Willshire Metagov 20230719
Speaker 1: Awesome. Thanks, Ed. Welcome everyone to Medigov seminar on today, Wednesday. What's the date? July 19. It's lovely to see many of you again, meet some of you for the first time. Seminar is our weekly series where we have folks generally in the governance research space, sphere, larger ecosystem come to these Zoom calls to present their work. They can be presentation style. Today's...
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- influence 0.006
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Transcript
Awesome. Thanks, Ed. Welcome everyone to Medigov seminar on today, Wednesday. What's the date? July 19. It's lovely to see many of you again, meet some of you for the first time. Seminar is our weekly series where we have folks generally in the governance research space, sphere, larger ecosystem come to these Zoom calls to present their work. They can be presentation style. Today's is a more interactive workshop style. So welcome. Yeah. So we're very lucky today to have John Wilshire, who's gonna be presenting on his work on the community power compass. And I invited John. I came across the community power compass as a community manager myself, and a member of lots of different online communities, Medigov included, and I really appreciated the power compass in the way that it invited me to think about the communities that I'm. A part of in a really new and different and nuanced way. And we're gonna be doing an interactive exercise around that for with amongst all of us today. So briefly a little more about John. He's the founder of Smithery, a a strategic design practice with systemic sensibilities, as he calls it. So I'll let him introduce himself a bit more and his work. But, yeah, it should be a really great, great presentation today, so thanks y'all so much for joining us. Take it away, John.
Thank you, Val, and hello, everybody. It's lovely to meet you. I have been lurk Yes, lurking on MetaGov since Val and I started talking about the Community Power Compass maybe a year ago? Let's For the sake of argument, let's say a year ago. So the, me then. What I'm gonna do is, so I'm gonna send a link round to the Miro board, eventually just for some working stuff. But what I'll do is I'll just share screen at the moment as I go through an example of the thing. So I'll share screen. So, yes, so I run, Smithery, as Val says, a strategic design practice with systemic sensibilities. And essentially, this has all come about because I was I wrote two blog posts last summer. So my background is in originally, I studied economics and econometrics. I went into market research. I ended up as chief innovation officer at a media agency 02/2011, which is a super interesting time in media because it's kind of the rise of Web 02/2000 and suddenly you go, oh, communities could be a thing. Of course, that all went somewhere very different. But you'd have thought with a background in economics plus communities plus media, the rise of Web three would have been catnip. And in a way, it was almost the opposite in the sense of it was like people kept trying to describe that gravity worked sideways and you'd look around and go, I'm sure it was still raining up and down and everything else. No, no, no, man. It worked sideways. Do your own research. So, but I realized just having this kind of industrial gut reaction was unfair because there's a lot of interesting intention in the space and it's like we can use some of this technology to pull apart things and reconstitute communities in different ways. So funnily enough I've been reading a David Graver named Wengrow's book The Dawn of Everything at the same time and I realized within this there were three interesting controls and three interesting freedoms that they observed sort of in civilizations around the world, which I wondered if sort of like, what would happen if you pulled those into this space? So could I reworded them slightly in this version as control of influence. So the sort of the because some people in communities have they just have more influence than others, and they use that for better and for worse sometimes depending on the community. There's control of information. So some people know things ahead of or just all the time instead of other more than other people. So there's control of information going on. And then there's control of systems. So whereas in the Graeb and Windle work that's talking about threat of violence, I'm always talking about threat of admin rights here. You go so who controls the underpinnings of the system that this community works on top of? And then the first version which is what we're looking at here was freedom to dissipate. So you go, okay, so I don't have to do what people in the community say they want to do. If we can tell all agree on something to do, then sure, let's all do that thing. But there needs to be space for debate, for discussion, for venturing different possibilities. Does that freedom exist? Then the third the second was freedom of movement. So if I contribute to this community, can I actually leave and go somewhere else with no real penalty to myself? So in the same way that the Great Britain and Winger, what we're talking about, you can leave one village or one city and go to another one and stay up shop again, and that's