Thanks, Nathan. Can you hear me okay? Cool. Yeah. So there there's basically, there's two things that I'm kind of hoping to get insights on today. One is related to online tools and strategies for kind of market governance as a whole, and then the other is we have a lot of networks and groups and communities using the site. So it's also related to kind of strategies and tools for them, as kind of subgroups, I guess, on the side. And we'll get I'll get to that later. I was thinking it might be, helpful if I give a little context first. So I was gonna share a little bit of personal background and also, some context on good market. And then I was thinking I'll, you know, get to the a little more explanation of the questions I have. Maybe around of if there's any questions from all of you, I'm happy to to share more. And then, yeah, any any ideas and insights would be really appreciated. So, yeah, so jumping in on kind of the the personal context and background, I'm I'm from The US. I'm I'm actually in The US right now, but I've spent most of the last twenty years based out of Asia. I've been Thailand a little bit and mostly in Sri Lanka. I've had the chance to be able to to travel and work with communities all over the world, but it's, Sri Lanka's kind of been home base for about eighteen years now. And another piece of, kind of, context and background is I'm coming at this both from as an academic background and a practitioner background, and I bring that up for a couple of reasons. So I I actually finished a PhD in 02/2007, and so I've been kind of out of the academic space since then. It's part of the reason I've been really excited about this Slack group. It's, like, always oh, you know, I'm hearing Albert Hirschman, Eleanor Ostrom, and it's like, alright. Those are not spaces. I haven't been moving around with people that are having those discussions lately, so it's been it's been kind of fun to be in the group, and I've been wanting to participate in these sessions and haven't the timing hasn't worked very well. Yeah. And so part of the reason I'm bringing that up is both that the the work with Good Market is kind of equally informed from years of, you know, working with communities and practice, but also from this academic background. And it's also why it's really important to me that it's done in a way that feeds back into research. So So if there's anything that can be done in the design that would be helpful for the research community, I'm interested in that. I wanna make sure that that's kind of, included and incorporated. Yeah. And maybe as a last point in personal background, really the thread that runs through everything that I've been involved in is an interest in complex adaptive systems, so and how change happens in complex adaptive systems. So I started out with a background in natural science, ecosystems, understanding about, I did work in environmental toxicology and agroecology, a lot of work in the sustainable agriculture permaculture space. That's what I first that's what first brought me to to Asia. And then you get to the point where you realize that, you know, you think maybe if we understand how ecology works, we can find technical solutions. You get to a point where you realize you have to understand social systems. I ended up doing a lot more in that kind of space, understanding about working with a lot of savings and credit groups, producer cooperatives, different kinds of networks, environmental networks, interfaith religious leaders, I'm trying to understand movements, how change happens. And then, and this has probably been filled up about the last ten years. It gets to the point where you realize if you don't engage with what's happening with our economy and economic systems, a lot of the other things, aren't moving. So, really, I'd say in the last ten years, it's been a focus on trying to understand economic systems. And and it's interesting to see kind of patterns across all of those, in in patterns and how systems work and how change happens. So that that kind of brings us to to good market. So that's that's the a bit of personal background. And I have I have just a few slides, but I thought, you know, pictures are fun. Thought I'd share those. I'm gonna turn my video off for these. One second. Are you able to see okay? Not able to see you, so I need some kind of a confirmation that awesome. Thanks. Cool. So just just kind of the the the big picture. Right? And then this is not at all saying anything new, but, basically that our current economic system isn't sustainable. It isn't working, right? We're working according to kind of system rules and also a big story, that's based on short term profit maximization, extraction, accumulation of financial capital, and also infinite the idea of infinite growth, which doesn't work on a finite planet. So the the big kind of thing behind Good Market is this recognition that a transition to a new to new economic systems are are it's already started. It's already it's already happening. And what I mean by that is that there are many different organizations, enterprises, and individuals that are choosing to operate according to a new story and new rules. And again, I'm not really saying anything new here. So instead of having a focus beyond maximizing short term profits, it's about prioritizing people and planet in in the choices that you're making, in your decisions, and how you work both as individuals, the choices people are making, but also, as organizations and enterprises. And the thing about this is that this this movement that's coming up, it's still fragmented. It's it's not a bad thing. It's it's how things emerge, right? But it means that you can't really see the the full scale of it yet, And it also means that it can be sometimes hard to have exchange between these groups. So it ends up being fragmented by by sector, so maybe people working on issues related to food and agriculture or working on housing or, you know, working on clothing, waste, all of these things often maybe have their own sub communities. It's also by how groups are registered. So you've got, you