@ronanmchugh do you know @nicolaswormser ? he's also in Copenhagen! @sophiejerram and @noelia from our team will be visiting there very soon too.

Hi all, I'm Malcolm. I live in Wellington in a large community house. I spend quite a bit of my week working as a Business Analyst at a rather large financial institution (I know, not exactly Loomioish!). I tend to work on things like project management, process improvement, systems development etc. Things that might be handy for Loomio as it gets bigger...
As you can see between paid work and home, I have my feet in two very different camps! Anyway, I'm hoping I can lend some of my skills to the cause.

Hi i am Chris, I am from Greece. i live in mt. Pelion. I hope i can help as much as i can on Loomio because i think it is a great project and with future especially for groups and organizations which want to make collective-decisions.

Hey @ronanmchugh, we need to catch up one of these days for sure. I'm looking for connections here, and I'd be more than happy to introduce you to the project. Are you keen to meet up next week? @sophiejerram is going to be around from wednesday and @noelia from Sunday, so that sounds like a perfect timing. Let me know ([email protected] or here).

Hey @nicolaswormser & @alannakrause, thanks for the heads up. Nicholas, yeah I'd be up for meeting. When are you planning to meet with the Kiwis? I'm time poor at the moment due to work and baby, but I'd like to be able to contribute a little bit now and then.

yes lets catch up! it would be really cool! @nicolaswormser @ronanmchugh :)

Hi all! My name's Tom, as you can see :-)

I come from a background of less-heirarchical-activism, and I work with Aptivate - http://aptivate.org - a non-profit tech organisation working in international development, that runs by consensus, based in the UK.

As it happens, we've been making our own online consensus decision making & tracking tool called Econsensus - http://econsensus.org - which is somewhere behind Loomio in terms of its development stage - and so we're excited to hear both about this project and Loomio as an organisation! I had the great pleasure of speaking to Ben and Vivien last week, and I'm looking forward to continuing to work out how we can collaborate and what we have to share with one-another, both in terms of online collaboration tools and as software coop organisations (coop-ish in our case). We seem to share a lot of practices, ideas and ideals.

I'm also involved with an activist-tech network in the UK and I've been making people in the UK aware of both projects, and there's definitely interest.

At Aptivate we're already learning a lot from seeing what you've accomplished with Loomio, and we think we have some suggestions from our own experience, and I hope we have a lot of discussions in the future about all this good stuff. Maybe someone can suggest an appropriate way for us to start asking questions and suggesting things without drowning people in rambling :-)

I look forward to collaborating with you all!

cheers,
Tom.

Hi all,

It has been great reading through all the introductions.

I echoe the statement by @benjaminknightloom "When the Occupy movement rolled around in 2011 I got deeply caught up in it, and had a first taste of collective decision-making on a scale I'd never even thought possible."

After the wave of Occupy receded I went searching for wisdom from the last rising of the social movement in the 60's and 70's. That search has led me to living/working/playing at Commonground Co-operative. A Co-operative Social Enterprise that was set up in 1984 in Australia. I am learning lots from the collaborative process they have built up over the years here and am looking forward to amplifying them in the near future.

http://www.groupwork.com.au/commonground

We offer Collaborative management and facilitation training through the Groupwork Institute.

http://www.groupwork.com.au

We run the Commonground Social Change Festival.

http://www.commongroundfestival.org.au/

We also have a conference centre we rent out at subsidised rates for social change organisations and a nice big market garden.

I am also Co-founder of Real Democracy Australia.

http://realdemocracyaustralia.org/

And part of the Stand In My Shoes empathy movement. http://standinmyshoes.com/

We live in exciting times and I am so happy that things like Loomio now exist!

Please connect with me on Twitter and Facebook.
https://twitter.com/carlscrase
https://www.facebook.com/carl.scrase

Hi folks, my name's Rich, I'm one of the Loomio Co-op members. My work here sits across design, code development, customer support, and communications.

I am passionate about the potential for disruptive positive social change that results when open source communication technology is deployed on a massive scale. In addition to this software project, I pursue this interest through DIY hardware (e.g.), community organising and activism around digital rights.

Hi my name is Raphaël, president of the association OpenMandriva.
Loomio is a great tool that help us taking decision, as we never can meet together (people from all over the World, from Brazil to New Zealand :)

Welcome @simon1 !

Here's a bit about him...

-

I’ve experimented with online and in-person dialogue and deliberative processes since the mid-2000s. I’m proud of the work I did with Toi te Taiao: the Bioethics Council, especially the Who gets born? Pre-birth testing' project. Information about this work can be extracted from the National Archives by following the links from http://www.mfe.govt.nz/website/closed-sites/bioethics.html.

I’ve been supporting the Wellington City Youth Council for over two years now. The Youth Council has been using Loomio since mid 2012.

Welcome to some more new members... tell us a bit about yourself @brettlockspeiser @josephcederwall @niclane :)

i rage. art rage, film rage, theatre rage, archival rage, community rage... on loomio i rage on the big live arts group board. rage

Welcome @robgilbert !

Here's a bit about Rob...

"As the chair of the Stirchley Stores committee it is part of my role to make sure everyone gets heard. Since we’ve started using Loomio we’ve had some really useful discussions that have previously consumed a lot of ‘real’ meeting time. With Loomio, people can get their idea together before speaking and as a result communicate more effectively."

http://www.stirchleystores.co.uk/

Hello my name is max, you can call me the Evil Overlord.
I had a mental break down about 3 years ago and I have not recovered yet. Actually i don't even think i'm improving. In the meantime i'm doing what any other narcissistic psycho would do....build an evil empire hell bent on world domination.
If i step on anybody toes....sorry about that...but I am evil

Anyway must get back to work...this world domination thing a lot more work than i thought.

Cheers,
Your Evil Overlord

Hey @rebekawhale - welcome! Can you introduce yourself?

How many people here are makers?

@richarddbartlett Are you a maker?

Hey Max, if by maker you mean physical materials + hands, then, Yes! Earthbuilding, Gardening, Sewing, Furniture...

Kia ora koutou,
I'm Rebeka Whale. I grew up in Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty - That's the East Coast of the North Island of Aotearoa. (+ my first 8.5 years in Te Wai Pounamu).
I am also half Deutsch - from a beautiful suburb in Hamburg. Excited about the German translation!

I studied Performance Design (for theatre and film) at Massey - (School of Design, Fine Arts & Music) and Toi Whakaari, in Te Whaea - our National Dance & Drama School. I have also studied Graphic Design. Throughout my studies I have always been somewhat of an outsider because I cared a huge amount about the environmental impacts of all the materials I was using, and generally wanted to make a difference 'in the real world' rather than fantastical ones. crazy!

My first production was completely in Te Reo Maori. It was for Taki Rua, and I designed and made everything from scratch / recycled materials - Puppets, Sets, Costumes, Props. It travelled schools throughout the country.

I was a rebel at Uni and would go off to the other uni I wasn't actually a student at - Victoria- just so I could be involved in something useful with a bunch of my peers - This was the Environmental group, Gecko.
I learnt a huge amount about collaboration and empowerment through that. political change, social processes, collective action. Much volunteering ensued!

I have worked for Enviroschools and Te Mauri Tau as an illustrator/writer/ facilitator / Youth mentor. I have trained in the Art Of Hosting and have worked as a Facilitator for groups such as the Department of Conservation, The Wellington Community Gardens Network (which I used to coordinate briefly) and more. A lot of these connections came about because of ReGeneration. A network I co-created with a bunch of peers, primarily about Empowering youth who feel like outsiders because they give a shit. (the kind of thing we wished we'd had when we were at school!)
I've also worked at the Sustainability Trust as a 'Community Projects Coordinator' Running workshops on a heap of things such as Matariki and Gardening. I also set up and coordinated the Wellington Curtain Bank in its first year. Okay, enough backstory!

For the last few years I have been heavily involved with Enspiral, supporting social entrepreneurs to be well...social! I have looked after many of the Retreats and Social events we've had thus far, and for the past year I have managed our coworking space here in Wellington.

I am primarily a tactile, real-world person. Experience Design is my training from a theatrical as well as 'real world' perspective. Lots of supporting groups to support themselves, and enjoy the process.

I was at the first Loomio Retreat and was here to greet the Loomio crew as a member of Enspiral at the beginning. It's been amazing witnessing this thing grow and it's a valuable tool I appreciate immensely. The people involved are super brilliant, humble humans also.

Woops. I out-lengthed Ben! sorry about that.

Hi Loomions! I'm Brett. I'm a web developer in San Francisco. I'm part of of the Adobe Books and Arts Cooperative and we love loomio. http://blog.loomio.org/2013/09/23/write-cultural-fit/

@maxnoble there are lots of makers here. @richarddbartlett sure is, and @richardfortune too!

Let's welcome @jennymc !

"Hello! My name is Jen McArthur and I am a physical theatre performer and maker based in Wellington. I am part of a newly established community of independent performance practitioners in Wellington called the Big Live Arts Group. We have a page on Loomio and it is making our communication and decision making so efficient and fun.
I am really interested in feeding back and supporting this amazing tool in any way I am able. Its gonna change the world!"

Some more community members to welcome!

@christopherrhalber says: Love Loomio would love to contribute.

@matthewnholt says:
I run a bitcoin mining Co-op and we use this service but need more feature like being able to hold motions based on shares held.

@daboczymihaly would you introduce yourself?

Great to see you in here @brettlockspeiser! Make yourself at home :)

Welcome to our newest members! @joelbaxendale and @traceyambrose

Welcome aboard @cheryldoig! Really nice to get your introduction:

"I work as a leadership futurist, exploring trends and making sense of them for today. Collaboration, open government, and community engagement are clear signals for today…and then I found loomio. I got excited and wondered how I might use it to encourage voices to be heard.

At present I am working with a few school clusters in the Christchurch renewal and see some great possibilities so would love to talk with others about possibilities."

Hey! I'm a computer engineering student at Budapest, Hungary and the member of an activist group, called Student Network, in Hungarian: Hallgatói Hálózat (you can read about it in English here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Student-Network-Hungary/336769799770184 and if you wanna contact us write an email to [email protected]) We use Loomio as a decision making tool. If you have any question, please feel free to ask.

Welcome @nandortanczos!

Introduction: "I’m a RasTafari social ecologist active in a number of areas of social and political transformation. I have been using Loomio with a couple of groups and find it a really useful tool. I look forward to being part of it as it grows."

Hi folks,

Holy. You guys are really interesting!

I am a consulting economist, working mostly on issues in telecommunications and technology. I am particularly interested in whether New Zealand can take advantage of the internet to improve its economic prospects, and whether use of the internet can really overcome some of challenges we face from being geographically so far away from the rest of the world.

Check out http://themoxiesessions.co.nz for records of the Auckland discussion group I run that talks about this stuff.

I reckon Loomio is a super-interesting example of things the internet can change (i.e., decision-making processes).

Love your work.

Hayden

Welcome @goob, who's been using Loomio almost since day one, coming from the Diaspora community. Great to have you in the Loomio Community group @goob, make yourself at home and feel free to introduce yourself here ^_^

HI, thanks @richarddbartlett for the welcome.

Hi, everyone, I'm part of the Diaspora community, and we've been using Loomio to help our decision-making since it started! It's a great tool, and we've found it's been a real help in organising ourselves in a democratic and open way.

Welcome @joelcosgrove and @micheldestree ! Can you introduce yourself to the group?

Welcome @hemondey !

"I’m quite new to Loomio.We are using this platform for our eco village in New Zealand, called Atamai Village. I’m keen to help make Loomio a great platform for consensus decision processes."

Hi, i'm from Portugal and i'm 30 years old. Currently i'm developing processes and metodologies to a project of creating a political party rulled by participatory democracy.

Welcome to our good friend @kenallen! Feel free to introduce yourself to the Loomio Community in this thread Ken :)

And hello to @jacobkeareymorelan! Feel free to introduce yourself here ^_^

Thanks @alannakrause. :)

Kia Ora all. Joel here. Like a few other people here I was involved in the Occupy movement and was involved in some of the dicussions that led up to Loomio coming into existance.
I use Loomio for a number of projects, 19 Tory St (a collective community space in Wellington), Fightback (a socialist group) and a newly formed Wellington Music Collective* (waiting on a new name).
While I have little technical ability, I can talk a good rant.

Welcome @neophytoskolokotro !

"I am a Social Science student with a real interest in how communities, especially free and open source ones, are structured and managed, and how their members interact with each other and outside. This would be a great opportunity to to learn more regarding this, and probably discuss with people with similar interests.

I have been a long time contributor to the Chakra Project, which provides Chakra, a KDE focused, Linux based distribution, and was the one that suggested using Loomio to improve the discussion and decision making processes.

I think I can contribute with new ideas and provide useful feedback to help Loomio improve."

Seedy Greetings,

Loomio, I love you. I am a community garden cultivator, guerrilla gardening extremist, feedom lover, seed librarian, writer, musician, ukular scientist and farmer. I live on a farm near Orillia, Ontario, Canada (just north of Toronto where I visit frequently).

I heard about loomio through my Occupy connections - I am an occupy gardener and am crazy about gardening puns. I am on a quest to grow community gardens everywhere and free food for all.

Now I am working on propagating seed libraries in my region, in partnership with public libraries, schools, community centres to revitalize local food systems. Sharing seeds, and teaching people how to grow and save seeds.

I advocate for a resource based economy, (i.e. a sharing economy) in my actions and words. I operate an open source farm called the Wikifarm, all food and seeds grown are freely shared. I studied at the University of Toronto, where I specialized in Social Network Analysis, contemporary social movements, sociology, philosophy and urban agriculture.

I have seen many online communities that have tried to do what loomio is doing. None have turned me on like loomio and I am excited to help it grow.

I want to use loomio to meet and organize with fellow gardeners on local and global initiatives to grow Free Food For All. In the meantime I will try to encourage our Toronto Seed Library collective to give Loomio a try for organizing and decision making.

If anyone is in Toronto or area, give me a shout and we will go for an edible tour of the city.

I've also started a group to continue plotting our World Peas Project - i encourage fellow gardeners to join and share their ideas for how to cultivate a global food revolution necessary to resolve the global economic, political, climate, ecological, social, cultural and existential crisis that faces us this century. Food is security. Food is life and food is love!

Peas in SOILidarity!
JKM

Welcome @izidroqueiroz !

"Hi. I’m from Brazil and I would like to help Brazilian movements to use Loomio. I will help translating Loomio to Portuguese."

