Governance Meeting Notes

nicksellen · October 1, 2020, 10:10am

This thread is for meeting notes from any of the sessions we hold, they should ideally include:

date
participants
notes
actions / outcomes
date time for next session

nicksellen · October 1, 2020, 10:12am

Date: 2020-10-01T09:00:00Z
Participants: Bruno, Katie, Nick

document meta-reflections on the process
each stage with variable duration as needed
standard weekly session at Thursday 1pm
write updates to the forum thread (We are designing governance features and we need your input!)
incorporate more casual input from the forum thread back into the process
tricky spreading it out over such a long time period
design probes / cultural probes - tasks for people to do in their own time. groups can do within themselves, then feedback. might be a way to engage people who participate in their groups, but not so much in karrot.
shared stories of scenarios groups encounter, and how to address them. collecting stories of governance experiences.
ideas on how to organise ourselves:
- forum thread is way for people to participate
- maybe another place for meta-reflections
- notes from each meeting, should they be on forum thread (or is it too long)
- maybe find a BBB instance to use (meet.coop, foodsharing, … kanthaus people)
- creating sub categories in forums, and use the forum thread as the main entry point

Actions for/before next session

fiddle around with forum categories (Nick)
publish these minutes on a new thread (Nick)
send katie the book (Nick)
write a summary of this meeting/process on the main forum thread (Bruno)
reflect/brainstorm personally on the stage 1 questions (particularly, set the long term goal, sprint questions, map parts, and wondering which questions to ask “experts”) (all)

We want Karrot to:
- encourage participation
- create accountability
- facilitate in-person meetings/decision-making and not conflict with it
- sanction behavior that goes against group’s rules
Facilitate taking responsibility in completely voluntary groups while avoiding positions of power?
Nick: To have a general purpose non-capitalist community organising platform that can support and encourage groups to use democratic governance processes that are informed by, but also inform, theoretical models.

Discussion on process questions

Nick: In someways we end up needing to remake all of society - e.g. to support the peoples lives who design and build the tool. How to respect the autonomy of the groups to organise as they wish without dominating them with our ideology. Karrot design and development should be accountable and informed the experience of actual groups.
Online/offline tension: Groups are sovereign but we should facilitate rather than dictate their processes. Voting and decision-making outside of meetings: Karrot doesn’t understand what happens offline
Philosophy on avoiding hierarchy - should we be clear?
Power vs responsibility: Foodsharing.de positions of responsibility become power quite quickly
Joakim: it’s very easy to get in a power position. Develop feature in Karrot when someone has too much power
Katie: Lift voices of those who don’t speak and take space. Idea: The trust Karrot system - could we flip that on its head to encourage people to participate?
This process started thinking about governing bad behaviour and now the conversation has changed to encouraging positive behaviour and participation
Consider changes in governance as groups scale
checkout

Actions for/before next session

Write a summary of our discussion (Bruno)
Do the homework of writing a long-term goal and questions
Maybe start the map when we’re done with the above
Get a BBB instance (Nick)

checkin
Joakim: thought about how even some of the existing features can be helpful to avoid conflicts, like the feedback, but many people don’t use or do not understand how to use them.
not much work has been done since last call, but in the very few minutes before the call Bruno came up with a suggestion for the long-term goal and the process questions based on previous discussion

Long-term goal

“Karrot will facilitate groups in organizing and making decision in a democratic and transparent way, encouraging participation from all and avoiding the formation of unaccountable and fixed hierarchies between participants.”

Some reflections on the meaning of hierarchy… In a sense, hierarchies cannot be fully avoided because of different levels of participation, skills, knowledge, etc. Itt is even desirable that some take the lead. The problem is with abuse of power, non-consent of others, etc. People should be accountable.

Process questions

“How to encourage participation even from those less active in participating?”
“How to encourage the people who are most active in participating and taking responsibility, while making them accountable for their actions and keeping them in check.”
“How to be a complement for in-person meetings and other offline processes for making decisions, instead of something that would conflict and not combine well with these?”
“How to enhance, rather than disturb, existing decision-making processes that groups already use?”

Drawing a map

We used Big Blue Button to start drawing the map / user journey. It’s perhaps not the best tools for thit but it worked. At least Nick and Katie could collaborate on doing some beautiful artwork while having the discussions.
We marked some of the steps that we identified as important to work on.

checkout

BBB whiteboard is very basic, so we can’t move stuff around… will be refined!

Actions for/before next session

Write a summary of our discussion (Bruno)
Organize the map (Katie)
Start some interviews (Bruno, Joakim, Nick, Katie?)
Maybe set up spacedeck to continue working on the map (Nick)

check in
interview guide
- good idea to also interview groups that don’t use karrot, whoever is available and interesting to us
- discussion about doing group interview vs one-on-one
- group process is quite interesting for us given it’s a lot about community, as the group mind can become activated
- for groups that have’t already experienced issues with governance, can guide questions towards imaging how they would approach things speculatively
- with FS Stockholm
- Meta-reflections on the process. Difference between corporate and voluntary settings. Making people understand what it’s about
Working on the map

checkout

Actions for/before next session

Do the interviews, sketch map together with interviewees (Bruno, Katie, Nick)
Gather the How Might We notes at https://codi.kanthaus.online/community-design-hmw?edit

checkin
Discussion on how to progress
- we have done 3 interviews, but we continue anyway. We can always have more interviews and get back to it
Discussion insights from the interviews
-Preserving the values
Integration of principles
- Free-rider problem. What if people just want the food? The group would not sustain itself. Having defined values and procedures is a way to do it.
Organize HMW notes
- invite others to put their votes/dots
- picked a few, 5 votes each
Homework
- ask for more input
- place HMW notes on the map
- Pick a target
- Write summary at Stage 1 - Defining the Challenge (Nick)
- redraw the map (Katie)

here are the How Might We notes organised:

