their teachers. Instances of common heroism, from the spontaneous, public responses to migrants arriving on beaches to the long suffering Hillsborough campaigners who eventually triumphed against the self-interest of authority, are plenty. And judging by the viral nature of the pictures and tweets that accompany them, these are the emotional and spiritual standards we yearn for in our politicians.

That clamour, that demand is growing daily. Maybe it accounts for that feeling of excitement I wake up with every morning.”

This article was originally published at openDemocracy.

The post The cyber-age demands a politics of the spirit appeared first on P2P Foundation.