Learning & practising Sociocracy

Just watched an interesting video about using sociocracy in a bakery co-op in the U.S. . Very useful and enlightening. See https://youtu.be/LgpwHKUiYkg

I would like to set up a small online group for getting some practice in consent decision making - forming proposals etc. Also to explore how circles work in a larger collectively run co-operative.
My mate @nathanbrown came up with the wonderful 'Digital Democratic Deficit' to describe what we see on here all the time - that out of hundreds (I can’t find any record of current membership numbers) members of the SolidFund there's usually only 20 or so contributing to Loomio discussions. For very good reasons! We are all busy people and of course not every SolidFund member is sitting at a laptop for their work. Soo, I've been chatting to @peteburden who made helpful noises about helping me set up an online practice group - and I am wondering if there is any way that Sociocracy tools can help us improve or reverse the DDD in the SolidFund Loomio group?
This is not yet a proposal, I need some big brains to help me work out if it’s even practicable or achievable. But if anyone’s interested, let me know so we can explore the potential?

I'm broadly interested. I'm usually one of the mouthier ones in online spaces. Interested to learn whether sociocratic technology is even applicable to online discussion/deliberation, and what it can offer.

I'm interested Kate. I've been studying up on Sociocracy 3.0 thru Sociocracy for All. I'm thinking of suggesting that Platform 6 tries a sociocratic model. We'll certainly have lots of decisions to make and potential circles. Re the democratic deficit in SolidFund, I think that is partly due to the fact that some co-ops have bulk signed up their membership.

I've also recently joined the UK Co-operative Governance Expert Reference Panel and I'm keen to explore how the underlying legal structure/governance of co-ops can be mapped to more dynamic governance models and ensure that the co-operative governance guidance, codes etc. are consistent with and applicable to the emerging use of sociocracy in co-ops.

I wish the democratic deficit were that simple. I was referring to the fact that as the pace of discussion increases, participation reduces from those who are engaged - only those with the time available by virtue of their "day job" or lack of other competing interests outside of work can keep up. It is different if it is inside a co-op but even then, imagine the difference between a sales team/finance worker's ability to respond and that of the delivery driver.

Governance guidance may also need revising in terms of recognition of digitally mediated deliberation, asynchronous exchanges, etc.

@graham2 can you say that in smaller words for me?

Apologies. On re-reading it is rather unclear! What I meant to say is that if Mark is undertaking a review of best practice in governance, then that work could/should take into account the fact that a good deal of deliberation/discussion around governance issues within cooperatives may now - and increasingly will be in future if the whole platformcoop thing keeps growing - be taking place in online spaces. As we know these are different to face-to-face meetings, and so any developing good practice about how to use these spaces to facilitate good governance needs to be written up and shared.

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I'm definitely interested (although a bit short on time at the moment). We're working with Sociocracy for All at Unicorn this year to develop a circle structure proposal to take to the membership. We have a small sociocracy implementation group (six of us), who meet fortnightly to practice sociocratic methods while progressing work on the proposal, and two of us took part in their Sociocracy Leadership Training (SoLT) programme in the spring. Our largest team are now operating sociocratically (for a 3-month trial period) so we can get some real-life data and feedback on pros and cons in our busy, multitasking co-op! So far so good with their circle structure, and we're supporting them with learning the basics so they can try out selection processes, rounds, proposal shaping etc. I'm just about to start full day training sessions with small groups of members to spread the knowledge further, and work out some opportunities for other teams to try out some tools and techniques.

that's wonderful, great to hear! I'm really a beginner, done a lot of reading, had a bit of mentoring, but I've not yet done any of the SoFA training. I won't have time to do any work on this now till September, but in the meantime if we can share ideas on here, work out if/how Sociocracy works online, then we can hit the ground running in the early autumn.