Recruit an initial leadership team

Chad Whitacre Public Seen by 477

Forming a cooperative of users to #BuyTwitter is a huge undertaking. We need leadership. Who is willing to step forward and commit to spending time on this effort? At this point the specific ask is somewhat undefined, because we are bootstrapping. The requirements are open to debate and revision, but probably look something like the following:

Commitment to a platform cooperative vision for Twitter.
Expertise in M&A and related areas.
Time and energy!

Do you meet the above criteria? Do you know someone who does? Let's gather names, run them through a quick vetting process (simple thread + proposal for each), and then make them coordinators on the project!

Background

The timeline of how we got here—as I (@whit537) am aware of it, please chime in from other perspectives:

2016-09-29 @ntnsndr published "Here's my plan to save Twitter: let's buy it"
2016-09-30 ~~Robin Chase indicated that there is "a multi-sectoral alliance of NGOs with shared guiding principles" who is leading the charge.~~ That was a mistake! 😮
2016-09-30 @whit537 created this Loomio group to facilitate open organizing, and invited Nathan Schneider (@ntnsndr), and the others Nathan originally credited, as coordinators: @arminsteuernagel1 @tommcdonough and Robin Chase.
2016-10-03 A ticket about onboarding @bonniefoleywong as a coordinator makes it clear that we need to take a step back and proceed in a somewhat more orderly fashion. :-)

Chad Whitacre Tue 4 Oct 2016 8:58PM

to the extent that we do have leadership in any explicit way (such as Loomio coordinators), it needs to be diverse.

👍

I'm all for not dwelling on leadership stuff and getting to work.

👍

Hailey Cooperrider Wed 5 Oct 2016 1:17AM

I reckon the group needs someone with a facilitator's skillset and mindset, who can suspend their own perspective and help the group think clearly together. Ideally someone fairly senior, who is looking for a new challenge. Anyone have someone in their network who might be willing to show up and play?

Matthew Cropp Wed 5 Oct 2016 1:59AM

@haileycooperrider I can think of a person who might fit that bill and will invite her to the project.

Rikkie Wells Wed 5 Oct 2016 7:43AM

After Nov 8th I'd be down to help with the build and promotion of a competing platform or buying Twitter. Personally, with enough of us, ideally we could build our own site and mass recruit users and push the fact we respect privacy rights....Paying 17+ billion because a site has a lot of users seems excessive. We are literally the content....A co-op social media platform interests me greatly. I won't be available to consistently and actively contribute until after the election. This is @zbanshee on Twitter.

Bonnie Foley-Wong Wed 5 Oct 2016 9:10PM

The people who seeded this community play an important role - inviting people to your village, being the inaugural mayors until others are identified or you figure out a better way of ensuring everyone in your village has access the resources they need to survive, thrive, and be happy. This co-op or whatever it is, is a microcosm of the future you'd like to see. As like any other village in the world, it ain't that easy to join as a newcomer (there are exceptions...)

Alanna Irving Wed 5 Oct 2016 9:56PM

Really great contributions emerging on this topic so far :) I'm wondering, does anyone have a sense for the conclusion we're converging on around leadership for now? I'd suggest a proposal summarising what's been heard and clarifying the approach we want to take, to test for agreement.

I heard a few people say that it's still early and we might want to hold off naming specific leaders for a while. I also heard that it's very useful to name specific leadership to help a movement coalesce (and that we need to be conscious of who we pick in terms of things like diversity).

Sam Toland Wed 5 Oct 2016 10:18PM

I think the issue of leadership does really need answered just yet (though just my opinion). More important to getting a broad discussion and inclusive debate started about what can and should be achieved.

Plenty of chats on Loomio and Slack about what the whole buytwitter thing really means - I posted a summary as a separate thread.

Alanna Irving Wed 5 Oct 2016 10:22PM

Great - since you have a clear view, how about raising it as a proposal? Proposals help us hear from everyone and test agreement. Even if we don't all agree with it, we'll at least know where people stand and surface some important issues. And if the group does generally agree with that approach, then we can stop debating it and move forward.

Poll Created Wed 5 Oct 2016 10:32PM

Stick with Co-ordinating Leaders for two weeks. Closed Mon 10 Oct 2016 10:01PM

I am proposing that we refrain from discussing 'leadership' in the executive sense for a two week period.

I think that we are at an emphermal stage in this project's development - and that crystalizing leadership could lead to;

(i) an early narrowing of the debate
(ii) stop us from recruiting a leadership from the broadest number of people possible - both in background, skillsets and experience (this is still a very small group of people)
(iii) might discourage people from joining, if they think that their is already an established structure to 'deal' with, in our to get their views aired.

I do think that what @whit537 called 'relational leadership' is what is needed. And I believe that this should continue to develop organically, as has happened to date.

I would clarify that I think that strong, executive leadership (democratically accountable of course) will be needed to get a project like this off the ground - but I don't think there is enough urgency (Twitter's not even 'for sale' yet) to outweight the demerits of establishing such a leadership at this time.

Thoughts? :)