https://www.ngiforum2023.eu/

With the growing influx of #EU funding into the #openweb we will see an increase in #techchurn due to the #geekproblem being feed by #mainstreaming #stupidindividualism of most of the #fashernista who can jump through the bureaucracy gatekeeper hoops.

Hoping for a balance of good Vs damage, though the shear blinded arrogance of the vertical crew push us to the damage side. #NGI do not won’t to see this problem, we as a community need to push back on this for a better outcome
Some examples from a resent #EU #NGI meeting

Example, a horizontal public BBB meeting where the organizers are the only one who have access to the share notepad space. Note in BBB this is open by default, so a moderator closed it on the assumption that this was the right thing to do.

The result, all the public input is lost in the transitory chat.

Let’s look at a second example from the same meeting, the chare (who is likely lovely in person) took notes that were ONLY her agenda, ignoring the meeting input. Yes, I was non-directly rood about this. She was confused and started to try and take the agenda of the meeting badly.

Q. Should we have been silent and let her agenda and a few other #mainstreaming people been the only thing recorded in the minutes, thus the next round of funding?

A. we need to compost this crap, not add to it. Most time people do not STOP this crap process, we need to do this more.

As it said on the side of my blog for the last 10 years:

“A river that needs crossing political and tech – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over complexity”

Orgs such as #NGIzero are unwitting feeding the “geek side there is naivety and over complexity” where the #mainstreaming #NGI are pushing the political side “arrogance and ignorance”

As I have been at the heart of this garden for more than 30 years, I think I have a better voice on this than most. That’s not arrogance, that’s truth 🙂

If you feel like talking shit please read this first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_homin

Let’s have a chat with @NGIZero about this https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Med Of course, if we can’t have this conversation the is only the stick which likely will end increasing the mess.

I think the #EU guys find it hard to see how low our apion of the #mainstreaming mess they work in. The #EU people at these events are clearly incompetent on the subject of #openweb (and meany argue life on the planet in general) we all understand this in the grassroots.

If you wonder why grassroots people see the #mainstreaming as children. An example, due to the crap behaver of voting for piss poor politics, we have this boat land to look forward to. To call #mainstreaming incompetent is a clear understatement of the issue, talking to the wide #ngi project here.

We should talk about this survey https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/wiki/Funding-of-openweb-projects and some of the more scary issues it brining up:

NONE WOULD DO FEEDBACK IN PUBLIC, this is important. The #EU funding has some “terrorism” in the cliques that run it, as people are actually afread that they will lose their livelihood if they speak out about these issues.

Me am “chaotic governance” so I ignore this, but you guys maybe need to take this onboard if you have not already.

A carrot and stick approach is a good path. I see @ngizero as the carrot and us the “community” as the stick. With this leverage, we can push harder for a better balance of good/damage from the funding influx to the #openweb from the #EU

Good to remember here, I am seeing @NGIZero as the solution and not as the problem in what am talking about #NGI

In the end, my difficulty is that I see the #openweb funding from the #EU being pushed by a “childish” point of view that is hard to respect and that it’s likely to do more damage than good, this we need to fix somehow, if anybody wants to help with child care.

Some things to think about:

It’s interesting how the truly aporling behaver of vertical minded people is excused by power (majority vertical) when they act in easy to understand crap ways in horizontal situations. And on the other hand, how the horizontal people are vilified at every point often for simply pointing out how bad the vertical behaver is. We need to look at crap behaver in vertical organizers, as they often do not see themselves shiting over the preceding. Though this act comes ever so naturally to them.

You can see this with the suffrages, the hunger marches, the Spanish Civil War, the Greenham women, the miner’s strike, corbinisam and just about anywhere you look where the two groups meet.

It’s crap that we keep letting this happen, take note I have near zero tolerances for this!

Positive projects for a better outcome:

* One practical idea is that we do need “chaotic governance” to have a voice https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Med

* Better focus on social tech https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/wiki

A native path out of the mess people make on the #openweb

The Open Governance Body (#OGB) describes a permissionless process/structure that is open and allows the group that forms using the tools to decide who is a part of the group or not. This process can divide into a web of connecting instances of governance as a natural human process of group formation. The #OGB emphasizes that there is no exclusion and always diversity, making it a natural fit for the #fediverse.

The #OGB also shows that if people are stupid and focused on individualism, each governance instance will have one member and no power. To gain power, people have to work together, which is built into the code. The #OGB emphasizes that hoarding power is limited, and it flows through the community, energizing and solidifying the community and building horizontal power to challenge/change vertical power.

The #OGB focus is on the importance of keeping things simple (#KISS) and that some people will try to push for existing power structures before democracy. However, as the process is permissionless, it is not possible to stop them from doing this. The #OGB emphasizes the need to do better, and that being native to the #fediverse is a big help in this regard.

The #OGB emphasizes the importance of recognizing where power comes from in the context of the #fediverse. The fediverse operates differently from corporations, governments, courts, and police, and it is important to think and build with this difference rather than trying to drag the fediverse back to the #mainstreaming path.

The #OGB builds from the #fediverse works because it is different, and it is easy to forget this important thing when #mainstreaming agendas grab and hold. The #OGB suggests that the missing question in almost all conversations is “who are we empowering,” and emphasizes the need to do better in alt-tech.