okay. Can I do that within the spirit of communities as they emerge? Largely digitally, but in other ways as well. And then finally, freedom to reorganise. If enough of us who are here going, I wish this worked in a different way, decided that we can think of alternatives, can we do that? Is it constituting such a way that we can reimagine and re restate the principles of that community and so forth? So I did that last year. Then recently, I just started thinking, okay. So a more useful way of using this construct is in a Canvas. So I'm sure you will all be thinking of, like, Canvas is in the business model Canvas, you'll be familiar with a little bit of form of make a slightly grayed out box version, then people can put stickies on it. And so that's what I've done. And so what what I'd like to do today as the kinda as the interactive part in three minutes, three minutes time, what time, Is just sort of, like, work through an example of communities that we are a part of or maybe more interestingly that we have invited to be part of but we don't know how to read them yet. Because I think there's there's interesting dynamics in communities. It's what the it's how they actually work and how they actually are and how they present themselves. So, I've just done a quick example on the board. I whiz round it and then we'll get onto maybe thinking about how we want to map other communities. So there's something called Radar XYZ, which in supposed to be a decentralized community for over 300 researchers, L adopters, Web three natives, and newbies who've come together to identify and accelerate better futures. The long and the short of it is like lots of our futures work in collecting of signals is trapped inside the corporations for which we do it and we wish it wasn't. What would happen is if we collectively did the research first and then found patrons and clients who would pay that for us. So I just sort of quickly zipped around. I'm not a member, but sort of like the the invitation was there and I was like, okay, so what what is it telling me? So clear I started with control of influence because you go, okay, so there are clearly a small set of people in here who have come up with the idea and they seem fairly essential in deciding how the structure goes, but they're also looked to as the people who see how this works. So there are key players. There's an editor, for instance. They are powering the process. So there's kinda like some scanners seem to have more say as well, so that was interesting as well. So that you're going, okay. I'm not I'm not answering something that is truly a level playing field yet, but maybe that comes after that. Control of information. Well, beyond the kind of, like, oblique language in terms that you have to learn, there was other things that lots of lots of people know stuff in here and understand what's going on and others don't. So it's kinda like quite a steep learning curve which you do find in a lot of kinda online community spaces nowadays. But then the sorta like the core of the work is like, hey, everyone can find these signals and contribute to the work. The briefs are shaped by the core team and then published. So there's kinda clearly information going on in the background of how have you got in mind the sorts of patrons that might pay for this? Are there established relationships and so on? Finally, control of system is the kind of typical stuff. He's got, well, the admin, the Discord, they run the social accounts and so on. It's it's it's fairly benevolent dictatorship all the way down. That's fine. Up to here, I was thinking it was a freedom debate. You go, okay. So scanning and sense make is an interesting thing. Which of those conversations can can I be a part of? If I'm scanning just signals at one level, when you get to the sense making part, so that putting these things to the together to think, oh, that's interesting. That's over here. Can I take part in the higher level conversations? Or if I don't take part in any scanning, does that affect me at all? Suddenly, am I not welcome in this conversation because I've not done certain stages of things? Freedom of movement becomes interesting because you go, okay, so if I am contributing to this database, do I get to take my signals when I go or am I committing in perpetuity so it will all be there? If I delete my account and want to disassociate myself, can I take down my work or does that pull apart the work that you've created? My watch thinks I'm creating starting a workshop. It's not really a workshop. The and then finally, freedom to reorganize. You say, like, if enough people change look at the work that's happened so far and say this should work differently, is there something in the terms and conditions that you can reconstitute that community? An interesting Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry. Questions?
Oh, no. I think someone just accidentally unmuted. I think you're good.
Oh, okay. Cool. Oh, and by the yeah. I mean, slow me down if I am speaking too fast and Scottish as well.
No. I think we're eager to jump in.
Right then. Okay. So you get the point that sort of, like, you you just examine things and then you go, like, synthesize it. Once you've got your initial things, say, synthesize and then reach a conclusion on it. All make sense?
