via David Spark from Spark Minute
3 Comments → Video: Clay Shirky on creating long term groups that build something over time without incorporating
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Good point Clay makes here.
From personal experience I can confirm that the available forms of incorporation – even the “association” which is a more informal type of group incorporation available in European countries – are far from the way things function in the network age.
Having started several of these “positive-type” groups, I always found that it was necessary to perform stupid but obligatory meetings and make documents to keep the group’s corporate form going, that have little or nothing to do with the actual work done by such a group, or really with group governance.
So if a form of incorporation or articles of association could be worked out that are more in line with how a network of interested people works together to get things done could be worked out, that would certainly be a positive step…
What Rene Girard says is that the group dynamics always leads to the mimetic conflict – so a group without mechanisms keeping it together, deterring violance and reducing mimetic desire between participants will always end up in disintegration. When you look at Open Source project groups – there is two differences from off-line communities. First being off-line the violence of mimetic conflict id not dangerous for people physically. Second the licensing prevents community members from destroying the accumulated community wealth (the code). This all shows how mimetic conflict, which is according to Rene Girard one of the main obstacles in sustained group action, is much less malignant in Open Source communities.
Having just participated in the start up of a company without any actual formal organization: http://annarbor.startupweekend.com/ and working this way with quite a few people, I feel that Clay Shirky is really on to something here…