The #OGB notes that there are problems in alt-tech and suggests that starting with the #4opens would remove 90% of the mess, revealing the real potential for good outcomes. The #OGB highlights that doing better in alt-tech would involve using shovels to make compost and planting seeds of the world we want to see.

The #OGB describes the process scaffolding for the governance body as a default effect, where the decisions on how things work will be up to the members of the body. The power of the governance body is only the power of default, and the #OGB is about removing all hard default choices and building in a small number of KISS tools, then letting the body members work out themselves how to use them.

The #OGB uses the example of #Couchsurfing, where the website redesign removed the #DIY tools active Couchsurfers had used to self-organize, leading to disappointment among members. The #OGB argues that letting members make their own process, open vs. closed, is necessary to overcome the #geekproblem and have hope for alt-tech.

The #OGB builds governance with the way, rules, norms, and actions are structured, sustained, regulated, and held accountable. this is to mediate that the #Fediverse currently has a “herding cats” governance, denoting a futile attempt to control or organize a class of entities that are inherently uncontrollable.

The #OGB codebase is not just a tool for the #Fediverse, but it can be used to democratically run any structures that have stakeholders.

The #OGB provides an example of how the codebase can be used to run a local street market, with each stallholder as a stakeholder, people who shop at the market as users, and the local council, events company, and shop owner’s association as affiliate groups. The #OGB approach and codebase will scale sideways, with street markets governed city-wide, and each of the markets becoming a stakeholder, users as users, and city-wide orgs and groups as affiliate groups.

The #OGB shaping of the “body” comes from a long history/experience of horizontal activism, where “those who do the work have more say.” https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Do-ocracy

The #OGB pushes that the bulk of the voice comes from those who run the #Fediverse, the people who run/support the instances. The people who build the tools also get a say, as do support orgs and events, and the users who will be spread widely get a say, but their power is diluted by the much larger numbers involved.

This working practice comes from 30 years of building from The Tyranny of Structureless tick box list https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody/wiki/03.-The-Tyranny-of-Stucturelessness That code being quite “anti-human” is an interesting challenge, and it’s important to figure out how to get the humane “mess” in a coding process that is based on being “exact” and in control #OGB

The #OGB project is grounded in lived experience, and it’s a way out of this mess. We cannot keep using traditional institutions. We have to stop the #techcurn if we are going to use #openweb tech for social/ecological change/challenge, and we need to think about this now.

The #OGB project is about developing better ways of having “trust” based conversations and “trust” based “governance” in the #openweb. The project is built from hundreds of years of on the ground organizing that has shaped every “freedom” we enjoy and is done in a #KISS approach. The #OGB is a #fedivers native way of working, NOT a #mainstreaming way, and it comes from directly working, setting up, and solving recurring problems at hundreds of direct action protest camps.

The #OGB focus on what we know works, as at the moment, almost nothing works for social good. The #OGB project is what is needed, a voluntary cooperative and collaborative alliance that is native to the #fediverse.

The thinking is that we need to put a stop to the #techchurn as we have piles of #techshit already to compost, that #nothingnew is a hashtag for this.

It’s not the goal of the #OGB project to create an organization that tells everyone what protocols and standards to use in the #fediverse. The #OGB project is about developing better ways of having good “trust” based conversations and “trust” based “governance” in the #openweb

To sum up, the current working models of “governance” in open-source projects are monarchy, aristocracy and oligarchy. This is the rock star developer, the coders and the funders. It should be obverse to anyone that 99.99% of people are missing from this feudalistic ideal of “governance”.

Democracy is the basic foundation of our shared modernity.

WHY DO WE PUT UP WITH THIS MESS IN TECH?

Let’s take a different path, please #OGB

Q. that is an optimistic projection

A. I have no illusion that the normal shitty behaver of fucking people over and being a prat will happen, but the codebase is designed to mediate this crap behaver for better outcomes 🙂

#OGB “permissionless” is an important word that needs some thought. The body is made up of three different, balanced groups: stakeholders, users, and affiliate stakeholders. Anybody can become a stakeholder by setting up and running an active instance, and users are self-explanatory. That affiliate stakeholders are a little more complex and are treated differently, and it’s up to the body itself to decide if they play an active and useful role.

That nothing in this is top-down, elitist, discriminatory, or undemocratic, and it’s #KISS and looks safe to the “normal world” while being native to the #fediverse and its roots. All the coding is #4opens, based on #activertypub.

With #OGB, it’s important not to get lost in the #processgeeks and their dogmatic love of #formalconsensus, as that’s a dead end and has been for the 30 years of activism and coding tech. It’s important to keep the #OGB both #KISS and human, understandable. The #OGB is native “governance” and federates in the same way as the projects it “governs”. That this approach is counterintuitive to mainstream ideas and “common sense,” but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

This approach has worked to some extent, as seen in the “#Fediverse” as a living example, working to scale small to bigger. There will be lots of “smoke,” and help is needed to keep the project clear of this mess. We have to overcome our #stupidindividualism to have a hope of a better world.

#OGB To remind you that the need for “governance” came out of a practical problem where the #activitypub community is made up of “cats” who were doing seminars outreach to powerful #EU Eurocrats on why they should be interested in #activertypub. #OGB is designed to be messy and not tidy, and it’s a “governance” of a disorganization, not a traditional power structure. “governance” can cooperate with more formal models of governance like traditional cooperatives.