Operating Procedure

On Sunday 12/29 2007, Julie Osborn, Colin Leath, & Michael Brennan met partly to discuss the future of this blog.

Here are my thoughts. First, there is a bit of tension between wanting to be careful about creating a quality, well-respected and well-worth-reading blog on one hand and (my own) wanting to create a place that is easy to use and open to many and working as soon as possible.

Influenced by holacracy, and agile programming, I'm focusing more on the latter at this point.

So, my aim is to get the blog and its features out to the SD/TJ community quickly.

If it fails and no one uses it, it can at least serve as the base for new blogs or other collaborative projects, having affected in some way all those who participated or became aware of the project.

So now about the operating procedure.

• One basic procedure. In posting as "Colin Leath", I will be posting as a member of the Editor's group, and as a Contributor. In posting as "Administrator", I will address technical concerns about the site. Eventually there could be posts authored by an "Editors" alias, meaning that the content there was approved by the three people currently serving as Editors.

Since I'm pressed for time, I will paste in a rough brainstorm I wrote up before the meeting.

Let me highlight this: If you'd like to be in the Editor's group for this blog (a group of three, intended to add solidity and permanence and more thoughtfulness to what would otherwise be a project led by one person), or if you'd like to help with the technical administration of the site (Admin of geolocation/mapping, Admin of site/post formatting, Admin of feed customization, or ??) please contact me.

I intend to make this collaborative project not dependent upon my own energy for its existence!

Here are the brainstorm notes:

2007-12-30-0811
on the proposal again.

--We can have two blogs: events, and all the rest.
sdtjdphevents-- anyone can post to, just by sending an email.

Roles we need:

Editors board--three people--selecting who is contributor, who is not, making other basic decisions about blog. -- so blog is not just one person's creation--

Contributors' board of some kind. ..

Reader's rep.

Admin of events

Admin of blog appearance

Admin of geolocation

Admin of feeds

"who do we most want to hear from?
"what do we most want to hear?

Goal: for reading and writing for the blog to help us grow:

See Hopedance mag as a model--

Have themes of month or of posting cycle--e.g. every third post, on this theme, this subculture, this part of our region.

Key features of blog:

(1) Filtering of content, based on what you are most interested in---

[perhaps not reasonable--]

(2) Geolocation of content--make it easy to see on a map where a post refers to--auto mapping of posts with, say [lat,lang] tag in post body.

(3) Relocalization-- finding content, events near a place could become simple.

(4) Ease of posting

(5) Content focus on resource use/creation (?)

(6) Quality of content (?)

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(10!) Being useful to the people who are organizing people--

(11) but also/and also helping educate ourselves in certain areas--such as the nature of the local water system,

But if we focus mostly on helping set up permaculture systems?? Working independently of govt's??



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Yield-- is money needed?

What kinds of yield to look for??

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Possible statements of vision:

--to help region become self-aware

--to help regional organizations, individuals collaborate

--support the relocalization of resource generation and use

--support the creation of great public space

--for the blog(s) to become a great public space itself

--to help create great neighborhoods

--to support caring for the global commons

--to help people live without needing or wanting to travel great distances/ reduce resource use

--Method: to create a virtual public square where many can present themselves and a few can be focused on-- (already the state of internet--e.g., san diego blog search?)

--to increase individuals' focus on the creation of public good over the creation of private estates.

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Measurable goals:

Are we sharing peace?

Do we love?

Do we look forward to each day?

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Governance: Organizational sustainability, growth
--decision-making
-decision implementation
-continuity
-celebration
-roles, accountabilities---
-"decision-making by integrative emergence" / holacracy / presencing / integral leadership / theory U. / Spirit / feeling the spirit, intention of the collective entity, or of the space, ground.