we put our votes on the most interesting areas (ones with more than 2 “votes” by us), and the idea to is then put them on The Map

agenda:

choose facilitator: Nick
check-in
bring Vasileios up to date!
two maps?
- feedback loops
- how to handle rule changes
- we don’t need to polish and have definitive version, two is actually OK
- can keep maps around long term, and update over time, even if we focus now more specifically
integrate HMW notes into Map
- we chose 5 HMW notes:
- “How Might We …supports groups to expand their goverance model as they grow”
- “How might it be to… bring up delicate and important issues without exposing oneself? (question of anonymity)”
- “How might we … make it easy for people to review existing rules?”
- “How might we … bring new people into responsible roles”
- “How might we … make it easy for people to give more general feedback”
lots of technical issues with excalidraw meant we had to abandon the map drawing
pick a target! (and also how to…)
- pick just one, or try one and see if find a dead-end?
- we’ll try out brainstorming and exploring each HMW!
brainstorming for “How Might We …supports groups to expand their goverance model as they grow”
- having a specific place that describes the governance model
- https://communityrule.info/
- more focused discussions (hashtags)
- general meetings becoming quite overwhelming
- what is the spark to expand governance model?
- natural to expand into working / regional groups / co-operation / neighbourhood based
- peer co-operation across groups to learn from each other, look at options
- maybe governance structure field is public
- also nice to let people communicate into groups on these topics…
- agreement / constitution for group to agree with before joining, basic “what you need to know” before joining, or just curious about the public information
- maybe a timeline, every 2/3 months (for example), prompted to update it, or verify it’s up to date
- growing can be to grow local subgroups and might have their own rules (autonomous), so contextual rules (e.g. per place, or pickup…)
- having contact people?
- constitution vs rules, are they seperate? rules more flexible to change…
- kanthaus constitution + collective agreements + operational layer
- Elinor Ostrom governing the commons, maybe the suggestions for groups are a good idea, different layers of the commons, institutional diversity
- arrange chats with other external people (more “ask the people…”, Nathan Schneider re communityrule, Doug)
- bootstrapping groups, don’t need one at the beginning prompts for “how are you planning to make decisions”, etc… open but not stressful, maybe nudges… even at the groups can write some stuff…
- new groups might look at established groups, established groups might be curious at the new groups too
- community forum exists for cross group communication, but nothing inside karrot right now
- public places - agora/polis for discussions between groups. might need to be connected to a specific group for now (before we have federated group things)
how to proceed how to existing solutions and sketching new solutions
how to move forward
- doing the same process with the other 4 HMWs
- create an async pad setup for existing solutions + ideas
- from now up to next Sunday meeting, we can explore these HMWs, then making a plan for a more focused session to do solution sketching more!
next meeting + facilitator: Katie
check-out

our partial map for exploring just one HMW…

actions and outcomes

setup pad for exploring HMWs async (nick) done --> https://codi.kanthaus.online/community-design-hmw-brainstorming
participate in exploring HMWs, existing solutions brainstorms, etc (everyone)

Agenda

checkin
values and vision
- for people who join a group to understand what they are
- and for poeple to update them
- talking then sketching
- constistution / agreement / “golden rules” kind of thing, kept quite brief and easily accessible, visible when it’s updated, maybe even a process for updating it, and definately some history, maybe a bell notification, / email
- maybe a conversation for discussing changes, so like a change proposal process, could be voting, review, maybe somebody (or some number) with some trust can approve
- agreement_manager stuff from before is something to think about, but we don’t need to worry to much about that role, maybe editors can just edit something…
- facilitating discussions is important, not just buttons, maybe a temperature check thing with emojis is nice, maybe a way to have a quick temperature check and if it passes ok then fine, but if there is some concern then maybe trigger a bigger decision making process… maybe even a retrospective thing “lazy consensus” when changes are made, but if somebody flags it up later trigger the longer process
- ties into previous concepts/ideas of allowing people to do things, but allowing undo, which we didn’t implement like that, but we did do history!
rule library ponderings
- stockholm doesn’t have any rules yet, just reacting to things that happen, but did have a shared vision
- should we encourage groups to make rules at the start? e.g. the 3 golden rules from food sharing? what if a group made rules against what karrot stands for, so kind of different levels of rules… karrot level is more inspirational, but then groups have their specific rules, preventing waste, but also solidarity, then local specific rules for different places (much wanted pickups), then rules that came up from unfavourable events/behaviours
- if you join a group but just see 1000000 rules without the context of where they’re from it’s a bit overwhelming, and new groups starting maybe feels a bit uneeded
- rules are to keep the vision alive! important to have rules to make it clear what the culture is and keep working happily
- important to have them more linked to inspirational / constitution meaning, e.g. limits to much wanted pickups is linked to a principle for sharing
- the rule library reflects this
- different groups could share rules, we include some basic ones, but not sharing without context, including maybe a background to the rule, how it works, how it came about, always link a rule to a why
- we have insights into stuff that will probably happen for groups in the future and pre-empt it … and suggestions of when to bring it in
- how much information inside the library vs nudging them to reach out to interact with people
- most simple version could be more like a wikipedia page where people can contribute rules, and the groups copy/paste rules
- rules should be groups somehow, local rules, overarching rules, or linked by mission statement
- communityrule page, lists different groups that used it, and register back on the page, so maybe we can make it a bit like that, public group info that anyone can browse to see how they’re governed
- are governance rules acceptable to be public? (helps build the thing above), maybe the higher level bits, esp what people have to see before joining, but details could stay inside
- in gothenburg they have general rules covering all places, but then some more specific rules later once you’re in the group (particular to places). maybe like 3 levels (high level mission/vision --> general ways to behave, etc. --> specific details for specific places)
- in stockholm they deal with some sensitive data because of a collaboration with a charity project, how does it relate? probably many groups have certain sensitive information (codes, financial stuff, details descriptions)
- will always be a certain amount private/sensitive info
- Bruno has aha moment! two topics connected: 1) visions+values, general agreement, and rule library - + maybe discussions/voting/etc 2) exploring other ideas from the community, seeing other reallife examples from the group, accessing templates/stories on the page where they are inputting the info into karrot
on creating a group
- prompted to understand karrots values and respect the culture
- constitution type of box, golden rules, maybe a mandatory field, can be edited later, could be connected to show principles from other groups
- for rules, no nice if only one person can create them, option to type a rule, it shows faded (inactive), after more people join and it gets voted/thumbs up, then the rule becomes active, also sad face to start discussion / conflict resolution about it
- timeframe? so a group decides every 3 weeks, or months to discuss them, get a notification to vote for/against/add/change rules
Values, how do you make decisions, a section for how to contact people in groups.
The rule section has a place to give a reason for the rule but they are also linked to a place or thing as another category
Space for comment/discussion
Ability to make changes, setting to faded style until it gets enough upvotes or nobody complains within a certain time.
If there is a rule contested there is a system in place to discuss and develop it. Similar to conflict resolution. Vote and ammendment possibility within a certain time frame. You can change your vote throughout your discussion.
how will we manage this “looking for solutions stage”? … which methods do we use going foward?
next meeting
- Thursday 1 pm CET
- facilitator: Bruno
- choose the most interesting aspect(s)/feature in each sketch to focus on. Another round of sketch
checkout