know, cooperatives, you have social enterprises, b corps, and that's just within maybe English speaking spaces. Once you get beyond that, there's so much diversity. There's different types of certifications. And in some ways, the biggest thing is language. So language both in terms of, you know, different, international languages. So, for example, there's just there's amazing things happening in places like Japan and Korea, but if you aren't speaking the languages and you're not searching in those languages online, it's really difficult to be able to see that and to be able to have exchange with that. And also language in the sense of the terminology that gets used. There are groups that definitely are, you know, using language that's more aligned with the old economy, and you have ones that are really trying to push boundaries. And often, they've got the same underlying kind of goals and values. They're they're they're prioritizing people and planet, but they're using different language to do it. Yeah. And so the the key things is that the people in this space that are working in kind of the the new economy space, one is that they're choosing to operate according to these story and rules, and the other is that they're they tend to prefer to to work with each other. Right? They'd they'd rather have partnerships and collaboration and work with other groups that are in the new economy. So the idea with good market, and this is a slide more for this group, not something that ends up, getting discussed outside of, these kinds of spaces, but the kind of the underlying idea is to have infrastructure for the self organizing global movement, right, to be able to make it more visible, easier to find and connect with each other, and the with the idea of kind of speeding up this transition process. So there's an element that the two main pieces, I'll come back to this, is kind of curation and connection. Right? Curation meaning that it ends up being kind of its own bounded commons in a way, right? The people that are choosing to work in this way, being able to trot, have more trust, be able to find each other, and be able to then connect in kind of two main ways. One about actual marketplace type connections, right? That helps build up the ecosystem of what we can find in the new economy, makes it easier to find gaps and all of that. But there's also a really big, aspect of kind of community connection, so that's for being able to support each other, share information, and really importantly about kind of collective action. Right? Because the the long term thing is about changing the system level rules and stories. Right? So having spaces where they're able to kinda share with each other and connect with each other. Yeah. So that's kind of big picture purpose background. And getting into the the practical part, the idea was to have a curated online platform. And so there was there was a web design brief, like, say, back in maybe 02/2011, was the first plan and design brief for this. And this was kind of groups of people who are all kind of working in the space, some contacts in other countries, and talking about wanting to make it easier to connect, you know, across these these current kind of divides. And so big picture plan, you know, there's design brief and all of that, and at the time, didn't have any resources. And I mentioned, you know, I I'd been in Sri Lanka. I was there I was there during the tsunami. I was there during the war, and I ended up seeing kind of the worst of the aid industry. And so just feeling and also I'd also seen a lot of groups that had gotten investment and that had pulled them away from their mission. They'd had mission drift. So there was kind of this concern about taking on don't have resources, kind of a concern about taking on external resources to build this because wanting it to really belong to the people that use it and wanting it to to really work with their needs, especially, you know, when they're when it comes to kind of aid funded platforms, I've seen many of them, they often end up being ghost towns. Right? Like, there's a project with the project, something's built, project ends, and that's basically the end of it. So there was a real concern about all of of those things and wanted to do more of what would be called, like, a lean start up approach. So, actually, what ended up happening is 02/2012, ended up starting a marketplace event, that didn't require really any resources to start up, and the idea was to kind of test the test the curation process, right? This idea of having a curated space that everybody that's involved has gone through meets these minimum standards, has gone through an application review, And just to see like, one is does the curation process work? Are people even interested? And also to kind of start getting to build a a community. And the thought was this this was gonna be, like, 02/2012. The idea was to do something short term, just learn from it. Right? And what ended up happening is it became it became really popular, which like, much more popular than anyone expected and ended up having to tell the international friends, you know, we're gonna have to put the software on hold because people's livelihoods are starting to depend on this, and we need to make sure that this is self sustaining. So from there, it ended up developing other initiatives that were local, an organic participatory guarantee system, retail shops. And with all of that, there were finally enough resources by 02/2016, so basically five years later, to actually start software development. You know? And in in retrospect, it was definitely a slower path, but really, really grateful that we didn't try to build what was in that design brief back in 2011 because it it would have done the wrong thing. You know, by the time by the time we got to 2016, there were people actually asking for this. There was a whole community around it. They were really actively involved in, you know, defining what was needed and also testing, which was a really, really big part of it. Because one of the intentions is wanting this to be a space.