Yeah. And if anyone has questions, like, we'll take some time now to do Well, John, if you don't mind sending the mural, and then everyone can start getting in there. And you can start with the panel on the left where there's a brainstorm moment for thinking about what community you might wanna map or thinking about some of the communities you're a part of already and might wanna map or thinking about joining and might wanna map. So that's the panel on the left. And then in then when you're ready, just pick a compass and start brainstorming using the tool. And, you know, feel free to unmute and ask questions if you have questions for John. But we will take time once we all do some solo kind of simultaneous solo quiet coworking time, then we'll come back together for a bigger discussion. But if you have a question that's necessary, feel free to unmute, and we can also do that. So does everyone have the Miro link now?
I have
a quick question. I mean, Johnny mentioned you you do all this, and then you synthesize. But, like, what does that mean? Like, what's the process of synthesizing?
So this so the the the the first analysis phase is almost just sort of how am I reading that community from the outside? So it, like, picked up those various notes. And I and I'd not put down on this one everything that I've thought yet just for the kinda like the the ease of explaining it here. But almost the synthesis parts, like given all of these different dynamics under one of the freedoms of controls, what's my overall read on the freedom of movement for instance, or my overall read on the freedom of movement? So it's just kinda like going rough rule of thumb going, so overall I think there is a fair chance there's a freedom to reorganise in here, right? Because there's kind of like visibly there's signals on the outside of the organisation saying, hey, we're gonna run a members only thing to work out how this works better. So they're even inviting it in there. So you go, okay, there's a fair chance that this is going on here. I mean, no, I think no I'm interested in both as a light tool to give you a ready reckoner on, you know, is this something I want to spend more time on? But also, and I'm a non academic in the kind of traditional sense, so there's kinda like also if people go, actually this could work as a framework for a deeper analysis of various different things, that would be an interesting thing to come out here as well. Cool. Thank you.
And so is everyone clear on what we're doing, what we're supposed to be doing? If you're not, feel free to unmute and ask. But, ideally, you are thinking about a community and then picking a power compass in the mirror board and starting to fill it out.
I see Steve doing some kind of not so sure signals. Okay. Maybe.
You're on mute, Steve. Are you talking to us? Maybe. Maybe.
Oh, that's good. That's good.
Cool. I can also make
a breakout room. If anyone has questions, they can, like, come find us so that you don't maybe have to, like, interrupt everybody. But, otherwise, people who wanna just co work can stay here. What do you think about?
Yeah. I think if you wanna make one breakout room for more of a well, we're gonna we're gonna all discuss and chat here in the big room. So I think the breakout room was if there were people from the same community who wanted to discuss while they do this exercise about their specific community, then you can do that. So, for example, if there are a couple people who wanna do this for Medigov and go into a breakout room and discuss, then make that clear, and then we can set up a breakout room for you.
Val, is there, like, a time limit or time frame to this exercise?
Yeah. So we wanna give people at least fifteen minutes to do this on their own and really think about your community, do the necessary research. So let's set fifteen minutes. It looks like there's a Medigov corner being formed. So if you're interested in thinking with other folks about the Medigov community, sent added a line to medigov from the three columns for people who want to join. So with five minutes left in the kind of co work time, so we can leave twenty minutes for discussion, I wanna invite you to move to synthesizing, if you haven't already, some information and drawing conclusions. Alright. Wrap up your final thoughts, conclusions.
A friend of mine described me rewards as, like, lots and lots of little ants all busily working, and that's
still true.
What it feels like.
From just from just observing, there's all there's lots of really interesting stuff coming out, but as, like, a as a broad observation, the the differences in sort of in how people describe, think about, reflect on communities is coming through already, so I mean, but as as I suspect, but I've never done that, got a whole team seeing all these things emerging at once. Who wants to talk about their boards? Nobody. I
would say how much I enjoyed it. And, like, I really dove in and, you know, found I found it useful to work off of a document, like a recent blog post from the community that summarized a lot of kind of answers to the questions that I had so I could kind of pull quotes from the document and bring them onto the board kind of as evidence of my thoughts or, you know, kind of preconceived ideas. So that was cool.
