Engagement of Initial Stewards

I like the final document - I agree

How to speed the process of appointing Interim Stewards so that constellation projects can commence asap.

@philippgrunewald, Looking beyond your proposal to engage interim stewards, Ian and I drafted a media release for your consideration.

We subsequently met with @martijnvanderkamp and Ben Habib to explored the idea of creating a small group in Australia and say one in each of Europe, America, and elsewhere to collaborate as interim stewards globally.

These small groups of interim stewards would benefit from being co-located, contribute differing local cultural perspectives and draw on local experts / permaculture organisations as required. Each small group could appoint a representative (on a rotating basis) to collaborate in regular global stewardship meetings and in monthly Colab meetings.

We are interested in your thoughts

Ed

To add to Ed's message. We recognized that collaboration across time zones, over digital platforms, does not always come easy to everyone in the Colab and makes it harder to make quick progress. Local groups can spend more time face-to-face, and have richer discussions (compared to online) and can integrate more perspectives into their proposals to the Co-Lab. We see a possibility for different local workgroups to arise (and form). The U.K, South America, The U.S., each of these groups can work on topics that are close to their heart and interest (enterprising, communication strategy, technology, etc.). Working in this fashion completely aligns with the constellation model and the sociocracy approach where groups send their proposals to decision-making groups (with representatives from all the groups).

Hi Martijn - I think the local groups are the organisations and networks that join the CoLab - represented by the person that sits on the stewardship group - eg if the Permaculture Association Britain joined, then the person who represents them already has a network that they are embedded in... otherwise surely we are creating a new parallel structure - rather than enhancing what we already have... maybe I am misunderstanding the proposal? So maybe the challenge is to support each rep to develop a co-lab support team / group that can take forwards that work in their group. Essentially i see the key task at the moment to engage existing orgs and networks into the stewardship group.

Hi Andy and Martijn,
Thanks for the post Martijn that better explains the essence of discussion last Friday.

Andy it it would be ideal if existing organisations setup as interim stewards. It seems to me however that we need to keep the ball rolling and hence the idea of fixed term interim stewards in the first planning round.

I guess I make the assumption that we would struggle to find enough stewards that are available and that have prior knowledge of the process. While I don’t have a big sample to make that call, there does not appear to be a culture of strategic planning in the movement currently. Besides the interim stewards would need to reach out to existing organisations, communities and individuals to engage them in the process.

Either way lets canvas for nominations without requiring too many hurdles for nominees to negotiate.

Hi @philippgrunewald it looks like the 7 that can vote have - maybe one last shout on slack to get others to sign up and vote? then we can start - @edwalta @martijnvanderkamp - then we can get ball rolling and move into next phase... we will see who applies!

@edwalta @andygoldring Thank you both, those are really good insights. If I'm trying to integrate these viewpoints this is what comes to mind.. If a local Australian group such as Ben, Ian, Ed, and myself want to be actively involved in the next step and help building the strategic direction as interim stewards, we are best to engage through Permaculture Australia and act as representatives on their behalf. One of us could then represent Permaculture Australia in the Stewardship group (perhaps on a rotating basis) and present our proposal to the Stewardship group with regards to the strategic direction. The Stewardship group can then sociocratically decide on the proposal, or provide feedback. The same principle goes for local groups across the world.

This process allows for faster progress and proposal developments because local groups can collaborate face-to-face, in the same timezone, etc and does not have to deal with the complexity of a very large globally distributed group of people. The wisdom of the stewardship group is applied through the decision making process so that it accurately represents the viewpoints, ethics and principles of all stakeholders in the stewardship group. Altogether, this process would considerably decrease complexity for everyone involved.

Yes @martijnvanderkamp I agree that your comment integrates what I and @andygoldring are saying. Lets improve when we incorporate allied organisations.

I attended the sociocracy webinar presented by @erinyoung this morning - an excellent demo of the synergy of the principles of permaculture and sociocracy.

The attached file is a promo of the webinar and double linking explained. Plus a diagram of what I understand you are proposing.