I added you to to Translation group. You can change your language in Loomio by clicking the menu in the bottom left corner :)

Welcome @clementlesaege !

Also @craiglambie !
"I wear many hats. Today I am starting a political organisation that will beat the 2 party cartel in Australia by engaging with the community and involving them in aspects of decision making not currently available to them."

Hi @alannakrause , I'm also a political activist of French Pirate Party. I'm searching for a way to consult citizens of my town in order to construct a program for municipals elections. I wanted to test Loomio functionalities but there is a little problem. We have to approve people to join the group and it is compatible with mass consultation. Perhaps I should try to modify a the code a bit in order to change that. I don't really need a voting platform, but more a platform to elaborate and discuss proposals.

Hi @clementlesaege - thanks for joining us! Loomio is meant to be designed not as a voting platform, but as a discussion platform for proposals, as you mentioned. I will add you to the Feature Ideas group and you can post there about your idea! Maybe others need the same thing.

Thanks @alannakrause, I’ve opened a post on this group.

Welcome @caelanmacintyre!
"Hi Loomio community…
I share many, if not all, of the values of the folks of both Loomio, as well as its groups. I think we are long overdue for a world where the egalitarianism and non-hierarchy of the band/tribe shines. A global band/tribe.
I come from the Permaculture and Transition movements.and would be honoured to be a member of Loomio. "

Hello @stefaang! Seems like you have some ideas for Loomio features... head over to the feature ideas group and share them :)

Let's all welcome @justin1 !

"Hi, I’m involved with a bunch of community groups and I’m setting up a Food Hub in Central Vic, Australia. Keen to learn a bit more about how to make the most of loomio, throw in some comments on my experience and meet a few collaborative thinkers along the way :)"

Welcome @tathrastreet!

"I’m a change agent and facilitator who sees the value in this tool for group decision making. SO exciting. I’m in Melbourne Australia, I had the pleasure of meeting @benjaminknightloom when he and @vivienmaidabornloo were here at the Collaboratory, which is where l learned about Loomio. I am a facilitator and a coach. I am keen to try this out and see how I can use it in my work and life. Thanks!"

Thanks @richarddbartlett Glad to be here! And shout out to @glenlauder, one of the most inspiring humans I've met.

Welcome to our newest members @luboshhanuska and @juanarrieta !

Hi i'm Ivan, i'm 24 years old, and i live in Brazil, working as web developer in Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
I've met loomio in a job task, because we have intentions to use it on here.
Initially i'll try to help in portuguese BR translation, and later contribute with some code.
I'm very happy to see how this community is working on loomio.
Congratulations for all involved on.

Welcome @mattmcgregor from Creative Commons Aotearoa NZ!

Welcome @ivorstodolsky !!

-

Ivor Stodolsky, Curator and Writer, Berlin/Helsinki.

Co-founder of Perpetuum Mobile

PM’s recent projects include Re-Aligned, Perpetuum Labs, The Arts Assembly and the Perpetual Pavilion.

Recent publications include “A Multilectic Anatomy of Stiob’ and Poshlost’”, Laboratorium vol. 3, 2011. See also http://www.re-aligned.net/category/discourse

I’ve long been interested in social p2p ideas, for example in The Arts Assembly project

We currently are using Loomio or something called PERPETUUM LABS - Curating the Social.

Hi everyone.
I'm @zombilechuck (same one in n-1.cc and twitter)

Recently joined the catalan translation group and completed some lines: https://www.loomio.org/discussions/9188

Mainly interested in... let me see...
- Food sovereignty. Local projects.
- Techie tools. Obsessed in usability.
- Opens-Source, Creative Commons, Fork everything.
- Libre auto-organized press and media.
- Self-managed groups and cooperatives.
- Pre & Post-Capitalism artisanry/crafts.
- Languages (latu senso, specially minorized ones).

Huh, ok, that's more or less me.

@zombilechuck welcome! You have come to the right place!

Hi my name is Oliver Minter, I live in Melbourne, Australia, and I am working for Senator Online in a volunteer role.

"Senator Online" or "SOL" is Australia's first and only Direct Democracy Political Party. We allow YOU the voters to vote on ANY parliamentary bill that you wish to. (BUT we havent got a Senator elected yet and hope to be elected in 2016 into the Senate.)

Our Loomio group is here:

https://www.loomio.org/groups/1473

At the moment we are mainly using loomio just to try and self organise as a party - BUT we have recently started a sub-group entitled CURRENT BILLS BEFORE THE SENATE that we are using as a DEMO to learn the neccessary rules and processes that we will need to create in our own software. (In that group we just list the current bils before the Senate together with the Pros & Cons of each bill and vote on them.) Our entire party system works by having say one SOL Senator elected to the Senate and that Senator is bound by our Party Constitution that states that they must vote on the Bill before parliament ONLY in accordance with what YOU the public decide. The public will vote through our own propriatry software app (still in development) for both PC and SMARTPHONE. To find out more about us - it is best to first visit our website HERE:

http://www.senatoronline.org.au/

Thankyou to LOOMIO for approving us in the first place!

PS. We MAY start inviting the loomio public to try our demo - but I have to first wait until we have full agreement within the party first - so stay tuned for us on Loomio!

Welcome @olivermintersolvol ! It's really fascinating to see how your group is actively using Loomio. Would be keen to hear your ongoing feedback :)

Hey anyone - where is the Loomio HELP forum or subgroup?? coz we are getting notifications within our own group (SOL) say to remind us that a proposal is closing in 24hrs - and it is sent at say 2.30am in the morning - how can i get this to arrive at peoples email inboxes at a more reasonable time? (my email beeps to me on my smartphone @2.30am )..

Hi @olivermintersolvol - good question! Maybe someone from the product team can answer? @robertguthrie @johnirving @richarddbartlett

Hi Oliver. Seeing as the proposal closing soon warning is sent 24 hours before close.. it would be best to set your proposal close time during waking hours :) Anything else would get complex really fast.. Hope that helps.

Hahah good point @robertguthrie ! I should have thought of that [smacks forehead].

@olivermintersolvol if you could confirm that the close time on those proposals were at 2.30am in the morning that would be great. If it wasn't then there may be a bug in the code

Hi everyone! I'm @alijacs and am the new communications wrangler at Loomio! I'm Wellington-based and love this city almost as much as I love cheese.

I'm a slam poet on a mission to save the world through creative persuasion, and have a fascination with storytelling for positive change. I'm also hugely passionate about freshwater rights, it's my number one issue on a long list of things to be engaged in.

I'm super excited to be joining such a team of wonderful human beings, and looking forward to getting to know members of the Loomio community.

the closing times have been like for example 6pm or 2pm ...i have NOT been setting closing times for 2.30 am... it must have been a bug in the code...

There could be a bug with the way your timezone is set. @olivermintersolvol next time you create a proposal, check to make sure the timezone is set correctly.

that will be the problem - i hade them set for say brisbane or sydney and i'm in melbourne - i didnt think iit would matter aat the time... thnks heaps..

except now when i go to change the closing date from say 6pm sydney time to 6pm melbourne time (maybe there is no time difference anyway) - it doesnt save properly.. i dont know whats going on now.. oh well its a fairly minor problem - i just make sure i turn my phones internet off while its in my bed...

Welcome @marcossiqueira!

"I tried to build a collective decision making platform called moveocracy and have learned a bit about what doesnt work. (and a bit about what may work). Would love to be part of the loomio community as I have moved on to other projects (financial reasons). I can do some web development/ux design and also am pretty good with fundraising, but mostly will join as a beta tester for now."

Looking forward to having your experience and feedback in the mix Marcos :)

@olivermintersolvol @richarddbartlett could you please move this conversation out of the introductions thread? Thanks!

dont know how to "move" it - can i just delete it all?

where is the HELP forum?!

Here! We haven't started using it yet but I guess it's time!

Don't worry about deleting or moving it now @olivermintersolvol :) Just if you want to continue the conversation maybe start a new topic.

Hi again. I'm starting a new thing that I want to share with you all. It's a group we called "cct" (cooperativa de consum tecnològic).

It's based on how food cooperatives work, but instead of "responsible food" we look for "responsible web resources" (not "responsive", ethical. (wordpress, bootstrap, duckduckgo...) and to fight internet monopolies, to share our knowledge, and get some services like hosting that will be more affordable collectively.

The idea is to keep it small and local. Small and lovable non-profit projects that dont have a web, deserve one (like our real food coop) but cannot pay. So, any solution (like a wordpress.com at a start) without too much work its a big thing. Techies and non-techies together!

My idea is to use loomio very hard, not only for internal decisions, but also as a way to evaluate the resources etc. We'll see how it goes.

You can visit it here (in catalan) http://cct.laparabolica.com/
Or try google translate or better,
http://www.apertium.org/?id=surfandtranslate

Sorry, this is the link to the translated page.
http://aplica.prompsit.com/tradurl.php?marcar=1&direccion=ca-en&inurl=http://cct.laparabolica.com

Welcome @brennannovak ! Brennan, you mentioned you've worked on collaboration/decision-making software before. Would you like to share any of your learnings or experience with us? Would be interested to hear!

Hey @alannakrause thanks for the welcome! Yah the software I was thinking of was very similar to this- I designed a bunch of interfaces https://brennannovak.com/ideas/collaborative-decision-making but never got around to coding it up!

Really excited this project exists. As I use Loomio more I'll see if there are any feature ideas missing from what I was dreaming up :)

Welcome @johngraham from Napier NZ! He's here through connections to Theory U, chalkle, and Enspiral.

Thanks @alanna for the welcome.

I've just found loomio today, and the whole enspiral thing. Amazing.

Hey I reckon we could do all this in Napier, and I probably know enough people in Whanganui to help do it there too. As in, create hubs of all this activity that's happening in Wellington, but local versions. I wonder what the next step would be?

hi @johngraham — one little step would be for you to come along to 'Enspiral Connect', 12 Dec in Wellington: https://www.facebook.com/events/438593119580185/?fref=ts

Hi @matthewbartlett , and thanks - yes, little steps are good. Getting to Wellington for that, is too big-fast just now - I'll keep wondering on what could be the next, smallest-slowest step for those who can't make it (and who stay offline as much as possible). Cheers.

Great designs @brennannovak! Thanks for the hat tip on your site too. It will be great to hear your ideas as you get more familiar with the tool.

Welcome @danielnickless our newest member! Dan do you want to tell us about yourself?

Dan asked about seeing some public groups using Loomio to make decisions. Check out the recently launched Groups Page!

Welcome @rorytb !!

"I’m an International Development student and I’ve been working for about 4 years now on the theoretical side of how various forms of democracy work, I am a strong believer and advocate of the participant model and I believe the infrastructure created by Loomio overcomes it’s one weakness (organisational inefficiency). I would love to be a part of this community so I can one day tell my grandkids, ‘I was there when it all began..’"

Welcome to new members @audreyportela @dariooliv and @moxybeirut! If you want to introduce yourself to the community, this is where to do it :)

Welcome @davidlatiakkulesza !

"I’m a young union member in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local 353 Toronto. I’ll be teaching my first class in mobile computing starting this February, the first time an apprentice has EVER taught. I just found Loomio and it seems very interesting, looking forward to exploring Loomio and how we can make use of it in the NextGen committee (to reach out to under 35 membership) to stay in touch and coordinate between meetings."

I'm keen to hear more about how Loomio could be used with Unions :)

hi, thanks @richarddbartlett
i'm dario from paris, france. i'm a political activist and i work with the italian grassroots movement 5 stars movement
we're very interested in collaboration, horizontal movements and democracy, so we're interested in loomio too. here to help improving :)

@davidlatiakkulesza One of my dreams for Loomio is that it help revitalise the union movement. I'd love to hear how you get on!

Welcome @paulclutterbuck from GenZero! If you like, you can introduce yourself to the community here :)

If you want to discuss specific features, join us in the Feature Ideas group.

Welcome @davidschofield !

"I live in Manchester, UK and am one of the founding members of The Local Veg Box. Our group is also working toward setting up a housing cooperative and is concerned with all aspects of sustainable living to the end of eventually setting up an intentional community. I want to get stuck into collaboration with other proactive people around the world."

Thanks for the welcome, @richarddbartlett. As you said, I'm with Generation Zero, which has been using Loomio since 2011. This is one of the few times since I joined Loomio earlier this year that I've accessed the site from a full-sized screen. I'm keen to see the site made more mobile-friendly.

In addition to my work with GenZero, I may also be interested in using Loomio for discussion among my new company's Board of Directors. It's a great platform that's greatly needed.

Welcome to @chrissiebutler, who has written one of the most exciting introductions I've read on here :)

"Hi. I’m Chrissie Butler. Wellington-based. One half of the mr sterile Assembly. I’ve been kicking around the edges of Loomio for a while and am wondering how I can weave it more tightly with other work/projects and also I how I can be more useful.

I work in education with a focus on diversity/equity/accessibility. At the moment I’m content writing for the Ministry of Ed’s new inclusive practices website. I also teach about Universal Design in an education context and web accessibility/usability. I’m wondering if any of this bag of skills might be useful to Loomio. Let me know.

Also Kieran and I want to see if we can weave Loomio into the way we work with the mr sterile Assembly. We’re interested in how we can use Loomio in collaborative democratic song writing. At the moment we are just gonna test the water re. functionality and then we’ll pilot a project."

Chrissie I'd love to catch up with you and Kieran! I'm sure @benjaminknightloom would be keen to get in on that conversation too.

Welcome @robnevin !

"Managing the mind of the crowd has been an earthly problem since Adam and Eve. Loomio has emerged to change this. My name is Rob Nevin, I live in Canada and through my company U-R-Able support persons globally who achieve success in the workplace despite blindness. I have been very encouraged by the commitment of Loomio to develop products that are ready-for-use by persons using screen reading technologies - not just because of global standards and recommendations for compliance - but because it’s the right thing to do. Very consistent with the mission of Loomio - driving right decisions."

Loomio is really excited about making the tool accessible to all. We're so glad to have your support.

Thanks for the welcome @richarddbartlett. Yep Kieran and I really happy to catch up with you and @benjaminknightloom.

Welcome to @steveray from Group Work Institute:

"Hi there… My name is Steve Ray… I actually work in the field of Collaborative Decision Making and am interested in this debate… In particular the opening assumption of how collaboration requires shared values… I think this is where the real skill of Consensus or Collaboration comes in and where facilitation is essential. I think we have to work across difference and find ways forward together in our difference.. and there are ways that we can do that."