Yeah. So so we ended up being really happy that we hadn't built according to the design brief in 2011 because it would have been the wrong the wrong thing. Right? By the time we got to 02/2016, there were there was actually a community around it asking for it, and they were very involved in defining, you know, what needed to be included, but also in in testing it. And what I was just saying was that, you know, this was a big part of kind of the overall intention. It's in some ways, if we'd started in in The US or in Europe or The UK, it would have been a lot easier. But it felt like it would have been hard to go from that to make it work for groups that were maybe in Asia, Africa, Latin America. So by by doing it in this way, we were able we were testing with communities that, you know, they weren't comfortable in English, they weren't comfortable with tech. A lot of people that didn't have, you know, didn't have computers, didn't have experience, but they had smartphones. So a lot the testing, like, it it didn't it wasn't considered that it worked until people that didn't speak English and weren't comfortable with computers could use it. Then then it was like, okay. Now it works. So, yeah, so it ended up it was a a longer, slower, harder way to get things started, but, you know, in the end, being really grateful about it. And it also meant that there was a lot of freedom. You know, there's not there's not an investor saying, you know, this is what has to this is this is the priority. There wasn't a donor saying this is the priority. It was all something that it kind of it belonged to the community that used it. Yeah. So it was the it started rolling out in 02/2017. It's actually linked to these other things because even in Sri Lanka, when we were just testing it, to be able to participate in the event or be part of the PGS or be part of the shop, people went through the online application form to be able to be part of this curated online platform. So that's how a lot of the testing was done. And I'd say probably we started we we kind of we're telling everybody we're beta testing in Sri Lanka and we didn't expect we didn't expect groups to get on internationally yet until we were ready, but we ended up getting, yeah, right from the beginning, once it went live, we started getting groups signing up in other countries, and that's really increased particularly in the last year. It's it's now we took we took beta off the site. We're kind of it's now at a point where it's actually, expanding. So where we are now is there's, more than a 500, and it's a big mix, social enterprises, cooperatives, responsible businesses, there's voluntary organizations, different kinds of networks across more than 50 countries. There's seven languages currently on the site that application form is in, and there have been a lot of surprises. So, for example, I I think kind of expected that you get a lot of, a big part of the pull is coming from from individuals. Right? They're looking for certain products. So expected a lot of, like, the food, clothing, that kind of thing. And also expected the types of groups that are serving these enterprises. So people doing packaging, printing, you know, different kinds of consulting design services. Also a lot of place based things where you've got people working on energy, compost, you've got restaurants, cafes. The part that's been really fun is the number of we've had, like, artists and musicians, writers, but particularly groups that don't have anything that directly involves money. So, you know, like, there'll be, like, home gardening groups where they exchange seeds and seedlings, but they don't have any financial transactions. A lot of service service groups had a a rotary an eco rotary club. Hadn't even thought of that space before. They signed up. So, yeah, so this is kind of where things this is kind of where things are right now. And maybe just one more slide, and then I'm gonna turn this off. I can see all of you again. So the the two main parts are kind of this curation aspect and the connection aspect. And everything has been, I think particularly because of the experience starting with the marketplace events, everything has been kind of tested offline or using existing, like, free, low cost tools before anything is built for the software. So the part that's that's solid and has been tested is everything related to this curation piece. I'm just gonna explain that really quickly. So kind of the heart and the core of it is this, curation process that has a crowd sourced monitoring system. So that means that there's there's minimum standards for every sector. I mean, everyone, including people who are musicians and writers. Right? There's there's minimum standards. There's a dynamic online form, so you get questions related to the type of work that you're doing. And how you answer those questions, generates a public profile page, a transparent page. These are the claims that you've made about the work that you're doing. And that's set up so that it can be all of the languages on the site. You can you can switch the profile page. You can see all of the different languages. The crowdsource monitoring piece is, is that, you know, that information is transparent and public on the site. And if someone's interacting with that