Yeah. I've I've I find that useful when I was putting together the example, and even just sort of like the screen grabbing some tweets and so on as you begin to build up that body of sort of alright, so these are some of the things that are transpiring. Where's Chase? I think Chase was done first. Should we look at Chase's board?
Hey. How's it going? I can talk about my board a little bit.
Yeah. Should I So
I did
share it so everyone can see it.
Okay. I did the the Optimism Collective, which for those who aren't familiar, Optimism is creating this, like, network of layer twos on Ethereum, which helps it scale. So they are basically creating kind of digital infrastructure, in my opinion. And the goal is for it to be governed by a decentralized collective through a mix of token voting and also citizenship voting. But right now, most of the governance happens on the token voting side. So that's kind of what I focused on, and that's where I participate as well in the community. So freedom to debate, I, you know, I feel like there's a high freedom of to of debate. There's a forum, and there's a discord. There's only one kind of gated channel within the discord, for, like, high voting power delegates, but everyone can see that channel, and it's not super active compared to the the public channels. And there's no, like, gate within the forum. And most of, like, you know, someone brings something up even if they don't have a lot of voting power or something like that, like, most of the time there's some engagement from the community. So I'd give a high freedom of debate there. Freedom of movement, there's really, like, engaging in the community takes time. So, like, there's no, like, kind of formal sense of membership. You know, anybody can say something, anybody can can offer their opinion and voice. So I'd say there's a high freedom of movement because it actually it it costs more to be involved than it does to not be involved. So, you know, exiting is is pretty easy. The only thing I'll say here is, like, if you're a delegate, you know, let's say I'm a delegate and I no longer want to engage in this community or vote or whatever, delegations aren't super flexible. Like, there's no way for me to, project to my audience or or the people who are delegating to me that I no longer want to do this. And so likely what happens is, like, if I stop participating, I'll still have all of that voting power as a delegate, for a very long time. Freedom to reorganize. So the collective is pretty heavily stewarded by the optimism foundation, and what ends up happening here is, like, the way these power structures and kind of policies of how governance works actually get set is the foundation will take, you know, community input. You know, they'll propose different policies or iterations, and then the community will, like, ratify them through a token vote. So the freedom to reorganize is pretty heavily skewed towards the foundation, but also there hasn't been many attempts from on the community side to propose a change. So it might go well, but it's just there there isn't a lot of attempts to do it. Most of the reasons Yeah.
There's almost there's no evidence of it having been done, so it's hard to read what might transpire should it happen.
Exactly. Exactly. But as of right now, pretty much every change that has happened has been even if it it has been kind of, like, off of community feedback, the details of that implementation have been proposed and and by the foundation. And then, of course, like I was saying before, as far as, like, power goes, like, it's very hard to change delegation and and things like that. So that physical building power is pretty set in stone, unless, like, you just have a lot of token which corresponds with, like, capital and and and money. Influence. So I I think it's kind of interesting how influence works here, because, of course, like, delegates have formal say through voting power, and the foundation has formal say as a steward, but there's also like a big kind of social influence layer here. Like, there are a lot of people who have been very engaged in the community, and had a lot of influence that way without having a lot of voting power, and they got elected to councils, and and and a lot of people hear them when they talk about things. So I think social influence plays a large part in terms of control. For example, like, up until very recently, the the person who led the regular community call for the the collective had almost no voting power compared to, you know, some of the larger players. So that was interesting to me. And then, like, a lot of stuff happens in the discussion area. So that's why, like, I would rank social influence a little higher than voting influence, or maybe about equal, because that often social influence ends up playing on to the voting influence, in my opinion. Control of information. The foundation is really, like, has most of the information. You know, they're building stuff in house. A very interesting debate here too is, like, there's some legal concerns. So a lot of the policy is set, by the foundation with a consideration of, like, legal protection, but there isn't much discoverability of what exactly the foundation is worried about, and how the regulatory thinking is. So that has created some conflict between people wanting to change policies or things like that, and the foundation kind of saying, we have this policy for for regulatory concerns, but they haven't really described what those regulatory concerns are. So the foundation really, really, like, the all any private information, the foundation is the one who has it. Everything else that's kind of, like, run by the collective or or within the domain of the collective is pretty much public information.