Great to have you in the room Steve! It will be wonderful to have your expertise in the conversation :)

Hi @chrissiebutler, wonderful to see you in here! I'd love to have a decent catch up with you and Kieran. I'll email you to arrange something! :)

Hi all! Good and bad news... I'm getting fired!
(Are there still young spaniards with a job?)

Well... this indeed mean good news for me, as I was thinking in a radical lifestyle change, and the job was the last shackle to this city and/or country... So I'm fostering new professional projects (graphic, web design, apps, CM, as usual, BUT ALSO rattan craftery, eco-furniture ...), and probably use loomio with my team and clients. Also, looking for a PLACE TO LIVE from zero... Any ideas?

Welcome to @constitutionuk ! introduce yourself and let the community know what you're about :)

@zombilechuck come to new zealand!!

Welcome to @timman

"Hi! I’m Tim, originally from Wellington and living in London now. I saw Loomio from a link someone posted and thought it was a far more mature construction of what I had envisaged as a personal project just before I moved over here.

Now I’m trying to get really good at anything web tech, doing an internship currently at a London startup who specialise in geolocation and have a primary product in vertical property search. We code in Perl mainly, with a growing emphasis on JS for frontend.

I want to see how I can contribute and be a part of this amazing project you guys are building! Mostly because the outputs of our generation is something that affects us all!

Best regards,
Tim"

Welcome to @chriswilson1

"A member of Cambridge K1 group."

We'd love you to introduce yourself and share with us why you're part of the Loomio Community when you get set up :)

@alanna <3
@matthewbartlett @alijacs @richarddbartlett @malcolmshearer... <3 too.

Hi, I'm Alex aka @Skud on most social networks. I've had Loomio on my radar for a while but just recently had a reason to want to use it to discuss forming a community network. I'm loving it so far and looking forward to seeing how it progresses!

Welcome to @skud

"Interested in talking about how to use Loomio and shaping its future direction."

Hi Skud! We'd love to talk to you about how to get the most out of Loomio and hear your thoughts! Drop us a line at contact (at) loomio.org

Welcome @juanluiscosta !
"Abogado, interesado en participación digital y herramientas de comunicación via internet."

@simontegg y @noelia son nuestros hispanohablantes. Tambien, hay un grupo aqui -
https://www.loomio.org/g/yStb1fUF/loomio-community-comunidad-en-espanol

Hey @viktorzaunders This is Viktor, a loomio enthusiast from Sweden. I have just recently started using loomio for a few different projects around local food development. I love the project and would love to contribute, I think a traslation into Swedish would be something I could look into!

Peace,
V

I'm a member of Pirate Party of Brazil, and an enthusiast of Direct and Digital Democracy.

What I most like here is the simplicity of the platform, which make decisions easier to take, even if the member of a group does not have specific knowledge about codes and programs.

I'm Danyl Strype, I'm a rainbow warrior and a cage rattler on a number of fronts from the Global Justice Movement and Indymedia, to GNU/Linux and CreativeCommons advocate, to Occupy Aotearoa, and many collective and co-operative projects before, during, and since. Been a keen Loomio tester since the very early days (before the Loomio group was using Loomio ;) I'm currently a member of the Permaculture in NZ Council, and Orientation Officer for the NZ Pirate Party. I blog at www.disintermedia.net.nz.

I've been thrilled to watch Loomio grow from a modest Aotearoa start-up to a globally networked free code community. I'm really looking forward to see what new features and improvements are rolled out over the next few months, although I'm planning a one year net fast (and writing a book about it, working title 'Email Ate My Life'), starting soon, and maybe more work on shelved sci-fi writing project.

Welcome @stewart!

Here's how Stewart introduced himself to us:

"We are looking at using Loomio as a tool in the decision making process for our group of homeschool families. We currently use the Formal Consensus Process which we perceive as having limitations in effectiveness because of, amongst other things, our geographical spread. I’m very interested in seeing how Loomio can be adapted to assist our process."

Feel free to start a new discussion in this community if you want to talk about how online decision-making could augment your in-person process :)

Welcome @yeltsinlima

"I’m a member of Partido Pirata do Brasil and I’ll like to help with Loomio Community."

Great to see you in this community, feel free to introduce yourself and let us know what your areas of interest are :)

Hi @alijacs,

My name is Yeltsin Lima and I'm member of the Partido Pirata do Brasil, as I said before.

I loved how Loomio works and I'll start to use this platform not only to the party-stuff, but also some others things that I found useful.

Thanks for the approval :)

Welcome @amatiasquezada ! Would you like to introduce yourself to everyone?

Hi @sarahnorton Welcome to the Loomio Community. Take a look around the sub groups and find the information you're looking for. If you need help or want to ask a question just yell out for help, or start a discussion on a topic you want to engage people with.
Here's how Sarah introduced herself:
"I’m a facilitator venturing into the online field, and also interested in supporting Loomio’s work alongside my colleague Steve Ray who has been communication already with Loomio about a possible partnership - so i thought i really should get involved and see what its all about in action rather than theory.
thanks, Sarah"

Hi @shwetaagrawal
Thanks for joining us on loomio! Please check out the full extent of the Loomio Community group as there's lots to discover. Here is how Shweta introduced themselves -

"I am a professional programmer with 2 years of work experience, one year at Yahoo! and one year at Wingify. Right now I am pursuing my masters in management from IIM Calcutta. I got to know about loomio from Hacker News and really liked the product concept."

Thanks! Let us know what you're interested in if you want?

Welcome to my friend @marykeoor from the Netherlands!

"As a founding president of the Cooperative ArboRegionaal B.A. I see that our members (all entrepeneurs, without central office) depend on digital tools like loomio. Loomio has proven its efficiency and power on distance. Loomio is, for us, a fundamental way of organizing.

Since the tool is properly implemented we face some ‘luxery’ problems, to improve loomio. I love to hear you idea’s."

Welcome Maryke!

Thank you all for the warm welcom, (eventhough it is cold in the Nederlands...)
Our Cooperative is facing a pratical issue for improval (voting on behalf...). I like to share the case below with pleasure.

A member is going on skiholiday and needs to vote. He doesn't remember his pasword and can't find proper internet in the mountains.
He sends a SMS tekst to me by agreeing on the decision.

In this case I am going to mention the vote in the discussion comments and afterwards it wil be mentioned again in the (recalculated) results. I find this energie consuming.

I guess that there is better design solution for:
Vote on behalf of someone else in a secure way (without knowing the pasword)

I am really interested in your opinion/experiences/solutions in this case. I wish you all a pleasant day.
Regards, Maryke

hi @marykeoor — one thing our upcoming crowdfunding campaign will fund is the development of an SMS interface to Loomio — so your skiing member will be able to text his vote directly to Loomio. Do you think that would solve the issue?

Hi Matthew, wauw it is really great to read about new development plans. In this case it solves (based on a temporary solution) the issue yes. I realize that many people use "what's app" or "Telegram" instead of (payed) SMS. Maybe it doesn't make a difference during the development.

However do you think this is the most adequate solution?
Maybe a bridge to far but if the software is accesible with an app(lication) on the mobile phone the impact/potention is much bigger.
Of course it is your decision and I respect the outcome. The idea of improving is already great. If I can help you to think along I am available with pleasure.
Have a nice day, my day has about ended.

Thanks @marykeoor — it'll be interesting to investigate integrating Whatsapp etc as well as SMS. I should have mentioned that the crowdfunding campaign will also let us build a beautiful mobile version :) (p.s. greetings from this grandchild of Dutch immigrants!)

Hi, Miguel here, I am from Granada Spain, 43 years old. I discover Loomio.org because I am constantly searching for tools for open government and I love horizontal workgroups and therefore cooperatives. I have promoted Loomio among the Econnomy for the Common Good in Spain and I will try to use it to built up a "kind of" volunteer parliament now I am promoting an open source tool for "open list" elections for organizations. We also participate in www.ahoratudecides.es an online survey for government issues (including participatory democracy), we have a user base of 43.000 volunteers, loads of work with no monetary return, but we love it.

@beaumurrah Hey Beau! Welcome to Loomio. This is how Beau introduced himself:
"I am a Dunedin based law graduate interested in Privacy advocacy and involved in various degrees with Generation Zero."

Welcome @davidg!
This is the space we invite people to introduce themselves to the whole community :) Feel free to say hello!
This is how David introduced himself -
"As a progressive activist in the Southern United States, I’m part of a working group out of our local peace & justice center that is trying to work out strategies for local movement building. Our group just discovered Loomio and is just beginning to explore its potential usefulness for us. In that context, I’d like to join the Loomio Community group to meet other folks using this tool, to learn more about its potential, and to give feedback on our group’s experience here."

Welcome @george2! Please feel free to introduce yourself here. Thanks for joining.

Welcome to @dean ! Thanks for joining
Dean, this is a space in the loomio community where we invite people to introduce themselves - why are you here, what would you like to learn, or discuss? What do you work on? Thanks!

Hello, I'm Dean.

I'm about to finish my PhD in molecular biology and virology... but I also have a huge passion for social justice and am involved pretty heavily in a grassroots democratic party.

I have been following the Loomio project for a while and was very excited by it's potential. Especially now that 1.0 is on the cards.

I have tried several times to get Loomio going in the community around me (with different people) but I have found engaging and adoption very difficult. I would really like to discuss and learn about how people have rolled out Loomio in their communities and what benefits they feel 1.0 will have.

Since then I have become more involved in other ways and work closely on some projects. Possibly a great place to start trying to implement Loomio again.

Essentially, it would be amazing if Loomio were a functioning part of the community I am involved in... HELP ME PLEASE!

x

Dean

Hey @dean I would love to help you! What kind of issues have you been running into with engagement and adoption?

Ha! @alanna, I guess mainly that I am the only person who thinks it is useful...

The average age of people in my group is probably around 50 (I'm 27). But they have great politics!

My strategy at the moment is to use it for the less-exciting administrative decisions that take a long till to mull over in person, they would be suited to Loomio and could show people how it is useful for discussion and then decision making.

At the moment everyone uses emails to submit proposals for discussion at local meetings, so they are interacting online anyway! Are there any stories of transition to Loomio? Where do I look?

Cheers!
D

@dean that's an awesome question! I've started a whole discussion about it.

Welcome @joaopedrotorres! João's been involved with a direct democracy project in Brazil.

Thanks, Matthew!

Welcome @vernet ! This is where we get to know each other and who is in the community. Please introduce yourself and share anything you are interested in talking about!
Signing up, Vernet said -
"I want to participate in the evolution of the software!"

Hi @gold ! Welcome! please introduce yourself here and ask any questions you might want to discuss with others or let us know what you're interested in! :)

Gold signed in by saying -
"I’m a Drupal developer living in Wellington. Run the NZ Skeptics Society and New Zealand Skeptics in the Pub (8 branches so far). Have walked the South Island and rode the North Island. Plan to complete a walk of the country in the summer of 2015/16."

Hi,

I'm a french consultant in public policies, sustainable development and collective intelligence.

My favourite topics are : direct democracy, mind-mapping, collective decision software, etc.

I support the crowdfunding campain in hope to to install an instance of the future loomio on my professional website : www.interface-consience.com/

I enjoy to discuss with all of you.

Hey all,

I'm a web developer working for Catalyst IT in Wellington, New Zealand. My primary focus is Drupal development.

I also run the New Zealand Skeptics Society and the New Zealand Skeptics in the Pub network of Meetups. The Society is undergoing a website redevelopment at the moment and part of this is moving the membership database online so the members can maintain their own details. This also allows us to provide better services/features to the membership. Loomio is looking like a great tool and I can see the Society making use of it a lot.

To that end I'm hoping to be able to get integration between Loomio and any Drupal site working. Talking with one of the Developers on G+ it sounds like authentication against Facebook/G+/Persona is already working so extending that should be a manageable thing.

I'm hoping a benefit can be seen in this. I know that much of our membership won't be on any of the big social networks that have authentication like this.

I'm also looking forward to having the opportunity to finally have a reason to get my hands dirty on some Ruby. :)

Oh! For the record, I came across Loomio on G+ via aimee whitcroft and was initially quite interested in it. The thing that made me sit up and pay attention was the tweet mentioned that it was already being used inside the WikiMedia Foundation. That caused me to take a more detailed look at it.

I'm now sold on it, a financial contributor, and wanting to make it work with the tech that will be driving the majority of the sites I work with.

Thanks @gold and @vernet for your wonderful introductions.

Please welcome @G who has shared this introduction with us:

"Hi guys
Love to come hang out and learn more about Loomio !
G"

Let us know why you're here and if you'd like to touch base on anything in particular!

Welcome @lyrecalliope !!

I’m a culture hacker natively from Atlanta, GA and currently serving from Boston, MA. I’m a volunteer for the open movement with Mozilla and Code for America as the cornerstone communities of practice I support and seek to align ecosystems with.

Glad to have you with us :)

@alanna Thanks for the intro! I'd heard of Loomio before but only just now decided to check it out given recent activity. I'm totally in on the vision!

I know a number of organizations and groups (unorganizations?) that have been dying for a replacement for traditional mailing lists, Google Groups, or the dreaded mail-list/GoogleGroup/integratedFrankensteinsMonster. I'd be interested in doing the legwork to find out what set of functionality would turn Loomio into a viable platform to migrate to from traditional mailing lists.

I know TeamBox (now Redbooth) had initially envisioned/marketed themselves this way, but they were more about productivity than consensus building. They also couldn't figure out how to get the open source model to work.

In any case, nice to be here with all ya'll and can't wait to see what this community can accomplish! :D

Great to have you in here @lyrecalliope! I'd expect Loomio to be a drop-in replacement for mailing lists by the end of the year, with of course the addition of decision-making functionality. Email integration is high on our list of developments.

Would be great to get your perspective on what user experience and functionality would make sense to you :)

Let's welcome two new members! We're really glad to have you with us :)

@andrewkensington : "Hi, I’m from Newtown, Wellington. I’ve spent the last 14 or so years in the building trade. I spend too much time squabbling with people on Kiwiblog where I post under the pseudonym Yoza. I heard about Loomio on Kim Hill’s program on Saturday morning. The whole Occupy movement is an interesting idea and if anyone gets the chance I would suggest they read David Graeber’s, The Democracy Project: a History, a Crisis, a Movement "

@samboyer : "former NYC Occupier, software engineer, and someone who is overall COMPLETELY elated to see Loomio. i became an engineer with aspirations to build something like this :)"

Welcome @dominiksteinacher !!