bruno · November 26, 2020, 2:20pm

Date: 2020-11-26T12:00:00Z
Facilitator: Bruno
Participants: Bruno, Katie, Vasilis, Nick

Check-in

Describe each others sketches

Bruno discussing Katie’s
- rules can be added and shared
- connecting values with the rule via categories
- rules with group name, rule, and context
- maybe in another section in karrot? not within the groups?
- also linking to karrot vision, which kind of groups karrot is for, principles and practises
- like making categories explicit, connected to goals/values, and groups collaborating, maybe can be combined!
Nick’s sketch:
- One page to present the group structure and constitution, including mission
- it gives hints on what to include on the box. based on what other groups did
- chat to comment on the above
- One page for rules (or rather agreement) section, how they connect to values, what the context is (which place, etc)
- general chat for the above and for governance
- One page for change proposal. It can be directly applied or just faded, open some time for discussion and modifications
Bruno’s
- creator of group or later editors (via the trust system) of the group can edit the mission/values/agreement
- who can edit, left out of this
- viewable by everyone
- a banner (and maybe notification) to show people clearly to go and read all this stuff
- can add comments, give feedback under each of the parts of the constitusion/mission, maybe specifically commenting about the last changes
- negative feedback can initiative a discussion or change process
Vasilis
- focused on new groups, when starting the group setting some initial rules
- people prompted to understand karrot values and constitution (golden rules, etc)
- then can add the groups constitution and rules
- everyone can add rules (linked to some part of the vision/constitution), but they’re considering pending, with discussion invited, can be agreed/voted for it to become added
- can be published to the common library and own group
- emergency rule for more immediate needs (e.g. covid-19)

Meta thoughts on how to continue the process

how do progress this into development?
focus on this idea? or try sketching another idea at another point?

A round to discuss most interesting parts to each of us across all the diagrams

Bruno
- good to have visible clear place for discussions / commenting with the rules and constitution
- including suggestions for rules, ie… he rule libary
- trickiest part is the process, just changing things, or more contested, proposals/faded items, voting?
- need to think about different perspectives from user journeys. about established groups, new groups, etc… active members, less active members… maybe focus on one of those aspects.
Vasilis
- query about how the categories from katies idea. sketch was focused on library, but could work that a new group can see the rules, picking and choosing based on the categories, to form their own rule book, later could add more. missing: how it fits into existing groups more, copying existing rules in? how does the flow work, how does it fit in with the rule library. rule library for prompting inspiration.
- really like the idea of picking from the categories when setting up the group, existing groups may have to put labels on their group too, like tags (“sharing is caring”, etc), might simplify by having the categories
- should not be mandatory to adopt a bunch of rules that come with the category, but could opt-in to choose some of them
- more focused on new groups
- interesting how we make the rules, how does a proposition become a rule
- also interest in the general golden rules kind of things about karrot, it’s culture, how to learn about it?
Katie
- really important to think about the different user journies, first thing is to imagine what the rule library will look like, then thinking about the different ways that people get there, probably used more by new groups, or new members in old groups, wonder how much older existing groups would be up for it
- really important to have a discussion place, within the group, then getting shared to the library (so it’s already understood/explained by then)
- upvoting when in library maybe (like reddit)
- from brunos/katies, using specific language, agreement vs rule (inspirational aspects), categories -> visions
- process of discussion a rule when it’s being implemented or reviewed, when it’s made and who makes them. hopefully it can be open to everyone to make rules
- will probably end up with active people making rules, and the passive ones in the background (example of eu petitions, limiting how much individual people can do to encourage participation), how can we encourage the less active users?
Nick
- wants it all, but feels there should be some focus
- rule library idea is quite central
- a complicated way of making proposals and discussions is too much
- helping guide groups on finding the right rules and how they connect to values
- a reflection on a organization in which rules are not made by people actually participating in the project
- wants to work more on the idea of the rule library, how they are shared and categorized
check sketches again and pick most interesting ideas
- rule library very central
- exchange of ideas between groups
- discussion within groups about rules/agreements

Another quick round of sketches (15 mins)

Nick on his own with pen and paper, Katie, Bruno and Vasilis together on Excalidraw
Feedback
- how to handle the case of new groups who need a simple thing to get started
- should start simple, maybe add in one component at a time?
- excalidraw sketch is focusing on new group, and a simple setup
- are we going to prototype and test with people? we could choose one of them
- the new group workflow can actually be used for existing groups for them to initially setup the governance stuff