group and they think a false claim is there, they think some they they have a doubt about information that's being shared, they're able to flag it, and that starts a review process. So this piece was tested offline for, you know, four or five years before we had an online before there was an online form. It was paper applications, super slow, super painful, multiple languages, and there was a there was a whole group that would meet and go through it. And that's how kind of it got refined before the the software was was built. And the flagging and review process was tested offline first, then tested in Sri Lanka. And what's exciting is it's it's also now working, you know, across countries. Yeah. So this is kind of this is the the heart of it is is this kind of curation process. This really helps build up kind of a sense of pride among the people using it, and also a kind of a trust with the the different groups that are using the site. And then the pieces that are now there's, like, the baby basic versions are available, and the community's asking for things to be set up on the development side are related to the marketplace space and the community space. Right? So the marketplace, they're able to to share anything they have to offer. Doesn't have to involve money. So, you know, there's things with products and services, but there's also you know, there's there's free events, all different kinds of of things that people have to share. At the moment, what's there is you can redirect somewhere else. So, for example, if if meta governance had a profile page and they wanted to let people know about the seminar, it would be you could have a link that redirects, you know, to your own website and your own page. People are currently using it for social commerce, so using chat to be able to exchange. But really what the priority is is this next phase of making it so people can do online payments through the site and longer term also linking up with groups that are doing mutual credit so that that's I mean, that's that's long term probably one of the biggest potential, opportunities is having a link with some of the mutual credit systems. On the community side, which is what we'll be, I wanna talk more about in a bit, we have, again, baby basic version, direct chat, and there's also a very simple forum that there's a lot of already the designs are done for the next steps and all of that, but this is one of the things I wanna talk about, today. The community space ends up being important for, both, like, supporting each other, sharing information, you know, any kind of collective action. And the way we've tested this is through a lot of offline spaces. So we've used other tools. We've used, like, there have been WhatsApp chat groups, all different kinds of things that already exist with the idea of eventually being able to bring them into the site. So that's kind of the the big picture background. Maybe it's one more thing on this. So for the marketplace side, the connection part is more about the sourcing. It's more about kind of supply chains and and connecting about those kinds of things. Whereas the community space, it's more about the support and collective action side. And, actually, within this space, it's it's kind of a noncommercial space. Right? It's not a space to be able to to kind of push what you're doing or promote your products. It's much more about, their community guidelines about what's what's used in the community space. So that's I'm gonna go back here. Turn this back on. Yeah. So that's that's kind of a a basic big picture, background of where of where things are at. And I think the first question is around the the good market governance piece itself, and then and then there's another piece about the government, like, spaces for the the groups that use the platform. So on the on the good market government's piece, again, a little just a little bit more background information. It's set up as a not for profit social enterprise. So that means it's revenue generating and has a self sustaining model. But in The US, it's actually registered as a five zero one c three, not to be able to access donor funds, but because for the for kind of the structure purpose that there's no private shareholders, there's no private owners, and it's mission locked. And it means that any surplus then gets reinvested back in, to expand and to support the community. So from the beginning, the idea is having something that's kind of community supported and also community governed. Always been kind of the the underlying you know, that's the direction things are moving. That's the goal. That's the kind of how things are going. And there's been this interesting gap because so it started out like this when we had an offline community in Sri Lanka. Like I said, we had this process of, you know, everyone coming together to review the standards and improve the standards and to, you know, do the review you know, work on figuring out the review process and all of that. And even the the actual things that exist in Sri Lanka, it's like being involved in what time should the event be, how do we need to adjust things, all of all of the decision making processes people were involved. But then there's there's a bit of a gap, I I say from, like, 2018 until now of, one, transitioning