So that's interesting. It it it it largely presents in sort of like so there's a when you talked about the channels, early in sort of like most of that stuff's in private, but there's also this undercurrent of well, most of this stuff's in public, but there is this undercurrent of well, there are private discussions in private spaces and private concerns at some level, which doesn't quite have the same level of transparency.
Exactly. Yep. Yeah.
So just just so we make sure we hear hear some other voices as well because I've only just looked at the time. Thank you very much for that, Chase.
No problem.
Who based based off the back of that, who found themselves working on the canvas in different way or found something in common with how Chase was going about it? Ian, I think for example. Where's Ian's? Ian. You're on mute, Ian.
Looks like they might have lost their Zoom window.
Oh, we can't unmute them, can we?
No. Sun, are you able to unmute someone? Also, us is on mute.
Do you
remember that workshop we went to where we all got lost and we couldn't get over it and we were there for weeks and we mapped every community because we could keep mapping on the Miro board, but there was no way we could leave the Zoom meeting. The is anyone who do Okay.
I did find it. Okay. I I think Hey, you said it.
So tell tell us I'll tell you what. While Ian's finding his mute button.
I'm I'm
I'm Tell tell tell us about the meta gov when you were working on, Zend.
Oh, no. No. Please. I think Ian's ready.
I'll be ready.
Three years of pandemic still haven't figured it out. Just working on a very large screen that's obscured by other screens. Yeah. So I was mapping out this, like, very fairly, like, informal, small kind of niche, like, Twitter conversation that I've been involved in since about December. Mhmm. That's just like a small group of social workers and academics in that field who are playing around with AI image generation. And it was interesting, like, mapping out the ideas of freedom and influence because it's voluntary. It's very, like, noncommittal. There's not much infrastructure, but there's nonetheless, like, implicit infrastructure in terms of, like, who the implied audience is, the sort of cultural references or, like, aesthetics and values, and the politics, I think, within, like, the social work profession and academic field and where that tends to go. So it's like yeah. I think the people who are involved are all interested enough and willing enough to, like, play around with software that, like, maybe more critical voices would just refuse to participate in. You know, AI generation and AI art is pretty controversial and understandably so. And I think it's easy enough to, like, be involved and then leave, but some people are, like, very established academics with, you know, tenure and careers and on committees and stuff. So for someone like myself, it's easy enough to go, but it's also useful to stay involved even in days where I'm just like, this theme is really boring. Unfortunately, the challenge is sometimes have with social work aesthetics, which can feel a little bit like inspiration porn instead of making, like, weird experimental digital art, which is, you know, kinda more of my space. But it was interesting to map out in this and, like, kind of on the operative theory. It reminds me a bit of doing, like, community power mapping for community organizing and labor organizing where, like, you'd be a different set of grids or, like, coordinates on a grid and, like, different kinds of questions for the similar idea of just writing it all out. So it was useful. It was generative. I think it's something I've been trying to make sense of. Oh, even just, like, where does this go?
It will to to that point because one one of the things that when I started out, I was going, maybe this will help people either decide to join a community or not or decide to leave a community or not. Does it does it help you almost let's start with that. When when you're forced into not forced, but when you start when you have a chance to kinda like to to stretch out the freedoms and controls, does it help you make a decision about future involvement in any way?
I don't know if it quite does that. I think it helps me with analyzing it, and, like, it's something where I feel fairly invested as a periodic user and participant.
Yep.
Maybe. I mean, I don't think I've made a decision based on this alone, but it was used a useful document that I think probably it'll start some thinking that maybe, you know, they're like, oh, okay. Yeah. But it's also you know, because I think it's an act like, primarily, like, academic community with some practitioners, it's also, like you know, some of these people all meet in person at a conference in, like, a year. Mhmm. So what the balance of that community are versus, like, some of the other overlapping communities, it's not entirely clear. I mean, I constantly debate whether being a social worker was the best career choice to begin with, and academia is similar to, you know, like, sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's like, what am I doing to myself?