"I am Dominik Steinacher and I am Head of Sales at Magnolia International. I am responsible for all clients and partners world-wide. Before joining Magnolia I worked as head of product development and marketing within the financial sector and IT sector, as well as in business development and sales strategy. The common thread in all of my roles is the connection between product development, relationship management, innovation and management.
I love sports - I runs, bike and play tennis. I was a pole vaulter for 14 years and I won the Swiss championship in 1996.
I am very interested in new things and therefore I want to be part of Loomio :-)"

hey @dominiksteinacher Loomio is real happy to have you, the sales, and international network part of Loomio is just developing so love to 'hangout ' or skype with you if you are up for it:-)

welcome @philipkorsika !
Philip works with Weta and used to be a student of mine at Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti in christchrch

Hey everyone,

I'm a regular average tech guy Netizen who is pretty interested in using technology for social and economic change. I can write some code, and do so for a living (as well as a few other things), and enjoy giving ui/ux feedback if wanted or not :D

Looking forward to using this and doing sweet, sweet things with it.

:)

Ohey, parallel commenting with @mixirving, see that comment too :)

Welcome @benchatterton ! "Loomio looks like a very interesting way to make decisions as a group. I’m interested in exploring how it works." - do you want to share a bit about yourself with the group?

I'm Ariane, in Cambridge, MA, in the US. I learned about Loomio a few months ago at an in-person meeting of facilitators - thanks, @vivienmaidabornloo and @mjkaplan for coming (from far and not so far) to introduce it to us. I've found it really useful for a group I'm involved with that has some critical decisions to make and isn't always around each other. Much easier than tracking emails. I look forward to learning more about the transition from other communication methods to Loomio so I can make it with another group.

Glad to see you here @arianecherbuliez ! Check out this ongoing discussion about transitioning from other tools :)

Hi, I'm Ben in Portland, Oregon, USA. I found Loomio on boingboing I think. I'm really interested in the sharing economy, alternative democracy, stuff like that. So mostly I'm here to see how it works and observe how people use it.

Welcome to two new members!

@ultraviolet

I have an idea to share and want to vote on other ideas. I think Loomio is a great software to facilitate direct democracy!

We're looking forward to hearing your ideas!

@peteranderson

Hi, I’m really interested in liquid democracy and have been working in this area for about 10 years. Do you guys have any working groups in the UK yet?

Yes we have lots of contacts and collaborators in the UK like @hannahs @neilmorris among many others...

Hi @arianecherbuliez. Great to see you connecting with loomio's global network.

Welcome @jeremygilpin

" 你好! Hello!
My name is Jeremy. I’m an American who has been living abroad in China for the past seven years. I work in education and believe there is massive potential for Loomio with regards to engaging students in decision making and helping to shape what democracy looks like in the 21st century."

Great to have you as part of our community Jeremy! Feel free to tell the group a little more about yourself :)

@jeremygilpin welcome! Mandarin Chinese translation is currently at 41%, and Taiwan Chinese at 24%. Are you interested in potentially helping with translation, or finding people in your networks who might be? If so speak to @mixirving :)

Welcome to 3 new members, @miguelsirvent @davidbest and @robnevin1 - please tell us a bit about yourself :)

Hi, and greetings from central Canada. My name is David, and I thank you for accepting me as a member in this vibrant community. I have taken time to read through all the introductions, and I'm impressed with the global representation and diversity of the community.

I have recently retired from a large international IT organization, where I worked as a software developer and advocate for inclusion best practices. I am very much interested in grassroots collaboration, and sustainable living, initiatives. I have always been an outdoors adventurer, enjoying the untamed nature of Canada's wilderness areas, but recently taken an interest in local gardening systems and seed development. As an entrepreneur, I provide organizations with website accessibility/usability, and Universal Design best practices, education.

I support your efforts as an advocate of the participant model and I feel the infrastructure created by Loomio, unlike other social collaborative tools, may be truly inclusive. I believe the simplicity of the Loomio platform offers great potential for inclusion of disabled people, and look forward to contributing in whatever way I can.

Hi David

Great to have you in our community! Sounds like you have a greath wealth of knowledge to contribute :)

Whereabouts in central Canada are you? I'm living back in New Zealand now, but I spent three years in Saskatoon.

Should have tagged you - @davidbest

Alina, I have never traveled to Saskatoon, but understand the winters can be quite brutal. I, fortunately, live in a more temperate climate, close to the beautiful Niagara Falls in southern Ontario (not exactly central Canada, but east of central; which is also known as the centre of the universe in some minds ). Cheers!

Welcome @cobi !

Hi! I’m doing a PhD in participatory governance in science and technology, and I’m backing the Loomio crowdfunding campaign :)

Tell us some more about your research! Would be keen to hear about it.

Hi @alanna!

There's more detail about my research at:
http://cpas.anu.edu.au/about-us/people/cobi-smith
and updates at:
cobismith.com
I've just come back from being an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development with the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact - I'm passionate about ensuring everyone's voices are heard in decisionmaking, both in their local communities and in decisions impacting all of us.

I would love to be more involved with Loomio, potentially doing a postdoc experimenting with it - I'm finishing my PhD in the next few months and writing postdoc research proposals - I am really interested in Loomio as a decisionmaking tool :)

Welcome @stevenclift ! Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

That's fantastic @cobi - the main motivation for Loomio 1.0 is to make the tool truly inclusive, so all kinds of voices can all be heard. Thanks so much for your support!

Welcome to some new members!

@josecordeiro

Founder of Being Sustainable Project and several other things. Application developer, web analyst and system administrator. Particularly interested in startups, open source and scalable technologies. Life in perpetual Beta

@donnaschaap

I’m Donna from The Netherlands and just read a Shareable blog about Loomio. It sounds great and it got me curious… and this seems the right group to start with :)
Good luck with the project!

Welcome @katechapman1 !

Hi! I’m Kate Chapman and I’m involved in a couple communities using Loomio. I’m also a programmer and might be interested in hacking a bit on Loomio itself at some point.

Hi @katechapman1, we've spoken via Tech LadyMafia! Really great to see you here!

Hey everyone, happy to see the community flourishing and to become a part of it. I started a company (Voteit.com) and am contributing all of the code to a foundation to make free for everyone. Lots of stuff we can pool together and share experiences. My day job is running another company I started up, turbosquid.com. Anyway, interesting times, and I vow to make it to NZ to visit Loomio in person.

@mattwisdom thank you so much for supporting the campaign, and for your interest in Loomio! We're really glad to have you in the community.

Welcome @joopkieftelapingvi !

I would love to install an instance of my own of Loomio for the local Party, as communication infrastructure and decision platform.

You might be interested in the Installing Loomio Subgroup

Thanks @alanna, already joined there and got accepted there a bit earlier even :). I am also translating Loomio to Esperanto now, and that seems to be going quite well :).

Welcome @david11!

Hi I recently donated and I am a part of a group that is currently debating whether or not to give loomio a try… too bad we’re not using loomio, it might go quicker :P

Thanks @alanna! :)

Just dropping a note here to say hello. I'm a freelance facilitator and group skills teacher based in Eugene, Oregon, US. I work with groups face-to-face, yet recognize the need for online deliberation and decision tools, so i appreciate the development of Loomio. I have dozens of articles on facilitation, consensus, and related topics posted at http://www.treegroup.info, in case any of them are useful.

I believe far too much precious life energy gets wasted in crappy meetings, and that people should not settle for meetings that are less than lively, productive, and connecting. Strong process leads to excellent product. Rather than being wed to any one method, i enjoy creatively blending formats and approaches to meet groups' needs.

That enthusiasm led me to get involved in the creation of the card deck Group Works: A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings. The deck is available for free download as well as for sale at http://www.groupworksdeck.org--check it out!

Oops, that last URL should have posted as
http://www.groupworksdeck.org
but it didn't and i don't see a way to edit.

It seems you can remove and then post again with correction...

Welcome @olivermintersolvol !

Hi all! My name is Oliver and I am a being who at this stage is specialising in audio & events. I am interested in Loomio as I feel it holds a great deal of potential in a wide variety of applications and would love to offer my thoughts on how it could develop and evolve.

Welcome to @caeschlick!

I’m a German-Venezuelan citizen currently living in Europe, trying to make living possible again in Venezuela so everyone can live freely, in peace and in harmony with the world, making and setting up an example for other cultures to follow and make way to new ideas, co-ruling methods and ways of living. Hopping to use Loomio as a tool to spread and get new and better ideas out in the world for the benefit of everyone.

Great to have you in here with us Cae, make yourself at home :)

Thanks @richarddbartlett I'll do ;)

Hey everyone welcome @charlesthomassin

French student in Local Development, involved in the creation of a food coop and in some other projects, I feel deeply concerned by the issues of participatory democracy. That’s why I’d love to help and support Loomio project the way I can by joining the community.

Glad you could join us Charles! Thanks so much for your support :)

Welcome to @hugovitalis and @kirstenjensen from New Zealand Treasury.

I have had the pleasure of connecting with Hugo and Kirsten this week about the potential of using Loomio to help build successful collaborations across agencies in our Government. Hugo and Kirsten are keen to see active Loomio spaces to understand the power of this tool.

• Welcome to you both, please introduce yourselves here *, and specify any key areas of interest you may have for discussion so that other community members can respond and engage with you, or direct you to discussions & groups which may be of interest to you. Nga mihi

Hi as Chelsea says Kirsten and I came across Loomio as we were pondering a better way of working with others to generate solutions to common problems. I am particularly interested in Loomio as a tool to support the development of new ideas and collaboratively agreeing on potential solutions. Just wanted to find out more about Loomio and the different ways it might be used. Chelsea suggested the best way was to join and have a closer look...

Welcome @johnbrooker! John was part of VISA when it was still run as a chaordic organisation, and now does wonderful facilitation consulting at yesand.co.uk. Great to talk to you this morning John! I think Loomio is more likely to open up more opportunities than put you out of work :)

"Hi. I’m John. I’m interested in chaordic organisations and I am a workshop facilitator who spends his life encouraging people to collaborate, innovate, make decisions etc. I live in London, England and I’d like to help Loomio grow (although it might put me out of work!)."

Thanks Ben. It was inspiring talking to you, so much so I set up a group and did my first ever crowd funding donation! Good luck with it.

Welcome @dwt! Wonderful to have you here - it'd be great to hear more about your experience with liquid democracy!

"Hi there,
I’m one of the original contributors to the liquid democracy effort in germany that happened around the pirate party there.
I really like what you are doing and would love to contribute some of the knowledge we gathered (that I still remember).
Am I in? :-)
Regards,
dwt"

Welcome @daviddigiovanni! David runs a great website called GroupSRC, highlighting the ways groups can use technology to communicate more effectively.

He wrote a really nice piece about Loomio and has been massively helpful getting the word out about the campaign on Reddit.

Thanks David!

Welcome new members!

@nickjohnstone

Interested contributor and friend of Enspiral. Already opened a pull request to fix an issue on Loomio.

@iuliandumitrascu

Hi! I like your approach to voting. I actually see consultations here. We might build a relationship.

Thanks @alanna

Just a bit of an introduction. I'm an 18 year old skater/hacker/wannabe entrepreneur, soon off to be part of the first cohort of Enspiral's Dev Academy.

I really like Loomio as a project (both in ideals and in execution) and I'm hopefully going to be able to help out on the code side.

Mwahahahaha we're sucking you in @nickjohnstone

Welcome Ben Bowie!

I'm an “ideas” man :) as everyone is…And am passionate about the Start up (lean start up community). I am also close to reaching for funding on a project i have been working on & Alanna suggest i join the group.

Welcome @frederickstark and @kevinmartin !!

Please introduce yourself :)

Thanks Alanna!
I'm an Australian climate activist, member of the Australian Pirate Party, and Web developer.
The Loomio crowdfund campaign got me really interested in this as a tool to use in various groups, organisations and companies. So I popped my head in to take a look!

I'm most excited for no more wasted time and fake 'consensus of the silent' in phone link ups!

Thank you Alanna. I am a computer science student from Trivandrum, India. Loomio has been discussed in various mailing lists I subscribe to and thought that it would serve as a good decision making platform for our college FOSS (Free and open source software) cell. I'm excited to say that loomio is a fine example to show my peers how open source is taking the world by storm. Good job :)

@benjaminknightloom Thanks for the kind words Ben!

I'm really glad to have found Loomio just the other day after writing about the decentralization of political power in democratic systems. A lot of my focus has been on how groups can use reddit and reddit-like technology to communicate more effectively. I would say Loomio is a "reddit-like technology", one that is really effective at helping groups make decisions. So I'm excited to see where this all goes.

As far as me personally, I am 27, live in the US, and work as a frontend web developer.

Hi!
Google Search makes available immediately enough information about me.
I am interested in this community because I would like to help improve communication. People need to coordinate and they could do this better, including over the Internet.
To what goals do we unite?
What would the Loomio team like us to do with their work?
Services like Delib, List.ly, Typeform, OpinionStage, PollDaddy, SurveyMonkey and FluidSurveys already provide such services. Should we use some of their work?
I would design any crucial application like this one so that it can be adapted to different usage scenarios and the user experience is close to optimal. I would like Loomio to have many more features and to communicate with other main applications, e.g. for organization management and social networking.
I like it that the Loomio team offer this software for sale to many teams. I would like such services to be used by more than one billion people.
I would participate in designing this service if you asked me to.

Hey @alexpb ! Great to meet you online recently and discuss Mesh Democracy projects! Welcome to the Loomio community, feel free to throw up any topics you want to take action on with others, or discuss :)

Here's how Alex introduced himself (feel free to add to this Alex!)

"Hi, I am working on a similar tool “Mesh Democracy” - an extension to the distrubited F2F system Retroshare adding a topic tree and liquid democractic voting. chozabu.net"

Yo @frederickstark ! Awesome to see a climateer here in Loomio. Do you think AYCC could use Loomio?

@chelsearobinson Definitely!
At the moment discussions and decisions on campaigns that actually make it to the grassroots take forever because each state and action group need to have a meeting to provide ideas and feedback before it goes back up the chain in more meetings!
Mostly this just leads to an aversion to democratic processes, despite a deep desire for more democracy. Loomio could be the solution we needed all along.

I'm not in any decision making spaces anymore, but I'll talk to the current coordinators to see if I can plant the idea in their heads ;)

Welcome @Crispin Clarke!

Crispin introduced himself thusly: "Hi - I’m an entrepreneur, cofounder of a tech startup in California and Colorado, USA, and somebody interested in community and collaboration for pro-social change."