For next meeting

sketch more async before next meeting
convert hand drawn one into excalidraw
Vasilis, Bruno and Katie will try to find a time to work together on their sketch
Facilitator for next meeting: Vasilis

Check-out

Vasilis_Ntouros · December 3, 2020, 6:43pm

Date: 2020-12-03T12:00:00Z
Facilitator: Vasilis
Participants: Bruno, Katie, Vasilis, Nick

check in
update Nick on Bruno’ s, Katie’ s, Vasili’s sketch :
Screenshot 2020-12-03 at 15.56.052334×794 162 KB
Questions:
- what is the procedure for approving an agreement?
- where do we include anonymous feedback and is it a challenge from the dev side?
- what about emergency rules? Need to be flexible for quick approval, reversible, accountable.
  - maybe an idea to all them something else?
  - a balance of flexibilty might be required depending on their stage of development, or what the group is like
- What about agreements that take time to approve, no one is willing to discuss or take initiative?
  - Reminders/notifications
- Rules specific to Places
- How to trigger going into a voting process?
  - could it be opened by anyone?
- How about automatic time limits?
  - if such dont exist you can always re-open a discussion over an agreement
- Systemic consensus origins of conflict resolution design process
  - we didn’t take it all, but some key bits (e.g. continue discussion)
  - here is the voting UI we have for issues:
    - https://storybook.karrot.world/?path=/story/issues--issuevote-vote
- How about agreements for specific places?
  - e.g. practical rules/agreements tied to specific places
- How do the categories get defined?
  - pre-defined? like core values/principles of karrot?
design suggestioin/comment: get sth from the rule library in an editable (not fixed) form that can be adjusted to a (new) group’s agreements
suggestion: implement things/designs/sketches for the future and pick up ‘basic’ things we thinki that we need for the development of a prototype
have in mind the storybook when sketching–> https://storybook.karrot.world/?path=/story/conflictsetup--create
Next meeting 2020-12-10T12:00:00Z
- Finish sketching
- Discuss how to move on to prototyping
- Facilitator: Katie
check out

bruno · December 17, 2020, 4:02pm

Date: December 17th, 2020
Facilitator: Katie
Participants: Bruno, Katie, Vasilis, Nick

Agenda

check in
- Prolonged but nice!
Overview of Nathan Call
- Important to the goverenace proceses clear in Karrot
- Think about what in integrated into the code
- Reflection on the conflict resolution
Talk about next steps
- Finish sketching later
- Now we move on to Stage 3 - Decide
- Use heat map and dote to decide what needs more discussion
- Do we need to check if there is anyting that is still missing?
Stage 3: Decide
- Bruno is interested in working with most elemets, maybe we can chose one decision making model, and skip library for now.
- Nick likes the vision text box, he had also seltected the library but is up for having it as an add-on later. A light weight editing and approval would be usefell
- Vasileois thinks its import to ask who will test the prototype, if two groups will test it would be nice to integrate imtergroup learning, I think all groups should test it. In agreement
- Katie try one decision making model or both and do some A/B testing. Categories are interesting and working with the vision text boxes.
- TRY: Treshold of apporoval based on the trust karrot systems. Reactions and temperature check. A multi-stage process, 1. Temperature Check (If all positive or neutral it gets approved) 2. If negative reactions occur then it need approval from 3ish highly trusted members.
Move on to prototyping, choose what to prototype
- things not represented in the sketch right now:
  - democratic flow around agreement proposals
  - Build a facade and try to test with multiple groups, Bruno and Katie could test in their groups and then do others over call
  - Work in tandom, coders start on one page while others work with IA/WIREFRAMES/Mockups
Next meeting
- 30/12
Facilitator next meeting:
- Bruno
check out

nicksellen · December 30, 2020, 12:08pm

Call with Nathan Schneider

Date: 2020-12-14 16:00 UTC
Present: Bruno, Katie, Vasileios, Nathan
Faciliator: Bruno

Call to discuss, brainstorm and see where ideas from Community Rule may fit into Karrot’s design of governance features and vice-versa

checkin
Quick presentation of our projects and their respective goals
- Nathan working wih mutual aid groups and present visual guides and templates for governance and organizing
- Also based on Ostrom’s principles for governing the commons
- Question: agreement or organization logics?
A few questions we might have to each other:
- Can Karrot be an iteration of CR, making it suitable for groups to choose different governance templates?
- Are we making any explicit or implicit ideological choices in our design process, more biased to a certain kind of governance?
  - Recognize there is a bias in governance model of platforms (implicit feudalism)
- How might we make a simple user-friendly process for groups that are just beginning and haven’t put much thought into their governance structure?
- How might we guide and help groups in the evolution of their governance structure as they get bigger?
- What makes sense to be hard-coded in the software (e.g. voting mechanisms) and what doesn’t?
- Require that groups make explicit what their structures are
- Idea of templates at community rule is to make it easy for groups to adopt them seemlessly and then adapt as they progress
Wherever our discussion is taking us…
Outcome: anything we could collaborate on? Next steps?
- Share updates on what we’re doing
checkout

nicksellen · January 7, 2021, 1:57pm

Governance Design Process meeting

Date: 2021-01-07 12:00 UTC
Present: Bruno, Nick, Katie, Vasileios
Faciliator: Nick