offline to online, but also having it go from being a community that's tested in Sri Lanka to something that's now, you know, across 50 countries. And I think there was I think maybe on on my side, there was also a concern about if we if we tried to do something with online governance too early, it would have felt like it was a Sri Lankan thing. And it's it's really important as we're getting groups on in other countries, they feel this is mine. Right? It's in their languages. It's for their community. And so if it had been already kind of fully in place, it it felt like it wouldn't it wouldn't have transitioned well into feeling like it was it was a a space for for others. Now we're at the point where we've got groups on that are, you know, across all continents, and it is time that it would be like, there's a there's a big need for this next step. So in terms of what's kind of the direction it feels like things are moving in, there's two main pieces. One is the idea so right now, we have, like, a 500 enterprises that are approved. We also have about you can use the site without being signed up. So we have many people just using, and we have about 7,000 that are signed up on it that are that are registered. Right? So the idea would be that when it comes to governance, there's this broader circle, but the actually, the governance piece is a smaller it's a smaller subset of people that are cocreators. So people that have contributed time or resources towards the site. So time is the people that have helped with translation, software development, outreach, people that are helping get their networks on, and resources, it's subscribers. It's like the minimum is, individuals is $3 a month. For organizations, it's $10 a month. So subscribers, people that, and we're we're working on a new crowdfunding campaign. So it'll be investors and supporters as well. So it's like anybody that's, you know, put something in time or resources, they're part of, they're able to be involved in the governance process. And the structure of that, what's feeling, like, the direction it's moving in, input from everybody, it's actually in the the community rules that you guys have. I think it's called Trias Politica. Right? So kind of a executive, legislative, judicial function. And part of the reason that that feels like it makes sense is there's the real heart of the site, it's, like, it's very defined. Right? It's providing this particular function. It's just this back end platform infrastructure for these groups with clearly defined rules. So, basically, the executive team is making sure that it's consistent. Right? Making sure that the curation process is always happening the same way. It's consistent and fair. Making sure that it's you know, it keeps its mission and that it's financially sustainable. So that's kind of the the executive piece of the functions. There's there's a judicial piece that was definitely a big part when we had the offline and is now you can start to feel the need for it for the online space, and that's when you hit a gray area in the rules. So either in the application process, if there's something that, oh, we don't really have something that covers this or, you know, where does this fit, or if it's the flagging and review process. Right? There you can tell that there's kind of a need for some kind of a judicial team that deals with those gray areas. Right? So that that's kinda the other piece. And the part that I I'm I'm particularly interested in getting some some thoughts on is from a legislative perspective, the idea would be when when it comes to, like, making the rules, like or updating or refining the rules, of the platform. So that's, like, the minimum standards. There's the community guidelines and anything to do with the curation process itself and also the road map for development, ideally, so that, you know, the the people using the site are involved in saying this is the priority for the the next steps. Right? So for those pieces, the idea would be to have, not a representative body, but to be able to have since it is online, to be able to have something where everyone that's a cocreator is able to have a say in that process. So I think my my first set of questions are just around any thoughts on that initial on kind of the direction that's moving in, but particularly around any ideas for, you know, decision making across large online groups so that it would be possible to have everyone have a say rather than having more of a representative body. So that's kind of the first, set of questions. And a key piece here is, like I mentioned, we have a lot of users that aren't that comfortable with tech, so so it has to feel really simple. And so there's things like Loomio is actually on the platform. They were one of the first international groups that got on. And so there's things like, you know, I've looked at that, and they've recently revised to something where it's, it's by the number of users, which we're already at a point where that would be a little bit challenging. So yeah. So any thoughts around things that would help with decision making across large large online groups. That's the first set of questions and anything related to the good market governance that you have thoughts or inputs on. Yep. Go ahead, Nathan.