@opseedlib Welcome! This is the home of the Loomio community. Introduce yourself if you would like to provide more info - we all love hearing what people would like to discuss in more depth :)

"I would like to create a place to share #gmofree seeds with our neighbors. #WaveOfAction #OpSeedLib

I wish to create a place where people can post requests for gmo-free seeds so that others in their area can share with them.

I save every seed I can and have made seed library starter kits for requests in my area. If we all save our seeds we can share with our neighbours. We can share starter kits or even one variety of seed.

Every seed can count.

GMO seeds are everywhere. If you go into any store the gmo brands are plentiful always up front and central with huge advertising displays. Organics are off to the side if you can find them at all.

Seeds are costly and they should be free to home growers.

Why do WE have to pay for them? We don’t need to when we can share them.

Thank you for helping to make the world a better place."

Welcome to some new members! @benjaminlupton @brianfey - tell us about yourself!

@laynesmall ....

I’m an operations developer who’s recently left a VFX house to return to university to study electrical engineering. I’ve long felt the need for something like Loomio, and now I want to help.

There are a couple electrical engineers around here, like @richarddbartlett :)

I have been needing a decision making platform for some time.

I am building an intentional community in my permaculture farm, and don't have a lot of faith in consensus decision making. Often there is too much overhead talking without memory or prior discussions. Wasteful.
"Community decision making" often ends up being false with the strong personalities running the show.
So I want a software solution.
I spend many years is software design so perhaps I will have feedback for you.

Right now it is a dictatorship, but as others get involved more decisions with be handled by the group as I near death

You might want to see this question and add your answer about how you use Loomio for a small community: https://www.quora.com/Decision-Making/What-software-could-I-use-for-100-or-more-people-to-be-able-propose-and-vote-on-decisions-for-a-small-town

I plan to have a public Loomio project, and a private one just for residents.

If you have an interest in my strange project, you can like this page to see photos as I post them: https://www.facebook.com/bosqueforest

-Brian Fey
https://www.facebook.com/brianfey

If you have an interest in intentional communities you can watch a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UYHoLzxb_4

Thanks @brianfey ! All the best with your project. If you run into any issues, want to share feedback, or want to discuss best practice with other Loomio users, please feel free to post around here in the Community.

Welcome new members!

@matthewhead

I am a teacher in Oregon, USA. I frequently attend meetings where decisions have to be made and would love a better way to handle these decisions. This tool seems to be a great start. I am very interested in discovering ways to use Loomio in education to facilitate discussions and expedite the meeting process to spend more time working with teachers and students and less time in meetings.

There are many people in this community really interested in how Loomio can work in educational settings, like @mixirving @silviazuur @benjaminknightloom - please keep us posted!

@umutcanonal

This project is very fascinating. I am a software developer on a collobrative consumption project called Library of Stuff in Turkey. We are building our software as a free software and our project is also a social enterprise. I think we can use Loomio for making decision. But furthermore, I think we can learn lots of things from you. So, I want to join your community :)

I'm sure you're aware that Loomio is available in Turkish. All the best with your project and let us know if there's anything we can do to help and mutually learn from one another :)

Welcome new members!

@jamshedpoonawalla

Hello! I’d like to develop a CRM-plattform for the german pharmacies. The biggest problem is to catch the attention of the collegues, that work in the professional associations for long. There should be kind of FAX-Gateway for Loomio. Maybe some kind of the thing, that is used by Loomio for translation. If there was a Fax-connection into a Loomio-group, the group-members could “translate” the fax into text, and consider the info for the poll… Best regards & happy easter!

@erickimori

My name is Eric Kimori, the Executive Director of Complitkenya. COMPLITKENYA is a registered Community Based Organization whose vision to establish modern world-class Community Access Centres in rural areas so as to promote Community ICT Development, promote e-learning and enhance youth employment through ICTs. Due to the documented evident reality in the community about the ever widening digital gap and that rural populations are increasingly being left behind in the technological development, the need for modern and well equipped Community Access Centres to address this gap was hatched at the formation of Complitkenya. We have established 3 such centre so far. Currently we seeking funds to build Nyamira county’s first digital library to help democratize access to information, spur socio-economic development and encourage e-learning. This group could help us network with potential donors or have access to relevant resources.

@christian welcome!

Here is how Christian introduced himself -
I’m a developer in Portland, Oregon, USA. Loomio is the most promising application I have seen in a while with so much potential to really change the landscape of decision making and consensus building all over the world. I will be following this project closely and hope to get some time to delve deeper soon.

Welcome @tobiaseigen !

"Greetings!

I am interested in Loomio for use by my organization (Kabissa - Space for Change in Africa http://www.kabissa.org) and our strategic decisionmaking, as well as perhaps to support decisionmaking in other communities I am involved in including my real-world neighbors on the island where I live (Bainbridge Island, near Seattle) and my geographically dispersed family (Berlin, Washington DC, Berkeley, CA, Bainbridge).

I am deeply impressed by what I see and in particular like the humanity shown in the user interface design. The makers of Loomio clearly don’t put the technology first and you want to serve those trying to make the world a better place. I salute you for that.

Cheers,

Tobias"

@mathijsdebruin ! Welcome!

Here's how Mathijs introduced himself to us on sign-in:
Activist, philosopher, software developer and democracy enthausiast.

Let us know what you're interested in so you can connect with others on topics you care about :)

Glad to be here. Thanks for the warm welcome! :)

"Hi my name is @Elaine I am a business student in my last year with experience in a top down government and corporate entities. I am interested in Loomis because it offers an open forum approach exposing the productivity that can arise from such business practice. I am excited to see this concept further developed and effectively implemented into bigger corporate/ government organisations in particular."\

Welcome!

@peterschurman1 Hi Peter, great to talk with you on Google hangouts. This is the place in Loomio Community where we invite people to introduce themselves and what they're working on so that you might meet others also interested in what you're doing! Feel free to start a conversation about what we were discussing about your work.
http://oneglobaldemocracy.com/

Welcome Elaine!

Hi my name is Elaine I am a business student in my last year with experience in a top down government and corporate entities. I am interested in Loomis because it offers an open forum approach exposing the productivity that can arise from such business practice. I am excited to see this concept further developed and effectively implemented into bigger corporate/ government organisations in particular.

( @robertguthrie how come I can't tag Elaine O'Rourke? :( )

Welcome 上官文青! Google Translate tells me: "Hello, my name is Shang Wen Qing, Shenyang, Tianjin University, graduating in 2005, starting in 2002 in the country has been engaged in activist work, has participated in many domestic famous activism. Currently a member of the Executive Council is a citizen monitoring, "Citizen Digest" group of young volunteers, the second batch of signers of Charter 08, a very recognized for your organization, you want to become a member"

Welcome Anna!

Hi there. I’m keen to see whether this would be a good avenue to empower self-assembly during a national emergency. I’m currently working on a project for a government agency where we’re assessing the efficiency and reach of the existing channels in reaching the goal (to provide information for people to make informed decisions). Would be fun to see if there are others thinking along the same lines as me. Cheers.

(@robertguthrie why can't I tag Anna??)

Welcome new members @jimmywales and @dnephin!

Feel free to tell us a bit about yourselves if keen!

Welcome new members!

@michaelduanemoorin

@mikeumus at BetaBulls & DocPad/Bevry. We’re starting to use Loomio for Bevry decisions and may do a open-source loomio glassware app at BetaBulls. We have ideas for loomio! Cheers.

@jerryscott

I am a technology researcher working on my PhD in collaboration technology. Loomio seems to address some of the collaboration gaps that I have been looking at. I’m interested in learning more about it, and designing some Loomio-like extensions or features in other software that address some of my specific research interests.

Jerry you might want to talk to @benjaminknightloom and @jeffswift about an academic perspective

Thanks @alanna. Here's the idea, voting on things with texts/Twitter (especially Twitter for open groups/campaigns) . Boom! :D

Hey @timrayner ! Welcome to the Loomio Community. Great to skype with you a couple of weeks ago.

This is how Tim introduced himself:
"Hi guys,

Tim from One Million Acts of Innovation here. We’re keen to explore how to use Loomio for grassroots campaigning, so I’d like to jump in on this discussion.

Tim"

Tim feel free to introduce yourself in more depth

Thanks @chelsearobinson!

Hi everyone. I'm a Kiwi living in Sydney, Australia. Came over here to study philosophy, and wound up doing research on how the internet was scaling transnational social movement activity. This was 2000-2008, so I started off inspired by the anti-globalization movement and tailed off (as my academic aspirations declined) wondering how this new social media thing might enable even broader forms of progressive engagement. Facebook was young, Twitter had just launched, and social media marketers had yet to flood the channels with branding. So I was an optimist.

Off the back of this research, I wrote Coalition of the Willing, which became this huge unruly collaborative film project http://coalitionofthewilling.org.uk. Looking back, it's funny to think that the idea of taking an open source approach to tackling climate change might be anything but blatently obvious, but we managed to turn a few a heads and won some awards in the process.

After this, I wound up working with a network of people inspired by the film http://coalitionblog.org, which evolved into a series of start ups. None of them progressed beyond alpha stage, but it was a great experience - worked with all kinds of people (including folks from NASA at one point!) and learned heaps.

When OWS landed I was totally on board. This post sums up where my head was at in 2011: http://www.coalitionblog.org/2011/10/swarm-wall-street-why-an-anti-political-movement-is-the-most-important-force-on-the-planet/.

Like the Loomio team, I was frustrated when OWS fizzled out. I felt that there was a missed opportunity - that movement leaders should have elaborated and scaled a set of mechanisms for enabling creative making and doing. So, from this point, I began thinking about how to create a movement that was focused on building and scaling collaborative innovation tools and culture. This led me to co-found One Million Acts of Innovation (Aust.) in 2013.

OMAoI is still in pre-launch stage. We don't even have a website yet, just a landing page http://onemillionactsofinnovation.org.au. It looks corporate, but that's only because we're chasing big money at the moment. The campaign itself aims to engage groups and organisations in all sectors and at all levels of Australian society. Watch this space.

To finish up, here's a couple of posts that I'm kinda proud of, one on Maker Democracy http://philosophyforchange.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/maker-democracy-roberto-unger-progressive-politics-and-collaborative-experimentation/ and a fictional report from the end of this century on how sharing, making, and open sourcing changed the world. http://philosophyforchange.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/2045-united-federation-report-on-the-great-transition-the-culture-of-transition/ Enjoy!

Welcome @michaelmckinsey !

I am the founder and CEO of FlashByte Digital, LLC http://www.flashbyte.us - which is a WISP in Southern California, USA. I am also involved with several start-up projects, one of which recently put up a diaspora pod at:

https://diaspora.fr33.co

I am interested in the D* project, and possibly on figuring out a way to include the diaspora pod in our CDSSO and so ended up here on loomia reading the discussions about the project.

In seeking information about D* I found loomia, which honestly was like a gift from the heavens.

A major problem facing the new project I am working on was how to allow people to come together in a collaborative and open environment and make proposals and decisions, and in the process of us envisioning our platform somehow none of us had heard of loomia. Finding this project has saves us an immense amount of work that would have required we functionally create the same product and we are immediately planning on setting up our own loomia server. I bought into the crowd funding at the “Host it yourself” level, and I am in the process of setting up your current implementation. I plan on contributing code and resources as well as spreading the word about what is an absolutely needed platform! If you had not done this, my team would have ended up needing to do it ourselves, and so in a real way I feel like your crowd funding effort reduced our development budget by every dollar you raised. We offer great congratulations on meeting your goal!

I am involved in the Occupy movement, and not having to sit out in a cold park for hours to make a decision is GREAT! My team here are really look forward to getting to know loomia inside and out.

@seantilleycommunit is here from Diaspora and might be interested in what you're doing with your Pod @michaelmckinsey

Great to have you in the community Michael

Share with me on Diaspora!

diaspora* ID: [email protected]

https://diaspora.fr33.co/u/mmc

@michaelmckinsey Feel free to add me on DIASPORA*

[email protected] is my handle, you can find me using the search. ;) I wasn't able to find you, but I know there are some federation changes in the latest upstream release, and joindiaspora.com hasn't upgraded yet.

@seantilleycommunit I am sharing with you on D* - found you no problem. I hope there is not something wrong with my pod configuration that you could not find me.

[email protected]

Welcome to a bunch of new members! We're very glad to have you here.

@nurana

I’m Nurana from Azerbaijan, Baku city.I’m 24 and I’m a company founder.

@erkangencol

I feel extremely inspired and empowered by the existence of Loomio and would like to contribute in any way I can as I’ll definitely be an evangelist for the widespread us of it in community organizing. I have an experience of being involved in couple of technology startups back in 1997-2004 in the Production and Product Management roles so I might have some suggestions to make Loomio better.

@stevecoffman

Hello Everyone, I’m a builder/ inventor/ organic gardener/ activist who lives in Ashland, Oregon. I discovered Loomio through Metagov [email protected], and found out about them through my involvement in the #Occupy protests several years ago. My first intro into group decision-making was during the Diablo Canyon (nuclear power plant) Blockade back in the early 80s. I was later involved in several (anti-nuke) protests at the Nevada Test Site. From these events I experienced the incredible empowerment that can arise through well-facilitated group decision-making….and have been on a parallel odyssey or quest ever since. I’m convinced that the only way we are ever going to bring about a more holistic and sustainable society is through something akin to what is developing here with Loomio. Thanks so much for getting this ball rolling! I’m really excited to be a member of your team.

@deanhewson

Hi, I build web stuff and am a new Industrial Design student, constantly trying to put things together and get communities together and am really interested in helping build this one.

@isabelledelgrange can you tell us a bit about yourself?

So many wonderful people introducing themselves here!

Bienvenue aux nouveaux membres!

@fanny

Bonjour nouvelle venue sur loomio je découvre la communauté et son fonctionnement. Je suis avant tout une militante convaincue par plein de causes certaines “ perdues” d autres moins toujours prête au débat et en quête d idées nouvelles

@jeronimoluisbarrac @dosto @canellebambou ... Voulez-vous nous parler de vous?

(sorry I don't really speak French!)

Welcome new members!

@johngietzen

I’m a software engineer from Seattle, WA. I’m recently really interested in civics and “consensus software” like loomio and wrangl.com.

@timmcnamara

Coordinator of the Science in Society group and love.loomio.org supporter.

Hi!

Welcome @jessenaiman

I was trying to build a similar system during the Occupy Movement. I may have some ideas to lend…and I have a job that may allow me to get this somewhere important.

And @edgalligan care to tell us a bit about yourself?

Welcome @m4xin3 !

I read an article about Digital Democracy in RT and it mentioned Loomio. I thought it would be good to check it out to see what it was all about.