checkin
expectations
- not very clear
- maybe a chunk of prototype progressed today, if not, maybe a plan that can be worked on in the coming week
- becoming a little more concrete
- … but also open to general discussions as they might be needed
- getting some inspiration to work more on it
timing
- until 2:30/3?
the map from Vasileios
- Excalidraw | Hand-drawn look & feel • Collaborative • Secure
- trying to understand where karrot exists between different initiatives and processes
- call with nick to understand some of the history/geneology behind karrot
- different actors/stakeholders in the cosmos around karrot
- maybe to open up bigger and more abstract discussions and connections
- invition to play around with map
- idea to bring in more non-food relating karrot groups and vision of where karrot goes in the future
- how to establish connections to other groups and movements and more publicity
- origin of karrot was international groups reaching out to foodsharing.de
- need to start connecting to other groups and understanding them, e.g. makerspaces, freeshops, community gardens
- interesting how it fits into broader food system, and maybe keeping a food focus is a good idea, “changing food systems” theme, a lot to unpack within food sharing context without needing to go beyond that
- longer term possiblities for people to run other instances for different purposes/areas
- open source / free software basis
- trigger for creating the map is to see how adding governance features relates to the bigger picture (butterfly effect), maybe useful for general vision/approach
- the reality of karrot vision and values is confusing, so useful to explore the complex reality
- could have another map that is only showing the things specifically related to governance topics
- background of more hierarchy admin/reporting system in foodsharing.de, and karrot being a reaction/alternative to that
- way of organising ends up more general than specific to food
- social issue of managing and sharing food, but also issues are managing communities of people in online/offline spaces
- maybe seeing the topic of general purposes-ness in three different levels
  - code level - the features are useful for many types of groups
  - a community organising model - the self-organized community model can fit wider groups
  - what the users/communities actually see and interact with (messaging, branding, language) - can be confusing if people don’t see how it relates to their group
feedback for landing page language changes
- https://rewrite-landing-page.dev.karrot.world
- Rewritte landing page by brnsolikyl · Pull Request #2281 · yunity/karrot-frontend · GitHub
- changes are the main title (“slogan”), the two subtitles, and a very small change in the “Democratic and participative development”
- taking away the sharing focus
- idea for a Big Release at some point with the new features (e.g. group templates), as a package with new landing page
- ideas to see how it can work for a freeshop and a toy library
- maybe some more time to reflect and think, given we are all very familiar with these terms
- if people are looking for this kind of thing should be clear
- a lot of (tech) people don’t actually know what a “community” is, a lot of people think about it geographically (e.g. neighbours), somepeople wouldn’t think of online communities as a community
- commons theory clarifies what communities are
- “group” vs “community” to clarify -> “Empowering self-organized groups”, connects to WhatsApp and facebook “groups”
- group into community -> becoming of a community/commons. a process rather than title.
- communities have boundaries, agreements, and conflict resolution processes
- currently when people are looking for an online tool, they might be thinking about “groups” (i.e. instead of facebook group have a karrot group)
- add in the conceptual part of what a community is somewhere, application process, governance processes
- let people create a group, then with our helping hand they become a community
- what is the different between facebook group and karrot?
  - data ownership
  - more specific features
  - open source
- closing reflections
  - Nick: nice framing to get connection between values/vision and where people/groups are at right now in their understandings and practise
  - Bruno: nice insights, practical thing to change word community to group, and work on some other details
  - Katie: discussion on community really interesting, trying to find out what people understanding, going from group into community makes sense, especially in the context of our governance design process. how to make a group become a community. commonning as a verb, fractal affinities of defining and redefining, from cultural commons (how can you own cultural stuff when it’s come from a whole history of it, so balance of ownership). “start a group, become a community” <-- nice!
  - Vasileios: really nice to have a new landing page, maybe “signup” and “browse existing groups” could go further down the page, so they are more likely to skim through the points, would be glad to join on working on more of this
prototype
- https://karrot.eu.ngrok.io/
- katies sketch
  - Excalidraw | Hand-drawn look & feel • Collaborative • Secure
  - examples of visions that people want
  - explanations for each type of decision making
    - maybe one sentence for a quick overview, and a link for more detailed explanation
    - in a popup instead of a new page
  - can select multiple ones plus an explanation of how they work within your specific group
    - means people can just adopt part of a methodology
  - clarify that selecting the decision making models will not impact how the software actually works
    - especially as they will be referring to offline processes too
    - it might be in the future we do have different software decision methods, but that should be configured clearly seperately
  - can be useful to see groups that might have similar vibes
  - good to keep flexible for groups as they will likely never be simple and use one specific method
  - how about for new groups? we don’t want to overwhelm them with options
    - maybe adding an “other” option
  - how to make clear that some of the inputs are optional?
    - prototype has toggles at the moment
    - should nudge them towards filling it in, toggles might make people not bother
    - some people just want to skip right to the end
    - maybe have a button before to “setup community organisation” or “do it later”, rather than for each field
    - who has access to change these things later?
      - maybe group editors, just use the existing mechanics of it?
    - make it clear you don’t have to do it now, but nudge to review as the group mature
      - maybe when it gets to a certain size, or time period, to nudge people
      - “this can be changed at any time”
  - how should the view version of it look like (as opposed to the editing view)
  - not wedded to the drag and drop interface
  - democratic process for approving new agreements (or changes to vision/governance)?
    - have more than 1 editors to approval
    - pending state?
    - possibly could implement it without democratic processes initially for a MVP
    - some groups probably wouldn’t give any feedback until it’s actually available in their group on karrot.world
  - changing the vision, etc would be nice to get people to have to explicitly re-agree (like in the existing hidden agreements feature), but maybe to postpone that
  - how about “main agreement” (big text box) vs individual agreements
    - “general agreement” relates to the application process too (as they are agreeing to it basically)
    - should not be so specific
    - specific ones more appropriate for the individual agreements
pick facilitator for next week: Bruno
checkout

Actions/outcomes

post map from Vasileios to community forum (as png)
Nick and Bruno will continue prototyping based on Katie’s sketch
Vasilis and Bruno will work on the writing/wording
Katie will continue with sketches time permitting

Images

Map from Vasileios

Sketch from Katie

Next meeting:

