Scaling Community Decision-making
By Benjamin Melançon
Any Free/Libre Open Source Software project will have elements of do-ocracy (rule of those who do the work) but this approach does not work for all decisions a software community must make.
Largely of necessity in heavily volunteer-driven projects, all people who must carry out a decision have to consent to the course of action. Everyone should get a say in the direction and conditions of their work (and no one gets to say they are just following orders).
A good decision-making process requires everyone involved be heard from, and encourages making decisions based on data and scheduling a time to revisit decisions.
We'll talk about ways we can do even better, but the nature of needing the consent of people to do the work, to carry out a decision, gives us a good minimum baseline in our processes for much of what we do.
When a decision strongly affects more than those who carry it out, however, we need better ways of making these decisions. We can scale conversations and decisions in a fair and truly democratic way.
Learning Objectives & Outcomes:
* Come with at least a passing familiarity with various ways decisions are or have been made in Drupal.
* Leave knowing about sociocracy and sortition and how these esoteric concepts could make our community scale
https://2018.tcdrupal.org/session/scaling-community-decision-making
Any Free/Libre Open Source Software project will have elements of do-ocracy (rule of those who do the work) but this approach does not work for all decisions a software community must make.
Largely of necessity in heavily volunteer-driven projects, all people who must carry out a decision have to consent to the course of action. Everyone should get a say in the direction and conditions of their work (and no one gets to say they are just following orders).
A good decision-making process requires everyone involved be heard from, and encourages making decisions based on data and scheduling a time to revisit decisions.
We'll talk about ways we can do even better, but the nature of needing the consent of people to do the work, to carry out a decision, gives us a good minimum baseline in our processes for much of what we do.
When a decision strongly affects more than those who carry it out, however, we need better ways of making these decisions. We can scale conversations and decisions in a fair and truly democratic way.
Learning Objectives & Outcomes:
* Come with at least a passing familiarity with various ways decisions are or have been made in Drupal.
* Leave knowing about sociocracy and sortition and how these esoteric concepts could make our community scale
https://2018.tcdrupal.org/session/scaling-community-decision-making