Welcome to some new people!

@alexwatt

Hello, i have thought about OA platforms for a long time, but this is the first one that really feels natural to work with. I do think we need proxy’s though, if this is going to scale at all.

@neelgupta

I love Philosophy & Computers

hello team!

Hello everyone :)

@alexwatt, what's OA?

Sorry, it means open access but really was a mental slip as i meant to say open democracy.

Welcome @dallasknight !

Hello. I am new to the Loomio community and an excited about the prospect of using Loomio as I have followed the development of this web-based decision support software for a few years. The internet has always held a fascination for me for it’s ability to democratise information.
I am a ‘brand new’ PhD graduate (Sat 10th May), with an interest in Health Information Science, and plan to garner representatives from stakeholder health provider groups together using Loomio to broker solutions to existing barriers which prevent disempowered groups getting easy access to health services.

Glad to have you here! You might be interested in this post about how Loomio is helping Pathways, and organisation focused on mental health. I think Loomio has great potential in the health field and I'm interested in your thoughts about that.

Then we both think that Loomio has great potential in the health field. I plan to get to know Loomio really well, so I can coordinate health groups and direct them towards using Loomio. This current project is my first hands-on venture, so there is lots of learning to do.

Welcome to some new members!

@jesteracer

Ruby on rails developer, vegeterian, anarchist from Russia.

@andrewmicone

I just want to try this out because I like the consensus based decision making methods it supports and I want to see how well Loomio does the job.

@emilvikstrom

Since I work with helping organizations transform to new forms I want to see what possibilities Loomio will create.

Welcome @henrilaupmaa @seanfarmelo @jessica4 ! Care to tell us a bit about yourself?

And some more new members....

@johnlove

hacking and healing to build a thrivable world

@jamesedwards

Am new to Loomio and have started a group dedicated to exploring the subject of human Scale Technology. I have a diverse background, including retail, adventure tourism, social and economic policy, and food production. I have deep concern regarding the trajectory of future developments in array of spheres, politics, economics, labour relations, social justice, environmental exploitation, and technological change, all of which are inextricably intertwined.

@elifeghali1

Just getting started using Loomio. Work for a US-based nonprofit network that is looking into using the software in our working groups.

Hi - I’m a co founder of a number of student co-operatives in the Uk - greenbikeproject.net the birmingham student housing co-op and also involved in getting a national network of student co-operatives going ( students.coop )

Currently using loomio to co-ordinate brewing and also for our community co-op newspaper www.slaneystreet.com - I tweet @seanfarmelo

Welcome @seanfarmelo ! My first introduction to consensus decision making was in student housing co-ops. Powerful stuff!

@jessedoud might be interested in connecting about bikes :) @josefdaviescoates is also big into co-ops in the UK and is a Loomio supporter.

hey @seanfarmelo good to see you here :) have you read this yet? http://www.managementexchange.com/story/collaborative-funding-dissolve-authority-empower-everyone-and-crowdsource-smarter-transparent

I've know of Enspiral for a while and long been a Loomio fan but it wasn't until read that I realised quite how much I love what they're doing!

@alanna thanks for the mention. I met Sean at a co-op event in Manchester and then again at the launch of http://www.students.coop/ a few month ago :)

My name is Roslyn. I wrote my PhD on democracy and international law (finished three years ago) and basically made the argument for establishing direct digital democracy as a way to deal with our numerous international relations issues. I knew enough about IT (I am a lawyer by training) to know that digitial democracy was possible, and, in fact, inevitable. Needless to say I was ecstatic to find out that someone out there was actually working on this. I didn't sleep all night. I currently live in Ireland where I lecture (on a programme combining IT and international law) and am a regular contributor to media on legal and political issues (mainly RT). This is a fascinating project and I'm thrilled to get in touch with like-minded people. I speak English, German and a bit of Spanish and French. On Twitter @roslynfuller

Really happy to have you here @roslyn!

Welcome @mattsale !

I’m 39 and live in Auckland, NZ. I’m Retail General Manager at Public Trust, New Zealand’s largest provider of Wills, Powers of Attorney and Trustee services. One of my team members went to a day with Gary Hamel recently and his learnings included Loomio. I am passionate about helping people love their work, and believe involvement in deciding what and how to improve customer experience is a great motivator for most people. So I’m very excited to be testing Loomio to see how it could facilitate that involvement for our staff.

Welcome @jordifaxedas !

Very interested in the development of Loomio. I think it is a great tool to empower real and direct democracy. I’ve been active in the translation of Loomio into Catalan. I study Engineering in Copenhagen (Denmark) but born and risen in Catalunya (Spain).

Welcome @eamonnoflaherty !

I’m a Sydney occupier, currently challenging the constitutionality of our 2011 arrests (and about to be bankrupt for my efforts, but ah well :) ) I’m interested in bettering Democracy, and recognise in Loomio the same cause that inspired me in my effort to create Demos- a democratic, online issues voting platform. I’d love to know more about Loomio, where it is similar and where different, from my own idea. Here is my FB event for my crowdfunding effort, and the Start Some Good page. Thankyou. Glad to have found you :)

hey @eamonnoflaherty you should check out http://iagr.ee set up by some friends of mine who are doing similar stuff :)

Welcome to some new members!

@noosquest

Hi, I love your project, we give it a try for a users feedback of our pearltrees users community

@kenlefebvre

I am experimenting with Loomio for helping my extended family make decisions about an upcoming reunion. In general, I am personally a fan of Loomio’s vision, as I believe a solid platform for introducing genuine democracy into any group is sorely needed.

@jonahfreeland

Hi, I’m Jonathan, I work as a freelance web developer. I’ve been thinking about collaborative decision making applications for quite a few years but never got round to building one. Recently, after an inspired search to see if anyone had released one yet, I found you guys. I would like to get involved in the development side of things, fixing bugs etc. Anyway, nice to be here and meet you all.

and @danielplaat and @inikette too!

Hello; I'm an OWS veteran of the Info WG, with occupy from day one. I have heavy experience with consensus in person and have worked in a think tank working group to hash out process, membership, and putting the ideas of Values based consensus into practice in the following year(2012). The past year I've been a growing facilitator for Occupy Albany. Upon hearing about putting consensus on an online platform through an occupy podcast; I wanted to check it out and see if I could contribute. With your coverage in Wired a comrade in the consensus group really hated on the idea; as to him this can only best be done in person; otherwise we are putting screens between us and tring to solve human communication problems, like listening to each other instead of having "the right program." I disagreed with him mostly; So I'd like to contribute to make sure there's an amount of humanity in this and importantly, work to take out the need for voting. More on that with a proposal in the right discussion section.

Thank you & Felicitations for having created such a powerful tool.... strongly agree with @roslynfuller above :
"...establishing direct digital democracy as a way to deal with our numerous international relations issues... & that digitial democracy is possible, and, in fact, inevitable."

I'm here to try it for our users community & figure out how it can be used elsewhere & at different scales

@josefdaviescoates Thanks Josef I'd love to talk to your friends- that link doesn't work however.

@eamonnoflaherty ah, it is only really in alpha and I think they're in the middle of another development cycle so must be working on stuff contact https://twitter.com/eddowding :)

Kia Ora everybody
I am new to Loomio and have come to this community via the Internet Party.

I live in Dunedin New Zealand and I am a 23 year old with 40 years of experience. I have been a pharmacist for most of my working life but I have also been a University lecturer, hosted a radio show, been an elected member of a District Health Board and presently I am a restaurant owner and some-time chef.

I have lives and worked in Papua New Guinea, and Vanuatu and have sent time in Thailand.

As a student I was part of the huge changes that swept the world in the 1970's. My first computer was a Commodore 64 in the late 1970's and when I purchased my first laptop I had to choose between a 40Mb and an 80Mb hard drive and chose the 40Mb as at the time I couldn't see how I could possibly use 80Mb!!!!

I highlight this because there seems to be some opinion that the technology revolution is new.

As a 60th birthday present to myself I went back to University to study full-time for and MBA - it was the best 2 years of my life with exchanges to Germany and Thailand.

My expertise and interest in in health. My MBA research was on Shared Electronic Health Records and I used some exciting software called 1000Minds - www.1000minds.com . !000Minds is multi criteria decision making software and it was extremely useful for obtaining and weighting public opinion via a web-based survey.

I see a real synergy between Loomio and 1000Minds in the sense that Loomio provides the "panel of experts" who develop the questions and then you can use 1000Minds to present a series of hypothetical choices to a sample population and weight their preferences.

I have attached a proposal that I wrote to the Internet Party when I first learned that we were going to use Loomio as a democracy tool.

I am very keen to part of any Health Informatics group

Delighted to have you in the community @peterbarron! I'm part of the Loomio team, and Dunedin has a special place in my heart (my first 22 years of life were there).

I totally agree with your sense of synergy between Loomio and 1000 Minds! The great news is that Franz and Paul agree - the motivation is absolutely there, so it's just resources that are limiting us in terms of looking at integration. So any suggestions or ideas there would be much appreciated :) I'm really enjoying the thinking behind this proposal!

I'd love a chance to talk with you - if you email me at ben [at] loomio.org, it would be great to make a time to meet when I'm visiting Dunedin at the end of next week.

Make yourself at home in the community and don't hesitate to reach out with any questions :)

Delighted to introduce some wonderful individuals to the community this morning :)

Vadim - @vadimmalykh :
"I’m individual programmer from Russia. Interested in all kind of collaboration and social using information technology."

Vadim - you have found the right place :)

David - @davidbohlmark :
"Tja! Jag vill också vara med och utveckla plattformen! :)"

Which the internet tells me means "Well! I also want to be involved in developing the platform! :)" in Swedish.

We would love to have you involved David!

And last but not least, Joi - @joiito :
"I am the director of the MIT Media Lab and a fan of Loomio. Would like to participate in the community and explore using it in some of my organizations."

@joiito, it was wonderful to meet you this morning - we're huge fans of the amazing stuff coming out of MIT Media Lab, so really looking forward to finding ways to work together! I'm sure others in the community will be really interested to hear about your work.

And now we're joined by Nuong (@nuongnguyen). Great to have you here Nuong - feel free to share some words with the group about your background and what's brought you to Loomio :)

Welcome to the community Fred Carr!

Fred has this to say about himself:

"I’m a retired engineer with a deep interest in philosophy and economic justice. A friend from the Occupy movement recently pointed me to the Loomio project because he knew that I had been investigating consensus software.
Based on what I’ve seen, and I’ve seen many startup ventures over a period of decades, all the necessary elements are in place for this project to bloom in a big way in the coming years. The combination of people and ideas around Loomio is channeling the energy we saw with Occupy into what will become an important mechanism for change in this time of need.
This is only the beginning for you. You are on the leading edge of history!
Fred"

Welcome @willmalina

I’m currently involved in the Metagovernment project and am interested in contributing to the development of loomio. I will be studying philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison next fall and currently reside in Minnesota, USA. I find loomio’s mission inspiring and would love to participate in its development.

Welcome @laurensmith

Interested in social entrepreneurship, development and innovation. Keen to learn more about Loomio as a potential tool for ADC which is a NZ based charity that support a microfinance bank in Myanmar and Malawi.

Welcome to the community @williamchu! William, thanks for your lovely introduction message - great to have you here :)

"Hi, I’m a police dispatcher from Vancouver, BC. I love everything about what you guys are doing here (as well as at the Enspiral Network) and hope I can contribute any way I can. Unfortunately, I have little programming knowledge. But I have no shortage of ideas and motivation, starting with testing the website’s new features and spreading the word. I believe there is unlimited potential for a website that promotes direct/deliberative/liquid/e- democracy."

Lots of lovely people to introduce today!

Welcome @claudiumarginean, who is one of the people who translated Loomio into Romanian :)

Welcome also @micahdaigle1 , who is a wonderful friend of Loomio and super knowledgeable democracy technologist (check out the Upgrade Democracy community).

We're also joined by @ksenya and @mariela - feel free to introduce yourselves to the group.

Make yourselves at home and feel free to ask any questions :)

Great to be back on Loomio.
"...there is unlimited potential for a website that promotes direct/deliberative/liquid/e- democracy." - very nicely put by @williamchu, so I'm just quoting.

Welcome! Bienvenido!

@miguelvazquezmoren

Estoy investigando herramientas de debate. Pertenezco al Círculo Podemos Alcantarilla. Soy desarrollador de aplicaciones web y aplicaciones e escritorio.

@hubatmcjuhes

I am a member of the Pirate Party of New Zealand and we currently rely heavily on loomio. We are very much looking forward to version 1.0.

Hi,

I am working toward a dissertation in online-deliberative democracy, in Israel. I have a wiki about it here: delib-democracy.org

Cheers

Tal

Welcome @talyaron! Thanks for sharing your work - really interesting stuff :)

Welcome @jochenwalter !

Hi, I am Jochen, an engineer and one world promotor who is interested in transition and how people can get together making decision in respecting each other and using the most comfortable techniques - it doesn’t mean to me that there are only computer and internet to be used!

Welcome to some new members!

@pierreyves do you want to tell us about yourself?

@pabloredondo

Solicito pertenecer al grupo. Jubilado. Para colaborar en la aportación de propuestas.

@tomvanlooy

I’m looking for straightforward ways to interact and collaborate with people across companies on specific topics in Belgium

@croctemp

Hi, I’m Daniel from Spain. I belong to Democracia real YA!, the original group that organized the 15 May 2011 movement of ‘indignados’ in Spain. We are trying loomio as a powerful tool to organize better our nationwide group, and as potential hard users we would like to know and discuss improvements in loomio… Thanks!

@michaelaspangenbur

Really interested in using Loomio long term with some of the groups I am involved in and would like to help it develop further.

Hello,
I'm Pierre-Yves and I am a "Gentil Virus" from Belgium.

If you want to know what the Gentils Virus are and what's their message for real democracy, check our web sites :

http://www.le-message.org/?lang=en
http://gentilsvirus.org

We experiment loomio to discuss and decide together how to update our web sites.

Welcome @dianashand !

I am from ECO Environment and Conservation Organisations of Aorteroa NZ and the Exec Committee is using Loomio to organise discussions and Working groups. http://www.eco.org.nz/

I’m Daniel, I participate in Democracia real YA! Madrid, the group that started the ‘indignados’ movement back in 2011 in Spain. https://www.facebook.com/democraciarealyamadrid

Welcome new people!