Date: 2021-01-14 12:00 UTC
Facilitator: Bruno

Vasilis_Ntouros · January 7, 2021, 1:58pm

Date: 2020-12-30 12:00 UTC
Present: Bruno, Nick, Katie, Vasileios
Facilitator: Vasileios

checkin
expectations for today’s meeting
- first day back trying to work again, so we’re kinda slow/unfocused
- keep expectations low
- maybe move just a bit forward
- do the prototype today
we have a prototype from Nick and Bruno
- https://karrot.eu.ngrok.io/ --> - temporary link --> nick’s laptop–> basic components
  –> later will look a bit more karroty
- short description of the prototype from Bruno
- Nick: think of other bits or different screens
- Katie: sense of connectivity among those tasks
  - adding vision, then “how are we going to make this happen” pointing at the ways a community is taking decisions
- Nick: vertical design? When u fill in the vision then decision making would appear
  - include some of the communityrule suggestions
- in this prototype keep in mind that other non-foosharing/saving groups can use karrot
- some more context for when/how decision making is part of a general approach/process
- the domain page: how to incorporate vision, decision making etc displayed in existing ‘side menu’
- existing vs new groups when thinking about this prototype
- conflict-resolution/issues as part of the main governance page
- what’s the language we use: for example instead of governance? -->
  - community organization?
  - something about self governance?
  - a spanish word Bruno likes: … Autogestión --> self management
  - karrot groups through design indicate an other way of groups if compared with a FB group
    where admins have those privileges
    -tags for decision making --> community rule tags, but also open text to explain how a community operates
next meeting?
- Date: 2021-01-07T12:00:00Z
- Facilitator: Nick
checkout and our next steps

nicksellen · January 18, 2021, 12:54pm

Governance Design Process meeting

Date: 2021-01-14 12:00 UTC
Present: Bruno, Nick, Katie, Vasileios
Faciliator: Bruno

duration
- Bruno/others? 1h+ 13:20 UTC
- Vasileios 40m
checkin
expectations
- evaluate and advance the prototype a little
- any balance of chat/prototype
- more practical aspects of prototype
- landing page as the chat/higher level part
landing page
- https://rewrite-landing-page.dev.karrot.world/
- discussion between Vasileios and Bruno:
  - importance of the language we use
  - less gender biased platform, how we can incorporate these ideas?
  - “Start a group, become a community” suggestion from Katie
  - added “autonomous” in addition to “voluntary” (coming more from charity or state culture, exploited)
  - screenshots could use mockups instead of real groups (privacy), maybe a few more mockups for applications and issues
  - … although real screenshots are maybe useful for engagement with groups, could ask for permission, a way to reengage with some of the groups
  - “no admin superpowers” explanation of “no bosses”
  - people might be coming with a perspective of “not a facebook or whatsapp group, ah it’s a tool, what does it do…”
  - gender biases of the photos we use
  - independent groups -> emphasise they can have their own agreements
  - show a group map somewhere
  - distribution of tasks and activities -> expanding beyond foodsaving groups
  - the word “offer”, OK in English, removed “ad-like” prefix. in other languages it gets translated into words more like “sales” (discussion beyond landing page) - maybe add some context somehow/somewhere to make it understood more like gift economy
  - we can write a message to people on transifex
  - open source prominence?
  - how to get the users to understand the right expectations of the karrot platform, as it works like the groups themselves
  - … maybe a visual diagram could be helpful
  - maybe an about page?
  - … could be a way to help people deepen their knowledge if they’re interested without confusing people
prototype
- https://karrot.eu.ngrok.io
- adding the values tagging bit to the agreements
  - puts agreement in context of what it’s for
  - warm fluffy headings
  - customizable at some point, but initially fixed by us
  - could have an “other, specify”, and periodically collect good ideas, vote on community forum?
- different editing view for creating a new group vs editing later?
  - question about whether to always make groups go through a “wizard” stepper?
  - need to keep in mind that groups might want to add different sections at different times
- maybe vision and decision-making can be input early, but the agreements maybe come later (more detail)
- should we have main/general agreement in addition to more specific agreements?
  - in Gothenburg the general agreement is a “guidelines for foodsavers”, and it’s about agreeing to it as you join
    - in this case it makes sense to have as ONE thing
    - seperate agreements are there for ambassadors / store managers, or people that introduce people, and sharing places
  - is it possible to fit groups that have general agreements into seperate agreements
  - in Stockholm they have an intro text (used in the application box)
  - agreements as not so long, but more concrete
  - idea to have flexible agreements that they can be very long documents or one liners
    - if they’re long documents they might need a title/summary too?
  - but for rule library shorter ones make more sense
  - if the group has many small agreements, it’s nice to see them as ONE thing too in a list
  - for the longer documents having a context on who or what it applies to is important
    - could have a text field to explain the context
  - idea for agreements to have
    - one line text to be title/agreement/summary
    - optional long text too
    - optional context field
    - optional place connection
  - connection to the application processes
    - maybe agreements can be marked as “main” or “important” and they are shown there?
  - would be good to look at real agreements and see how it could fit here
    - Gothenburg ones, and bike kitchen
    - foodsharing.de ones?
    - Copenhagen
    - Luxembourgh?
    - community forum post (ping known people) + playground group + more direct contacts?
  - if using karrot from the beginning might start with one-liner agreements
    - e.g. have some just about pickups
    - then more for starting co
  - maybe if we have lots of individual agreements they need to belong in group-defined categories
    - e.g. Community Standards - Noisebridge has “general guidelines”, plus more specific things for disagreements, or if you’re asked to leave
  - big open question about the value of having agreements managed as seperate items
    - in Gothenburg writing a whole document made sense, to get input from it as a whole
    - adding initial documents as a whole seems useful, but managing more granular changes later could make sense
    - seeing each individual agreement in a context or bigger whole is important
  - principle to try and avoid overwhelming people with walls of text
    - so this idea to only show people a small amount when the apply
    - or only showing them place-specific agreements when they actually need them
- discussions around how groups grow with central and regional hubs
  - regional ones should have autonomy to do their own thing to some extent
  - but also a connection to the central thing
  - some thoughts how to support some of this stuff inside karrot
- moving “new group” process to a wizard in general
  - some required steps, some optional
  - if skipping some steps, any time later can come back to re-do those steps
  - editing the info
- a part/section for reporting abuse
  - dealing with conflicts/abuse
  - e.g. anti-harrassment policy stuff
pick facilitator for next week:
reflections and checkout
- a more questions raised! (positive)
  - a lot around the agreement management
  - … as wall of text, or short snippets
  - … organising/tagging/categories, unclear right now. see need, but not solution.
  - sketches welcome!
- looking forward to collecting real-life examples, should bring back clarity/focus
- a bit confused what we’re producing now vs our discussions before, trying to connect dots, a bit lost
- need to visualize how it’s going to be
- bringing up more big questions instead of closing down! hoping clarity comes
- confusion level’s gone up, but used to it. Just need to get practical and build at some point.
- Back to the idea of the Google sprint, more focused. Maybe need to get back there.
- Try to scale down the idea and build less, like just the vision/decision-making.
- Also nice to explore how groups can actually make use of the agreements feature
- Now we’re working on a more normal design process, not a sprint.