I'm wondering if it might be useful to go to the second set of questions so that people have the whole big picture. Do you think we should stop here?

Yeah. Is there a

Yeah. I I think actually, that it's kind of linked to what I was gonna say next. So the curation process moving online, it it made it a lot easier. Right? We were using at this point, you know, we've done probably a thousand applications, 200 weekly meetings. Once it went online, it was based on everything that was learned from that. So just the the process, we were able to use the help from the computer to be able to speed up the the review process. And I think that's also when we started There were a lot more surprises that were coming in. You know, once it went online, you got groups that they didn't wanna be part of a they didn't have physical products or didn't wanna be part of an event, but they wanted to be part of a community. And so we started getting a lot more of those kinds of applications. So it broadens the types of groups that were signing up. So I'd say those were probably the two main changes. The thing about can can you I was the second question again. Yeah. Yeah. Affiliates. That's what I was gonna say next. So the a big part of how this has been built is so that it's useful for existing local communities and existing networks and also for existing to to link with existing software tools and software platforms. So the way that it's been kind of expanding is if you have, say, a local group, you've got a group in your own, like, in, say, in Boulder, or we've got groups coming up in Nepal or this big group in London, different places. Right? If you have a if kind of a local network and a local group, you're able to have your own network page on the site. So it's your logo, your story, and all of your community members, and you can search within that. You can search the marketplace within that. And there's also you can search by, you know, location. You can, so the the idea is that this is a tool for people that are trying to also build up kind of local economies, rather than everyone having to build silo apps. So this is a way that they can use this as a as the curation process is free. So to be able to use it as kind of a free tool and also link through and redirect whatever they existing technology that they have. So it's a a big part of it is connecting with with real world businesses. There are groups on there that they have things that they can ship worldwide, but the the focus is on being able to see the people in your local area to be able to actually connect with groups in your area that are, you know, trying to do things that are good for people and good for planet. So that that's that's probably the one of the main points is it's connecting it's it's about it's an online space to facilitate offline connections, which is why it's been set up to make it really easy to be able to, you're you're not required to do things on the platform. You're able to take things offline. Yeah. So and I I think I I do kinda wanna throw out the second question now just if anybody wants to to also have some thoughts on that. So the the second piece is, like I said, we've got all these networks and kind of subgroups that have kind of emerged from the site, some of which, have their own are are formal networks, like the World Fair Trade Organization or there's a international organic agriculture move like formal bigger groups, social enterprise alliance, those kinds of things. And then there's also a lot of very informal subgroups that are kind of have popped up and are now using other tools to kind of connect with each other. So people working on zero waste or people that are doing home gardening or, you know, just whatever. Some people working on advocacy and legislation. So whatever the interest happen to be. And at the moment, we've got this very basic there's, like, a forum space, but the request we're getting is wanting to have spaces for those communities. And I've been a part of a lot of these. I mean, we can come back into that a little bit more, but I've been a part of these kinds of WhatsApp groups and chat groups, and I've also seen the challenges that they end up facing over time. And so one idea was to be able if people wanted to create their own group chats on the site, one idea would be, you know, using something with the community rules so that they're defining at the beginning, this is how we work. Another thing would be to do integrations with existing tools so that they don't have to do it on the site, but that we're kind of helping them redirect to spaces where they can connect with each other. But we're getting a lot of requests around this. They're wanting to have they don't wanna use Facebook groups, and they're looking for spaces that they can, kind of as as a community, be able to connect with each other. Forum works really well for information exchange, but it doesn't seem to work as well for just that kind of community, like, support like, feeling like they're building relationships and the commute like, support system and kind of the day to day planning if they wanna do an initiative together. For that, more more of a chat space seems to be working better. Yeah. So for the second question is around any experiences you've had about existing tools that maybe could be integrated or about, you know, guidelines that would make it easier for them to be able to actually coordinate effectively and not have some of the challenges that are really common with groups that fall apart. So those those are kind of the two two main areas.