One one thing I just picked up there was sort of like the and it's this and it's almost like a more implicit version of the freedom of movement thing, is it? And I especially for especially for specialisms, you go sort of if you are part of little informal communities and so on Mhmm. Freedom of movement is harder because you go, if I disappear suddenly, I don't know what will happen, but I just know less stuff will happen. And so there's kinda some softer implicit things, I think, in that as well.
Yeah. That's a very good point.
We got four minutes to the top of the hour. Do you wanna any final, I mean, I I can stay longer if people wanna stay longer, but I'm also conscious that some people want to leave at the top of the hour. So why don't we say, Val, let's do some wrap up thoughts, and if anybody wants to hang about, they can.
Yeah. Sun, would it be okay to have people stay on here for ten minutes, or do we have another call on here?
No. No. No. Yeah. That's all good. We can do some afters.
Okay. Sweet. Yeah. Does anyone John, what what did you envision for kind of a wrap up? If I don't
I mean, good luck. My my broad reflection on just sort of like hearing some of the commentary, and I hope to hear more after if anybody can hang around, but on hearing and watching sort of some of the things go down is that it seems to be emerging as hoped, that it's not something that tells you whether a community is good or bad. It just sort of like helps you sort of like pull apart what a community might actually be for you or for other people like you. And in that sense, you can start spotting where you might want to make changes in the community or whether you're just happy with it working as it works, right? Because I think that sort of like if you are I've thought through examples in the past of of just thinking about sort of, so communities where there's very few degrees of freedom and very high levels of control but they work because they're honest about it? I think that's okay, it doesn't have to be sort of like if it's just all freedoms and no controls, then it's just gonna let you go, 'That's just potentially chaos'. So I think there's sort of ways of seeing the differences in communities and maybe even if there was like an ongoing effort to kind of like to map a lot of different types of communities, then you could start stepping into, okay, are there typologies, are there archetypal communities emerging because, A, because of technology, but B, not because of technology, just because of the way that we're all socially used to interacting twenty five, thirty years into having digital presence. Do you start getting to kinda like archetypes that people who are starting a community can follow? So the this has been super brilliant for that for me. And I hope it's been sort of useful and interesting for others as well.
For sure. Yeah. It showed me a lot of what I don't know. Like, maybe I'm making judgments kind of implicitly through just the blog posts I've read, but there's actually a lot more nuance that I want to find and dig a little deeper. And now I have a kind of, you know, framework to plug into when I find that information to locate it and bring it somewhere so that I can do something, make a more informed decision. I feel like it showed me a lot of, yeah, what I still don't know, even though I've been kind of lurking in this community for months.
What I'll do as well is that all the the canvases on here are SVGs, because it just makes the Miro board lighter. But I'll save down a PDF of this and drop it into the channel as well. So if anybody wants to kinda take it and use it in different places, have a play, tell me how it goes.
Awesome. Yeah. Usually, what we do after a seminar is we'll create a thread in the seminar discussion channel where folks can continue the conversation async through chat in the Medigob Slack. Yeah. Exactly. So a channel in the Medigob Slack in the seminar in the seminar dash discussion channel of the Medigob Slack. So
Great. And do and do we want to put this and and, obviously, it's it's all of your work that has gone on to these boards. If send Val a message if you're not happy with putting that up because we could we could put the Miro link up so that people can have a look around the boards. But if you'd rather yours didn't go on, just let Val know, and we'll take that one off before sharing.
Yes. That or, you know, if you wanna take your name away, whatever you want to do. Any degree of anonymity is welcome. Remove yourself entirely to leave everything on there, whatever you want. So, yeah, thank you all so much. We're out of time. Thank you, John, for hosting. Again, we'll if you wanna stay on, if you have some time and you wanna dive in a little bit, I think we'll talk a little bit about Medigov after maybe since that was brought up in the chat. We'll do that. But let's, for now, just unmute and give John a round of applause as we do after every seminar. Everyone, three, two, one, unmute, and applause.
Welcome.
So your theatrical bow. Thank you very much, everyone. It's been brilliant.
Awesome. And we'll stop the recording.
Yes. We will. I kinda have a question.