Leadership of OurField

Dear Grahame and Darren
It would be very good to have a gathering in August. Very many thanks Darren for all that you and others have done to get the spelt milled and packed. As a 2017 member I waive my entitlement to some flour. Best Tony (Allan)

Surely, Tony, you have some eager baker-friends at SOAS or around?

Dear Graham

I am very sorry that I do not have such a network.

I must start cultivating the bakeries in my part of London.

Best

TonyA

Leadership team and problems with Loomio

Happy to see we have had a number of people coming forward to be on the proposed leadership team.

Although there could be something to say for having a small team that feel committed to taking forward the leadership of OurField, I wonder if we could get better results by having an open team, which any member could join, which included the people who have volunteered here to take a lead?

I guess it may be that an open team may leave people feeling somewhat less committed to stepping up, when work really needs doing, than having 4 people who feel its their responsibility, but I feel there is a danger that some in a member limited team might find they dont have the time or energy that they hoped for the leadership team work, which could leave a larger work load on those that were left. Similar to what appeared to happened last year.

Thinking about OurField, along with having an organizing/leadership team I believe improving communication could have great benefits.

I think having as much of the communication around OurField, including that of the organising crew, publicly visible would have great value. Both for -

• the collective to be able to keep track of whats going on, allowing them to see how decisions were reached and even to step in if they were interested in getting involved or to help if things looked like the leadership team needed help.
• and for the loftier 'open source' goal of allowing others to learn from and possibly be able to replicate our endeavors.

I sadly agree with others that Loomio is probably hindering our communications. On paper its great - and I work with other groups that are using it effectively - but its sadly doesnt play nicely with less powerful devices, and often very slow to load and possibly not always amazingly user friendly. Given the likely diversity of devices and tech skills of our collective members it no doubt impacts levels of participation.

I was part of the team who looked at alternatives to Loomio and we did agree that possibly we would be best sticking with Loomio, at least for now - but I did say I'd look into what would be involved in getting us set up on a promising alternative called Discourse.
Discourse is a nice modern, open source discussion forum, which works well on mobile, and like Loomio allows email notifications and replies by email.

We've got a test instance set up and are testing it now. If anyone would like a look, and possibly to help us with the test, please send me a message (click on my picture)

I wouldnt like to see us move to using the Facebook group (no email notifications - so people have to remember to check for activity) or Slack (its designed more for chat than discussions and the PC app is very resource hungry - not good for older devices)

Hopefully Discourse proves to be a viable alternative that can streamline our communication - enabling easier and transparent communication between the leadership team, collective members, Grahame and John Cherry.

Finally I'd be happy to be on the Leadership team, or to support them.

for some reason, your profile doesn't show a contact button. coincidentally, i planned to recommend discourse at the next opportunity for discussion: i've actively used it for a number of communities. choosing facebook would end my participation: i'm motivated to co-invest in better/human models of production; content/process tools are an important piece of the puzzle.

on a slight tangent, i'm concerned about the public-by-default discussions - for both technological and social reasons. naturally, i'd like to share my concerns within a trusty environment, but low-trust spaces stifle high-trust conversations.

Thank you @darren4 I would support discourse though I'm not at all familiar with it but if you have experience and find it works then I'm willing to give a good go.
On the leadership issue I’d like to get involved, but time is a big issue. There are some times in the year that are easier/harder for me regarding workload. And if there are certain tasks rather than a range of tasks I find that easier to get stuck in.

I agree with you @wahome about levels of confidentiality/privacy and though I'm happy to chat openly I would like to explore ways to encourage open debate within the OurField group, for the freedom to help nurture good conversations

@wahome you said

for some reason, your profile doesn't show a contact button

I see it unfortunately doesn't!

If you click on my picture in the thread members box (scroll up to the top on the right hand side of the screen), you may have to use the magnifying glass icon in that box to find me, then, hopefully, you'll see a contact button on my profile page, that will pop up.

There doesn't seem to be a free option for Discourse (or am I missing something?). In that case, why not use Slack?

Discourse is very simple and easy. My understanding is that Discourse is free as long as we host it ourselves (or find someone who is already doing this who would just add our instance), and we will have to have someone do the updates of the software etc. If we could find someone who would host it for us then it would be a nice option. I also use slack regularly and like it...