Awesome. Thanks, Nathan. Yeah. So, Amanda, as I was listening to your description of the various subgroups and the users, I was just like, the thought was crossing my mind. You you also mentioned Facebook yourself a moment ago, and that thought had crossed my mind. My question was kind of, like, who or what do you think of as the quote, unquote competition?

Good market.

And there's a few ways of interpreting this. Feel free to interpret it however you want. But one way is, like, if good market didn't exist, where would these users turn? What tools would they be using? Facebook, what's your other stuff?

Yeah. Yeah. So I'd say, like, for a lot of the people that are kind of in this new economy space, it's a different way of thinking about competition. Right? So there's a much it's more of an ecosystem approach. Right? So you're looking at what's your niche in the ecosystem, what's the specific value that you create, and how can we work with each other to kind of speed things up. So that's part of the reason that Good Market has a really, like, narrow it's just this curation and connection piece. It's all about highlighting and supporting other groups. Right? And that's part of the reason that they don't look at Good Market as being competition. They look at it as a tool that they can use to kind of highlight what they're doing. So I'd say kind of within even even groups, so, like, groups like, I don't know. Nathan, I think you know social roots. We're talking about how we can kind of link together and support each other, how people who are building other online tools, how we can kind of connect and support those. So I'd say within that space, it's much more that kind of a focus. It's more about people that are currently using old economy tools and wanting to transition to new ones. So I I'd say in that space, it's probably, like, Facebook and also, to a certain extent, Amazon of wanting to have places where you can find or buy things online, but you know that it's it's curated and it's matching these kinds of values and principles.

some

Yeah. So that that's that's the question is, supporting supporting, participation at scale ideally without requiring, election of representatives. That that would be the goal. So, online decision making across larger groups, trying to see what out what's out there and what might be a big a good fit for this space. Nathan, I think you're on mute.

Yeah. And and and so for a lot of the things, like, for example, on the mutual credit side, you know, talking to, like, Carla from Conviatus and other groups that are doing mutual credit, I think I think there's a potential to use and plug in a lot of those kinds of tools. But to have it work for this community, it has to be it has to be simple. It doesn't have it shouldn't feel scary.

you know, are these

Yeah. So, I mean, I I know I know the groups in Taiwan that have used Polis. I know, like, Audrey, and I kind of asked some questions about that. The sense I got from Audrey was that it it was more, really for for the for policymaking and for public. If if there's ideas about how to use it in this space, I'm very interested. So any recommendations on that would be fantastic. With Sortition, again, it's like wanting to have a good sense of are are there any tools out there or anything that would be useful to be able to to play around with or to test that out?

That's really helpful. Thanks.