Actions/outcomes

community forum post (ping known people) + playground group to ask for the agreements in their respective groups
- Nick writes a forum post and a Mastodon toot
- could add them (or links to them) in a pad --> a collection of existing community agreements or links - HedgeDoc
- Katie gets from Copenhagen
- Bruno from Solikyl/Gothenburg
- gather some from interesting types of groups, e.g.:
  - Community Standards - Noisebridge

Next meeting:

Date: 2021-01-21 12:00 UTC
Facilitator: ?

bruno · January 21, 2021, 2:06pm

Date: January 21st, 2021
Facilitator: Bruno
Participants: Bruno, Nick, Vasileios, Katie

Agenda

check in
- some chat about how to show alternatives to project organising:
  - traditional charity kind of model: find some funding/sponsors, employ some people, manage volunteers for the rest
  - new model: more community orientated structure, no big division between “volunteers” and “staff”
Examples of governance in groups (Discussion)
- insights from Copenhagen’s code of conduct and ethics
  - two documents, code of conduct which refers to code of ethics
  - those two are the ones you have the read before you can participate
  - they also have many more, but a bit overwhelming!
  - the amount of structure/rigidity in the docs is due to the scale of them
  - they have a board structure, with 6 different roles
    - volunteer management
    - community
    - etc
  - re-election of roles every 6 months
  - organised quite rigidly in that model
  - they do like the community vibe, but maybe struggle with making it happen
  - can really feel like work, especially with the larger events
  - 600-700 hundred members, 200-250 active volunteers
  - at big events, have market collections in the van (2-3 people), 6 people to do bakery collections, setup shift (10-12 people), … and other roles with 12 people or so
  - smaller events also
  - get a lot of students and international students, can have more volunteers than shifts, people compete for them
  - but other periods they’re missing volunteers
  - food inspector made it so random people can’t contribute food
  - dissident group on karrot?
    - Karrot
    - the people are also in foodsharing copenhagen
    - it works as a side project
    - some food comes from the events to go in the fridge
    - more of a community model (anyone can bring food, unlike in foodsharing copehagen)
  - foodsharing copenhagen use 3 different cultural spaces for events, and book the space
  - they keep some equipment in the spaces, but don’t use the space outside the events
  - foodsharing stockholm have a fridge that they can use to put in food to preserve it for longer
  - question whether foodsharing stockholm have a wider political/social agenda? or just food waste = bad
    - key volunteers see themselves as activists, focused on food waste
    - struggle with some of the social/practical issues
    - practical work of running events takes over, so maybe less time to do wider political/social work
    - did hold a public food waste dinner to raise awareness of food waste
    - wider topics are a goal, but hard to fit in
    - a lot of work dealing with conflicts in the group (racism, who takes what, blocking people joining)
    - lead to some other projects created, e.g. foodsharing ? (not sure of the name)
    - dealing with the size of the group has maybe taken away from some of the initial values
  - the board decided on the agreements, any idea for which process is used to challenge/manage the rules?
    - e.g. if you wanted to challenge rule number 9 (about not bringing your children to a shift)
    - they have meetings where it can be discussed
    - do a majority vote to approve stuff, and have a chair to co-ordinate things
    - some of the rules can make it feel like work, and they have training programme, etc.
    - events are a lot of work due to the scale, so require a tight operation!
    - some people go to get food, and the work is the “payment”
    - hard to embrace community structure AND get the work done
  - maybe to run as an actual community would require at least a majority of people that share a similar goal
  - have been a lot of issues about people who take too much food, so addressed by having more specific rules, and volunteers to try and keep people to it
    - some similar conflicts in Gothenburg too
      - the place that has the most food has the most conflicts and issues (e.g. hiding food)
    - in stockholm due to covid they’ve been trying to avoid crowding
      - some people trying to keep more food for themselves, and keep it more quiet
      - “it’s free I’ll take whatever I can carry”, hard to get people to take a wider mindset about it (thinking about the other people)
      - at least the volunteers should have a value-driven purpose, maybe less important for attendees
  - question is scale is very interesting/relevant to karrot
    - how much can a group scale using karrot?
    - how do the governance features fit into this
  - the two documents fit into the model of document with title + a lot of numbered points
  - the code of ethics document seems to fit the “value tags” ideas quite a lot
    - each point is talking about the wider value that the point is for
  - including the context of the points is maybe very useful
    - e.g. seeing why rules that sound harsh are there (there is usually a reason)
- Noisebridge model of do-ocracy and consensus
  - Community Standards - Noisebridge
  - conflict between do-ocracy and consensus? how does that work!
  - document is on a wiki
  - fits the model of a document with a title and sub points
  - including context of rules + values would be really nice
- Solikyl Gothenburg documents
  - a category in their forum where they keep the main documents/agreements:
    - Dokument, Material & Resurser - Forum Solikyl
  - and another category for meeting notes
    - Mötesanteckningar - Forum Solikyl
  - e.g. there are documents (posts) on there about the rules for people responsible for a sharing location
    - Beskrivning av roller: samarbets- och platsansvarig - Dokument, Material & Resurser - Forum Solikyl
    - seems possible to fit into the model in the sketch easily
    - most (but not all) could probably be included in karrot
    - but could be hard to organise them if they are all in karrot (e.g. categories?)
    - having them on karrot is probably better for visiblity and engagement
    - a minority of people have a forum account, many don’t comment/participate or know about it
  - is it possible to use a forum with karrot, so groups can have their own forum within a bigger one
    - using an external forum? or a forum feature?
    - we did start some work for being able to login to karrot/foodsaving forum with karrot account
    - but even so for optimal participation having the features in karrot seems needed
    - some thoughts to keep the forum more for karrot meta/development than for the groups themselves to use
- Foodsharing Luxembourg
  - Daniel said “Currently, we keep our agreements inside our meeting minutes on a shared drive on Google Drive. We update our group agreement based on these smaller agreements at least once a year. I do not think that this is ideal because agreements should be evaluated and then changed or discarded after a certain time. Otherwise, the list of agreements will grow indefinitely. I have not found a better way on handling this yet. Does this help you already”
  - seems like it could be a really good use case for what we’re working on (e.g. being able to remove agreements too!)
- a couple more listed at (kanthaus, foodsharing):
  - Share your community guidelines, rules, or agreements!
  - pace of change of documents varies
    - e.g. kanthaus constitution changes slowly, but collective agreements a bit faster
  - also important to contextual documents (where they apply)
- foodsharing Stockholm
  - a newer group with very few rules for now as they are smaller
  - they have rules for a foodsharing point
    -Foodsharing Point-
    Rules for use
    