@arturo3

Soy Arturo Esteve, estudiante de Ciencias Políticas en la Universidad de Barcelona. Lo que más me gusta de mi carrera es la teoría y filosofía política, la política comparada y el derecho, relaciones y conflictos internacionales. Soy trilingüe y actualmente trabajo en una cooperativa ONG de ayuda social en el barrio del Raval (BCN)

@stijndewinter

I am Stijn, from Belgium and I am following the OpenApp threads. I feel connecting on the Loomio front is probably useful as well.

@dylanbuckley and @cristinaarribas do you want to introduce yourselves?

Welcome @sionwhellens !

Recently set up and coordinating the UK Worker Cooperatives group and Solidarity Fund subgroup. Happy to contribute!

Welcome @janvonmulert !

Hi, Ive started using Loomio through policy incubator for the Internet Party(quite an experiment!). I’ve come across some threads discussing the short comings of loomio for the kind of collaborative decision making the policy incubator is trying to achieve. I would like to make sure the gripes/ideas coming up in the policy incubator get fed back to the loomio developers. If there is a better place to bring this information please let me know.

We're always happy to hear feedback :) Please make sure you check out the Roadmap to see what's already in the backlog. Put new suggestions in Feature Ideas.

welcome @rathy !

I’m a teacher who’s interested in incorporating e-democracy into my classroom, to co-direct lesson content and negotiate a student-centered timetable. Loomio seems like an incredibly powerful tool to achieve this end and I’d like to learn more about it!

@mixirving might have some thoughts for you :)

Bienvenidos, @ofelialemavillar !

Pertenezco al Círculo Podemos A Estrada y Loomio se está probando con una herramienta fundamental en las comunicaciones y vías de votación entre los miembros del Círculo.

Bienvenidos @joseantoniobarbas

Actualmente hemos abierto un grupo y desearía unirme al grupo para solicitar (y en lo posible) aportar ayuda y experiencias.

y @josebecerra tambien!

I want learn about Loomio.

Thanks @alanna ! For some added context, I recently started my own e-democracy site with my class through Your Priorities, an Icelandic open source e-democracy platform. My class are on their front page! Here: www.citizens.is

We've since been experimenting a fair bit with more horizontal forms of leadership and student-centred learning, and it has been such a positive experience! So much so that I've been reading more around the topic (I found out about Loomio through Micah Sifry's 'Big Disconnect') and can't figure out why this isn't a bigger thing!

If there's any other educators on here who also nerd out about this stuff, I would love to hear your thoughts!

@rathy Thanks for the site link. I am from Australia.
https://www.loomio.org/g/GRQl4yUT/senator-online-sol-australia
Senator Online is Australia’s first and only Electronic Direct Democracy Political Party.
(sorry, this group is open to see but closed to join) https://www.loomio.org/g/nzVv8a6F/senator-online-internal-governance
https://www.facebook.com/SenatorOnline/posts/836387449707779
www.senatoronline.org.au

Hi @lbjoum !

Yes, I'm aware of Senator Online and I think what you guys are trying to accomplish is awesome. :) Will there be anyone representing SOL at the auIGF?

auIGF? I don't know what that is but it sounds like we should know.

I see you have joined our loomio. Thanks. Please feel free to talk there.

Do you know any similar loomio groups?

i should say - the pirate party NZ are on loomio https://www.loomio.org/g/EatD8u7s/pirate-party-of-new-zealand.

Hi @rathy , I'm a developer and translation supported on loomio. I've got a background as a high school teacher (this amazing school), but unfortunately loomio hadn't been born while I was teaching. Super exciting that you're exploring this area in school

Hi! I found out about loomio via the Diaspora* wiki. I'm a supporter of enhancing democracy by IT. My hobbies include programming and playing the guitar.

Welcome new people!

@obanosnet

A tech guy interested in participation

@juanjose2

Hola! me gustaría formar parte de esta gran comunidad :-D

@luisdominguez

QUIERO FUTURO PARA NUESTROS HIJOS (UTPIA?)

@saullozano

Loomio newby but very excited about its capabilities. I’m colombian born, live in Germany for more than 30 years and love to create bridges between Germany and Colombia.

Bienvenidos @omarramosfernandez !

Voy a trabajar en el problema de la importación de contactos, que usted ha mencionado.

Welcome!

@edo

i’m a developer from Italy , i’m trying to use loomio in a local political party website as part of a bigger project to help citizen to collaborate and take decision. i hope to find some help and be useful to the community.

@chemafernandez

Soy un español cansado de tanto robo a mano armada y quiero un pais digno e igual para todos. Tengo 52 años y luchando activamente por la cultura mundial, no es la hija pobre. Sin cultura no hay vida.

Welcome new people!

@pintopastel

I need to understand how Loomio works as I need to create a group about Cinema lovers and makers. Pinto pastel is my own blog as I do draw with pastel and love it, but this group is just for research as I need to know if it´ll work with the other group

@katiemimnaugh

As administrator of a Loomio group, I would like to provide feedback on features and content.

@diogonunes

I’m a developer and I recently found out Loomio. I was developing a similar product, also in Rails, available at www.dcid.org/how. Your project is light years away from mine, so I decided to put mine away, donate to your crowdfunding campaign and join your community. I also joined the Portuguese-Portugal translation group. I want to get involved and help you develop Loomio ;)

Diogo, if you'd like to jump in and help with dev, please check out our roadmap and github, and get in touch if you need support to find what to work on.

@alanna Thanks for the introduction and the links. I'll give my best to assist your project ;)

Hey @paularossplata welcome to the community!!

Loomio ❤ Podemos!

Soy informática y soy de ‘PODEMOS’ en Mallorca (Islas Baleares, Spain). En nuestra organización social y política (muy nueva, por cierto) estamos utilizando muchísimo esta herramienta, pues nos parece MUY ÚTIL para poder desarrollar nuestros debates como organización asamblearia que nos planteamos ser. Por eso tengo interés en pertenecer a esta Comunidad, para estar al día con las mejoras de esta fantástica herramienta!! Y también por si algún día precisara hacer alguna pregunta concreta.
Acabo de ver vuestra reciente incorporación del ‘Not following’ y me parece genial!! Congratulations!!
Paula

I am computer and I am from 'Podemos' in Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain). In our (very new, of course) social and political organization we are using this tool a lot, as it seems VERY HELPFUL to develop our discussions as we considered asamblearia organization be. So I have interest in joining this community, to keep up with the improvements of this fantastic tool !! And if you ever do require a specific question. I just saw your recent addition of 'Not following' and I feel great !! Congratulations !!
Paula

Welcome!

@lewgrothe

I’m a developer and a member and supporter of a new private loomio group.

@nicoaumar

Hi! I think this software could be quite useful for groups to organize ideas.

Hi! Thanks for accepting my membership. I'm a developer (in C#) but I have no idea about open source; I'd like to learn about it. I've been using loomio for a while and I find it very useful.

Great! Welcome! Please see http://www.loomio.org/roadmap, where there are
also links to more info for developers who want to get involved. You might
also want to check out this recent blog post where one of our open source
contributors talks about why he got involved...
http://blog.loomio.org/2014/08/10/james/

Hi! Thanks for accepting my membership!! ❤

Welcome to the community @campesino! Great to have you here! And thank you for your brilliant introduction, and for the suggestions you've made so far - we are greatly appreciative!

I’ll take the chance to tell you that I am part of a quite large community of people using Loomio right now to participate in the build up process of a new political party in Spain called “Podemos” [we can] which has recently won 5 seats in the European Parliament, against all odds, and is now third or second position in polls, cracking our perennial bipartisanship! Quite an achievement for a political [anti]party which was a month old on the elections and with participatory/direct democracy and radical transparency as its flag.

So far Loomio is being used extensively for internal decision making in most local [territorial] and thematic [sectorial] groups called “círculos” [circles]. If you do a search of the word podemos or circulo in public groups you’ll get an idea of how many people are using it, a rough count I just made yielded 4 thousand, but this is growing still, at least until local elections next spring or general elections in autumn2015. This is because the IT Circle has been recommending it for maybe a couple of months already and is spreading. Every now and then I here things people say about it, mostly whether Loomio is suitable or not for what we need and considering other options. The suggestions I made are about the things I found most ‘annoying’, specially the lack of a system to categorize discussions and fully separate sets of them inside a group. As @robertguthrie suggested, labels could make the subgroup suggestion not needed anymore, or subgroups altogether. Labels for ordering and filtering. For me specially, dont know for others, it would be great also to be able to use a creation-timestamp order, for doing things like what I’m doing in a group I launched to debate and vote the 65 points of the Earth Section of the political program of Podemos for my Agriculture Circle. You’ll see they are numbered. Whenever somebody posts something the order is broken.

This ‘discussion’ on our main group, of which I’m proud, took me a while to make as it serves as an index with links to the 65 points/discussions in the group for voting the Earth Section [would’ve used a sub in our main group if it didn’t mix with the group discussions] The results of the votes for the 65 points will be posted here on each corresponding line in due time.

But Loomio is great even without the features I suggested! I congratulate and thank your team so much for making it possible for us to advance on this extremely exiciting political adventure we are in. I encourage you to keep working on it and listen to users.

Take care of yourselves

El texto no tenía ningún error gramatical. Pésima traducción.

Welcome new people!

@jacobgadikian

Hi, my name is Jake and I’m going to try to use Loomio to run a decentralized group of businesses, each with its own social goals. I think it’s possible for private enterprise to truly change the world for the better by focusing on only one theme: User empowerment. Think I can hang out with you guys? :)

Yes yes yes! Please hang out with us :) You might already be aware, but Loomio is part of the Enspiral Network which has similar goals to what you describe. Other tools focused on user empowerment are coming out of Enspiral, like Cobudget. Tell us more about your projects!

@roxupedroalvarezgo

I’m interested in Loomio and I want to join this community to learn and hope to help in some tasks.

@anita1

Grupo de coordinación. De podemos manzanares

@joshuanichols

I'm just getting started with loomio. I have created a group for the small town i live in. I think the project has huge potential.

Actually, hot diggitey damn! I had no idea about enspiral until just right now.

Can't wait :)-- I'll be joining their forums right now. When I saw Enspiral I thought it was referring to inspiral...... guess I was off target by a bit(http://www.amazon.com/InSpiral-Condoms-12-Retail-Box/product-reviews/B00014UK78). I had a feeling that my idea was too interesting & natural in an age of networks to truly be unique, but I could not find anyone else actually doing it. I can't wait to learn how you solve the various problems and how you leverage the strength of the model :)!

Cool! Happy to talk more about that @jacobgadikian - probably best to email me when you've had a chance to look into Enspiral a bit more. Definitely check out that link to Cobudget I put above - it also explains a lot about Enspiral.

I just hit the Enspiral homepage and gave it a detailed look. I want to tell you a little bit about the structure of 21C Dawn & how it differs from Enspiral. (Though, I agree with you fully-- it's quite largely the same concept)

Similarities:
1) Centered around coworking ("The Whiteboard" Coworking space will be our hub,
2) Diversity - The more the better including:
a) Linguistic - Since we are english speakers in China, a pre-requisite for non-native chinese speakers is a desire to learn Mandarin. Conversely, native Chinese speakers have a prerequisite of a desire to learn English.

b) Ethnic - in our ~10-20 person coworking space, we aim for a minimum of one person from each continent.

c) Geographic - We want to have a hub on every continent, too.
d) Economic - We aim to make each other better off through our work, but there are no financial requirements to join, and there is a system wide minimum wage that supports a basic lifestyle in Shenzhen and will go up matched to local inflation trends.

3) Corporate Model - We also use corporations in our structure. Our structure is a tad different from yours, however.

Differences:
1) Our "Guiding Org" (21C Dawn Foundation) owns 5% of all the companies associated with it.

2) There are zero employees, instead there are only owners.

3) No "paychecks" -- instead our companies pay dividends monthly and if that's lower than 3000RMB, it is boosted to 3000RMB by other parts of the organization. We do this because we feel that it incentives the individuals to help the organization succeed.

4) Profit - We feel that the profit motive is a powerful motivator and should be harnessed for good instead of eliminated. When companies are clear about their social values, and even how much profit they are seeking, we feel that they can profit so that they can sustain themselves and their employees without acting like members of the Bush Administration.

5) No real politics - We feel that politics has become a distraction from the local reality we live in. We aim to have an impact where we are. We feel that in time, men and women will evolve beyond the need for governments, while governments will simultaneously prove how dangerous they are.

Anyway, I felt kind of odd with all of the first person plural, but I'm pretty sure that I speak for everyone in 21C Dawn when I express my happiness at having found you. Something I considered almost immediately after beginning this conversation:

Do you folks think we are compatible enough to exchange 1%?

Best,
-Jake

Hmmmm I'm not sure I totally agree with how you've characterised the similarities and differences. Might be interesting to talk more though! If you want to find out more about Enspiral, start here: www.enspiral.com/faq :)

We are always super happy to find other aligned communities around the world. We collaborate a lot with diverse groups across the globe. If you want to talk more about Enspiral, hit me up on [email protected]

@jacobgadikian Interested to hear more about the corporate structure of your co-working business group. Do you have a webpage somewhere with more information, Jacob?

Welcome to the community @sophiedavies! Sophie has provided the following introduction:

I am working for a Governmental Organisation and am looking Loomio for online decision making and just want to know a bit more about how it works

Let us know if we can answer any questions!

Welcome @tekarihoken! Care to tell us a little about yourself?

Hello I'm @tekarihoken, i am a member of a french political party called "Nouvelle Donne" and we are making some tests using loomio in order to see how it fit with our needs.

Hey @pedro16! Welcome to the community!

Soy el administrador del grupo Podemos Manises y me gustaría potenciar al máximo la colaboración en mi grupo la discusión politica.

Welcome to the community @nick4 - would you be interested in telling us a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, my names Nick Cooke I'm a member of the birmingham student houseing co-op and students for co-operation.

Welcome new community members!

@arasbm

Hi, I live in British Columbia, Canada. I am interested in designing interfaces that can help communities make decision, and this seems to be the main mission of Loomio. So I like to try it out and see if I can participate.

@ethanwinn

Hi, I’m a member of the CoLab tech coop, and we’ve been using Loomio for board discussions and talking about our own projects to support decentralized, democratic teams working for change. As I understand te impact Loomio can have…for progressive group organizing, for politics, for open source software development…I’m excited and would like to be more involved.

Welcome @elaineclermont, great to have you hear and thank you for your brilliant exciting introduction!

“Who I am and why I want to join the group.”

