#license:CC-by-sa-3.0
Outline for Charles Jeffrey Danoff's Open Governance & Learning Project
inspiration from http://www.aresearchguide.com/1steps.html
- I. Introduction
- II. Body
- A. FSF Board of Govenors
- 1. After a quick skim of the Free Software Foundation's 2009 "909" tax form, I found an intriguing aspect of their governance model, that of the 7 highest or "key" employees, only Executive Director Peter Brown received a salary, of $79,602. Nobody else got paid (from page 9). http://p2pu.org/general/node/15762/forums/26445#comment-11455
- 2. Thus the majority of the work done by the board is free. This implies a very high motivaiton for their board, something I would *assume* is not true for most non-profits and/or organizations in general. I'd tend to think this would make internal governance far more efficient, 'cause if you're not getting paid and still putting in the time you'd be highly unlikely to waste your time.
- B. http://open-governance-and-learning.posterous.com/week-3-open-governance-learning-task
- I couldn't find a lot of information to answer Marisa's questions, but here's my attempt.
- organizational structure:
- processes in place for communication, coordination, and decision-making:
- I have no idea. I "imagine" they're similar to any non-profit. What they work on comes top-down and the board or staff are the decision makers of consequence.
- They also have a lot of volunteer work, some of which is structured through Libre Planet http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Main_Page but I'd imagine in general all volunteers take their lead from the board.
- What kind of leadership they seem to have?
- They have a very structured board who I guess makes all the leadership related calls, which I think is wise. Stallman once said "If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough - you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal." he chose to adopt an institutional structure to implement the changes he felt were needed in the world. Unlike many others from his generation who complained about "the man" or the status quo, he worked within the socio-political structure of America and actually *made* changes happen. In general the hacking community seems to be pretty un-traditionally orgnaized. Stallman taking a traditional route (non-profit) enabled them to have far more impact, I believe.
- How do they make-decisions (apparently at least)? Do they seem to be consensus-driven?
- No real idea, I imagine they are concensus-driven within the staff and very important volunteers, with Stallman/select others having veto power when they deem necessary.
- C. Organizer Instruction for Project
- http://p2pu.org/general/node/15762/forums/26115
- 1) Please find few documents on the organization of your choice and look at the organizational structure and the processes in place for communication, coordination, and decision-making. What kind of leadership they seem to have? How do they make-decisions (apparently at least)? Do they seem to be consensus-driven?
- I just found out a very useful article that might give a fair idea of what you want to look for when working on your project.
- 2) By the end of this week 3, that is, by February 16, write at least one entry in the course blog about your analysis work. If you prefer, you can start your own blog for the project, ideally a posterous blog (when you become contributor you also create your own blog) so that it is connected to the one of the course. Let’s avoid spreading things out too much, otherwise they get too messy and we struggle to find where your contributions are.
- 3) Feel free to use other formats besides writing. Upload video, pictures, whatever works best for the purpose of your project.
- As said earlier, working on this task also helps develop several skills and achieve important learning objectives, such as those
- • Express clear, coherent thoughts through writing
- • Analyze or critique existing work
- • Connect course topics with current events or personal experience
- • Debate and discuss issues in the field topic
- • Conduct research, contribute to course content repository
- • Reflect on learning, metacognition
- • Review the work of classmates
- http://p2pu.org/general/node/15762/forums/26115#comment-10602
- Kostakis's methodology can give you some hints on how to work on your own project. He reviewed books and articles published on peer governance in Wikipedia, searched online records of disputes, and contacted current and ex-Wikipedians for reflection on the issues.
- On a much smaller scale, we have suggested that you only review few documents, but, if you like to go the extra mile, you may want to interview someone. Up to you and your time constraints.
- http://p2pu.org/general/node/15762/forums/26115#comment-10618
- - how is the activity in the project organized?
- - how are roles divided?
- - how does decision-making work?
- - what are the conditions for entry in the project?
- - what tools and procedure are used and who chooses them?
- - how is leadership appointed?
http://p2pu.org/general/node/15762/forums/26445
- The plan is to build on the worfk started in week 3 and widen the scope to ask: How does open governance (or related systems of horizontal governance, self-governance, or commons management) work in the various places in which it is currently found?