Just, just a thought to share based on my own experience with online communities. This is a really hard set of problems, Amanda, that that you're you're describing. And I don't think like, I don't claim to have answers, but just to share a little bit of experience. You know, one of the reasons this is challenging is because anytime you open up a forum for online debate discussion, whether it's the type of, you know, asynchronous form that you described or something more synchronous like chat, you inevitably have this effect that sets in where you get a a minority of people who are extremely vocal. And then you get this, like, piling on effect. Right? And and and it kind of very often even even for not super contentious issues, like, kind of just falls apart into these, like, this factionalism, which is quite frustrating to see. Again, I don't have, like, I don't think there's a magic answer to this. I'm curious what other folks in this group think. But but I have seen work very well. I don't know how how helpful this is for for you and for good market, but, ironically, it's offline stuff. And so, like, the the very best engagements I've had with the communities that I've been a part of, are when possible attending events, conferences, hackathons, meeting people in person, you know, doing things kind of the old fashioned way, you know, at a bar or at a restaurant or something. And that's the best opportunity I've had to, like, learn from folks who aren't always as vocal online.

That's a really good point. And that's also something I've seen of kind of these groups that have been kind of watching and seeing what's been happening with existing groups. It's the ones that have had a chance to actually connect in person are less likely to fall apart. And I've also seen we've had groups where okay. Like, for example, a zero waste group where you had people that were a little bit more mainstream and then a group that was kind of saw themselves as being more radical, and they they splintered. And I'm not necessarily sure that that's a bad thing. I mean, they the way we're, like, looking at setting this up, maybe they have two separate spaces, but they find ways to collaborate on other activities. So I I think, I I think having the fact that it is so much based on these local networks where people actually have real relationships, offline relationships, I think that's something that can definitely be built upon. Right? Making making that be kind of an explicit part of it. That's a good idea.

Yeah. And the interoperability piece is, like, is is really important. Right? Like, I the idea that it's not tied to this one platform, that it's something that goes across. One of the things we're noticing that's a challenge is, you know, so there's a lot of users in Asia, for example, that they don't use SMS at all. They use WhatsApp. But then if you get to Japan and Thailand, it's Line, and, of course, with China's WeChat and right? So certain areas, it's still Viber. And so it it then it becomes, like, if you're trying to engage people where they already are, it gets diverse really fast. That's that's I'll I'll check out and see if there's anything in Matrix that might be ready.

Fantastic question. Yeah. So the the site set up with this it's like a really lightweight what we've actually been calling primary curation. Right? So like I said, there's these minimum standards. They're pretty basic. It's based on sustainability standards for different sectors. So, like, there's there's all these existing third party certifications for almost everything now, and they're privately run. They tend to be quite expensive. So that if somebody has third party verification, they've gone through a whole, you know, certification process, that's recognized. They you can search by that. They're recognized for that on the site. Right? But the idea with having a primary curation is that groups that are small or can't afford or doesn't make sense for them to pay for third party, that they can still be visible, that they're part of the community, they can still be seen. So, the standards are based on kind of these global certification standards that have been developed. They're the very basic primary curation level. The part that's been really fun and so that's kind of this, like, entry point. It's kind kind of this low level entry point. And so you if you look on the page, it's like you have to be able to clearly define how your purpose, how you prioritize people and plan it. You have to be able to define that. There's hard it's a little it's harder if you're in the material economy, if you have physical products that are more likely to cause damage. If you're if you're a service provider or you're a musician, those minimum standards are pretty easy. Right? You're just having to be able to define, you know, how you you go through and answer the questions. There's some really basic minimum standards that are met. The part that's been fun is because it's set up so these networks and community groups can use it. Some of them are using Good Market as their primary curation, but they have their own additional criteria, and they screen for that. So when you go to their network page, that's a subset, and they're defining in our community, these are the criteria. So that part's been working really fun. It's like there's this basic primary entry point, and then the different networks and community groups are able to define on their own, here's our additional criteria. Does that make sense?

I wanna put one more thing out. We can follow-up on Slack. And that's if people are working on something that's research oriented and this could be useful to build in something that would help collect data, I'm very interested in that. So just let me know if you have any ideas of, how this could support work that you're already doing.

Thanks, everyone. Thanks.