[hackerspaces] Do-ocracy at 140 members?

[Mark Adam]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Tim Saylor <tim.saylor at gmail.com> wrote:

> At Pumping Station: One we've used do-ocracy<http://wiki.pumpingstationone.org/Do-ocracy>to get things done since day one.  However, at 140 members I wonder if the
> system breaks down.  It's not practical to "ask around" and see if anyone
> minds if the bikeshed is painted pink.  Someone's going to oppose almost
> anything you want to do, and more people want to ask questions and bounce
> the issue between themselves with not much productive output.  And if we're
> talking about an action that's not reversible, like getting rid of "useless
> junk" that someone else thinks is very valuable, it can really blow up.
>
> Interesting you bring this up.  This was my issue with the Occupy
Movement.  They wanted pure democracy without representation (republic).
 But it just doesn't scale.  Eventually you'll either need or want single
individuals making decisions on behalf of the group.  The issue then is
deciding who.

Does anyone else have experience using do-ocracy at a large scale, and how
> has it worked out for you?
>
> I can say that it mostly failed at the Santa Fe Complex.  Mostly things
got done and fueled by influxes of resources, not by self-emergent
properties of groups.   The hackerspace model needs a network tools for
establishing people, projects, and "tags".  This is what we were working on
at sf_x until we lost our building, and then funding.... :(

The model is still sound so talk to me if there's any VPython coders that
want to make it happen.

Mark
pangaia.sf.net
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