    This food was rescued by Foodsharing Stockholm, which is a community-based movement that helps to reduce food-waste. By taking this food, you have become a part of the Foodsharing movement!
    
    Dropping off food at a Foodsharing point:
    Go through all the food in the fridge/cupboards and the food that you are dropping off. Throw away any of the following:
    Anything that you yourself would not eat (apart from personal dietary restrictions)
    Food that has gone past the expiration date (sista förbrukningsdag)
    Rinse any packaging from old food and recycle it if recycling bins are available.
    If any food has spilled in the fridge/cupboards, clean it up.
    
    Taking food from Foodsharing point:
    If the best-before date (bäst-före datum) has passed: Use your senses! Look, smell and taste the food.
    If the expiration date (sista förbrukningsdag) has passed: Throw it away!
    If neither date has passed: Enjoy!
  - wondering at which stage adding more structured agreements is useful?
    - so how much should we push the agreement of creating agreements in new groups?
    - or should they wait until a conflict/issue happens?
    - depends on the size of the group (maybe prompting them at that point)
    - ultra advanced AI to do text sentiment analysis to detect when conflict is brewing
- groups might not include all their documents there, but over time maybe can include more
  - particularly boring legal document? focus more on everyday kind of documents
- the groups don’t seem to use digital tools for discussing the documents, more from physical meetings
  - seems like it
  - in karrot we’re thinking to create the place for debating of the rules
  - do people not debate them online because of missing tools? or something else?
  - one of the hard questions we raised at the beginning was how to create someting to faciliate face-to-face interaction too, to complement digital and physical spaces
  - so using it as a repository of agreements should be ok too
  - a lot of decisions might be made in person first, then discussed later on karrot
  - shouldn’t aim to take away face-to-face action
  - the mechanism by which an approval is approved (e.g. reactions smiley face, etc…) and whether it should be anonymous or not, should consider these points!
Design of agreement’s page(s)
- Nick’s wireframe Stage 2 - Sketching Solutions - #8 by nicksellen
- “context for change” comes up during the change proposal phase, but maybe it’d be useful to comment on bits?
- this design would’ve worked well in the recent experience of Solikyl in writing, discussing, getting feedback and approving a document about roles.
- set the time limit for an agreement, will al the proposals go through all they just gonna stay there? time limit sounds necessairy
- the time limits defined by the group itself
- e-mail notifications
- banner reminding that there is an open proposal
- split screen or tab views proposals and approved ones
- how to promote in-person discussions and decision-making?
  - idea: when creating a proposal ask the question of how the process will be
- when reaches the time limit and there’s no negative reaction, it passes. Or 3 times more positive than negative it would get approved. If not, re-submit. Inspired on score voting Ukuvota.world
- 4 bits to add to the sketch/prototype:
  - time component
  - field for people to write how to participate in process (e.g. in person meetings, or only online, etc…)
  - file upload for minutes
  - approval mechanism - how to approve a proposal? Face reactions would be more like temperature check
- how to dispute approved agreements? Or make sure they’re not challenged right after being approved?
- live democracy approach not just a fixed weekly or sth session
- anonymous vs non-anonymous? maybe dig into deeper in the future
Next meeting
- Two threads to future work
  1. Vision field and how to make decisions
  2. Agreements work flow
Facilitator next meeting: Katie
check out

Governance Meeting Notes

Actions for/before next session

Next

Discussion on long-term goal

Discussion on process questions

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Next

Long-term goal

Process questions

Drawing a map

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agenda:

actions and outcomes

next

Agenda

Agenda

Call with Nathan Schneider

A few questions we might have to each other:

Governance Design Process meeting

Actions/outcomes

Images

Governance Design Process meeting

Actions/outcomes

Agenda