I don’t know who I am with respect to you, to me, I’m a mom of a 14 year old, an activist since the moment she was born, a thinker since birth, an optimist to put nearly any pessimist to rest comfortably in a bed they can understand, an artist, a poet, a writer, learned how to play on the internet in the 70s, a convicted felon - they didn’t like my idea, said it was a crime, who knew?! …. so, yeah, just your typical #SuburbanSoccerMom (except she’s a swimmer now) gone rogue just trying to breathe on planet earth.

why, because … one, “loomio” makes me think of “loom” which makes me think of weaving, which makes me think of fabric, as in the “fabric of our society.” two, because Sea loves it so much and I like talking to Sea here. three, because I believe in the energy Loomio is presenting here for people to make decisions. It is very neutral to allow things to be just seen as it is, and I don’t mind beta testing if it helps progress good ideas. whether I spend my time here or on myspace or on some other random group, this one seems to be the most interesting one I’ve experienced in a long time. thank you for creating it and being brilliant. =)

@elaineclermont lovely.

Yes, loomio has that 'feel' about it. Well done loomio people.

Please welcome out newest community members! Great to have you here!

@kyleeastrobox

Local Wellingtonian who is very interested in open source and transparent technology. I’ve been using Loomio in beta mode for a couple of years for Kiwiburn, and as such I’m quite invested in the direction Loomio takes :)

@patricia23, would you be interested in telling us a little about yourself?

Welcome to the Loomio community @jansavinc - great to have you here! Please let us know if we can clarify anything :)

Hi, I’m a member of the Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative and we are using Loomio to coordinate decision-making. There are some features that are unclear to me, and I would like to get involved; perhaps at a later date, I could help with development as well

Thank you @hannahsalmon !
I'll get back with some questions in the following days.

In the meantime - this is a great platform, good work everyone! It's made our organising much easier, and we're excited to see what direction it takes.

Hello community, please welcome our new members!

@balasankarchelamat

I am a regular user of Loomio and would like to join the discussions

@boazchen

shared the panel with Ben at PDF
http://personaldemocracy.com/boaz-chen

Welcome to the Loomio community @daniellemacaulay! Great to have you here! Thanks for telling us a little bit about why you were interested in joining this community:

Product Manager hoping to use Loomio to make better decisions as a team.

Please let us know if you have any questions :)

So many wonderful new community members! Welcome! Welcome!

Welcome Jacob Bloom!

I just graduated college in May, and in my free time am a Student Union and Green Party organizer. I am currently attempting to start my own marketing, sales and consulting firm, and just got hired to set up a sales department at a local marketing firm. I want to teach businesses and leaders how to be successful by doing good.
At school I majored in Communication and double minored in Political Science and Religious Studies. I specialize in brand development, brand integrity, strategy, organizational theory, campaign management, field coordination, political psychology, grassroots organizing, lobbying, canvassing, public relations, sales, rhetoric and argument, public speaking, and setting up sales departments.
I found out about loomio and cobudget at the Participatory Budgeting conference in Oakland this weekend, where I saw a presentation and met Alanna Krause. Loomio looks amazing. A fellow collaborator just requested to start an account for our efforts and I am eager to get using it. Also I would love to see if I can help spread the word about loomio and so was directed to get active with this group.

Welcome Scott Ludvigson!

Hi, I’m Scott, I’m studying electronic and computer systems at Victoria University, and I want to join the Loomio community because I’m interested in the potential it has for changing the way we, as members of various communities, voice our opinions and make decisions. I would be happy to contribute to this community if i can.

Welcome @carmenpodemos! Care to tell us a little about yourself?

Welcome @chipdeubner!

I’ve been following and using the project for a while now, and pushed to implement the software at my workplace. Would love to take a bigger role in Loomio’s future.

Welcome @eduardkurganskyi! Would you be interested in telling us a little about yourself?

Welcome to our newest community members!

@jessicaducey

I’m an Enspiral contributor based in Wellington, NZ. I’m keen to learn more about how Loomio operates and eventually participate in a broader way.

@sarkadinagymarton

would like to explore

@carmegarcia, care to tell us a little about yourself and why you were interested in joining the Loomio community?

Hola buenos dias, ne llamo carmen garcia tengi 49 años y empiezo a utilizar loomio porque es una herramienta muy util para nuestro proyecto de organizacion politica PODEMOS, con esta herramienta podemos hacer participe a toda la cuidadania de cualquier decision que se tome .
Gracias por aceptarme, un saludo

Welcome @lagoleon! Would you be interested in providing us with a little information about yourself? :)

Welcome @madsringblom! Thank you very much for providing us with an introduction:

Member of Board at danish political party ‘The Alternative’.

Responsible for our Political Labs and working together with swedish ‘Samutveckling’ on adapting Loomio as digital platform allowing us to involve people in the ongoing development of our political program.

Great to have your voice in here :)

Welcome @mikeshaw! Care to introduce yourself - we would love to hear it!

Hello! I'm Mike, I'm a co-operative activist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. I was active in setting up the Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative and Students for Cooperation. I like graphic design.

Thanks @hannahsalmon :)

As additional background info I can tell that I work as a UX-/UserResearch consultant and have spend a lot of time on digital design in the public sector.

I'm very excited to see how initiatives, trying to use digital solution to unleash group creativity or knowledge, are popping up all over the world. (A big thumbs up to Loomio for beeing one of the most exciting :)

I'm also very interested in getting in touch with other people from (or living in) Denmark who are interested in Loomio or the area of digital democracy or community.

Welcome to the Loomio Community @joshua1! Care to provide us with a little introduction? :)

Welcome @matt11! Care to tell us a little about yourself?

Hello @waelalsaad! Welcome the Loomio Community, and thank you so much for providing us with such an amazing introduction!

Hi loomios
actually I was deep depressed the last days and finding loomio today gave meenergy to stand up and look forward.
Yes, my name is Arab; am Palestinian lived in Germany 17 years and returned home 2009. Since then I work within our family business now managing the wooden furniture factory.

To know abit who I am any my relation to Loomio; 2004 I’ve started advocating for global Palestine beyond borders ending my self putting up a vision for Global Brain Application.
I wish to follow my inner-callings and follow my dream is to build open source ecovillages for appropriate economy around the world which will connect the healing power of humanity and nature. What holds me back to do start working on my dreams is bit complicated ..

I am here to support loomio design and share some ideas I gained along the visions I have, like implementing open translation tools in the process to design a tool for global governance bond to patterlanguage and geographical layering of common decision topics.
I would be happy to join the translation group (?) to help setting up the Arabic version of loomio to build afterwords local loomio community in Palestine which will help spreading it ..

In Spirit and Love
Wael

I think it's quite likely that you will find people who share your vision in this group :)

I've just invited you into the translation group. We would love to support you to build a Loomio community in Palestine. Please don't hesitate to get in touch if we can do anything to help!

Hi y'all,

My name is Joshua, and I'm a sixth year undergraduate, professional non-profit digital marketer, and radical rabble rouser. I've worked in print and radio journalism, and love talking to people.

I'm a trained Authentic Relating Games facilitator, and I'm a deeply playful and lighthearted person. I also used to live in a student housing cooperative in Austin, Texas, which provided me with lots of opportunities to participate in meetings: some very well run, and others not so much.

I love traveling and meeting new people. My last trip took me across the southwest United States, and I would like to travel more internationally. Accordingly, I'm interested in using loomio as a tool to work with teammates while being a digital nomad.

I look forward to contributing to this project and watching it grow across the world!

Welcome to the community @jessicalee! Thanks so much for your kind words of support :)

I love Loomio! I’m an undocumented immigrant activist in the US.

Hey community! Please welcome our new members! Wow!

@luzmariacabralesll

Hola:

Soy coordinadora de un grupo de creación colectiva.

He creado un sub-grupo y deseo saber cómo se puede ver los propósitos de forma gráfica y el tiempo que lleva la discusión.

Un saludo,

LUZ

@tyler1

Consensus fan

@markwhite

We’re also a tech start-up coop.

@janrivers

Hi I’m Jan a Wellington Librarian. I’m really excited about the possibilities of Loomio in collaborative decision making and recently helped organise the Wgton conference Democracy, ethics and the public good.http://www.publicgood.org.nz/2014/08/07/is-the-quality-of-our-democracy-an-election-issue/.

Welcome! Welcome!

More new members! Welcome to the community! Great to have you here and looking forward to collaborating!

@christianmairoll

I was asked via Facebook to contribute my ideas, so I’d like to do. :)

@dominik

I´d like to contribute to the discussion about financial sustainability of loomio.

@keithdavis

I’m a developer and am new to Loomio, but am interested in the direction the project is going.

@karissamckelvey

I am a software engineer interested in building collaboration tools as well as the open data movement.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions :)

Welcome @wolftune, and thank you for providing an introduction!

I’m co-founder of Snowdrift.coop, a sustainable Free/Libre/Open focused fundraising system run as a co-op. I’ve been interested in Loomio since I first heard about it many months ago. We’d like to partner and get Loomio to be a project we help fund. I’ve also engaged with some of the other Enspiral folks already and other mutual connections.

As a co-op ourselves, we’re interested in the best tools for decision-making.

Great to have you as part of this community - looking forward to interesting conversations!

Welcome @paulfenwick !

I’m @pjf on twitter, and I’m strongly involved in free culture, global justice, and social justice. You can find various writings at https://pjf.id.au/

Ooops for automatically generated usernames. :) I'm now @pjf on Loomio as well. ;) And thank you for the welcome, @alanna ! :)

Welcome new people!
@gb

I’m a new Loomio user, I would like to approve/like some features that have been suggested, and I may bring some ideas too.

@danielgoldman

I have a tech/game/entrepreneurial background, and passionate about social and economic justice, and agency.

@jacopo

I volunteer on the development of Airesis a similar platform to Loomio and I am interested in the different vision and method that are implemented in Loomio. I hope I can give as an informed person my contribution.

Welcome new and not-so-new community members! Thank you for your introductions!

@Rafa Cordoba

I am the coordinator of the group “can cunit” and I would like to participate, to propose changes and report errors found.

sorry for my english.

spanish:
soy el coordinador del grupo de “Podemos cunit” y me gustaría participar puesto que me gustaría proponer cambios e informar sobre errores encontrados.

@billy1

Hi, this is Billy, went on the first Loomio retreat ages back, now have a new Loomio account since I came on as an Enspiral contributor, and would be easier to use just one account on Loomio, hence trying to sign up under this account now…

Welcome @joemitchell1!

One of your many funders! Dreamer of digital democracy dreams. Keen to help out Loomio where I can.

Please feel free to share your dreams with us :)

Thanks Hannah! What an extraordinary group of people! (Loomins? Like Moomins?)

Well, the dreams are of global digital democracy.

Plenty of folks - from Ancient Greeks to medieval theologians to modern scholars in the postwar-moment - have dreamed about global democracy. But I think we're just starting to see how it might actually be possible. Not through a world parliament - another representative body distant from its people - but through constant debate, engagement and participation online.

Loomio is the sort of tool that allows us to reimagine global political decision-making. It's exciting! And, I think, a key to solving some of the great global challenges - climate change, poverty, inequality, and so on.

So no pressure Loomins!

Good luck! And keen to help out in anyway I can.

P.S. If you're interested in the idea of global digital democracy, I've put together a quick presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/j0e_m/global-digital-democracy-16975729

@joemitchell1 - Loomins! Love it!!

That slidedeck was AWESOME. I am going to tweet that from @loomio right now :D

Welcome to the Loomio Community @moralfj!

I would like to know how I can to work better with Loomio because I dont know too many things about this tool.
Thanks

Maybe you'd like to tell us a little more about yourself? And if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask!

Hello, I am an environmental activist interest in engaging with and mobilising more people. I am a little unsure of how I can do this on Loomio but I am really excited by the language being used in the threads and especially terms like, enabling, open source and transparency.

Please welcome our newest members! Thanks for providing us with introductions!

@manuelgonzalezmend

muy buenas me llamo Manuel González Méndez natural de san juan del puerto huelva y estoy interesado en aprender y colaborar

@salvaramosr

Hola, GRANDE, BRAVO, pertenezco a un círculo de PODEMOS en Valencia, y estamos muy satisfechos e interesados en el desarrollo y evolución de “Loomio”.
Gracias.
Salut.
Salva Ramos, aprendiz.

@abdullahkhalid

Just trying to understand what Loomio is all about.

Hello, BIG ONE, BRAVO, I belong to a circle of PODDEMOS in Valencia, España, and we are delighted and interested in the development and evolution of "Loomio".
Thank you.
Salut.
Salva Ramos apprentice.

Thank you for your generous words @salvaramosr! Looking forward to collaborating :)

Welcome to the Loomio Community @morvan! Thank you for providing us with an introduction

I work for the city hall in Nantes (France - Brittany).
I have to study the differents way to talk with the citizens and the issues of the e-democraty and this sorts of web sites and web tools.
Your potential is huge.

Welcome @jeandaniel ! thanks for such an epic introduction, I'll paste what you've written here for everyone to see. Feel free to let us know what else you'd like to connect with people about. thanks!

"Who am i? Well, first, I’m an admirer. I admire what Loomio has achieved so far in terms of a container and process to allow groups, teams, communities to agree on goals, challenges or solutions that they care about.

Also I admire the level of penetration you have already achieved. That’s great momentum.

I admire the social enterprise orientation as well. Your minds and hearts are in the right place.

I’m also a designer of online deliberation processes, and I have a few ideas that could be useful for the Loomio road map - it’s got such a head start, it makes sense to contribute that way rather than to reinvent stuff for nothing.

I have many backgrounds all vying for attention here.
- I am a business management consultant helping organizations become more effective at what they want to be, do, have.
- I am a cyberneticist in that I use Beer’s Viable Systems Model to diagnose dysfunctions in organizational processes and structure, and resolve them to maximize their viability.
- Until recently I was the architect of the e-Deliberation process, an on-line group deliberation platform.
- I also work with poverty stricken communities to help them bootstrap themselves unto a better place.
- I am remodeling the maple kitchen cabinets in my house on Vancouver Island, Canada. :)"

Also WELCOME to @gizemcandemirkilic

Would you like to introduce yourself?

Hi, I'm interested in democratic decision making tools.

@jeandaniel - glad to have you! Please share your ideas for Loomio in the Feature Ideas group - looking forward to hearing about them!

Welcome @BenBurton! Thanks for providing us with an introduction - care to tell us a little more about yourself?

I learned about Loomio a few months ago and am starting to get invested in the tool. I would love to help the project grow in some fashion.

I have a beard and wear a hat?

Thanks @BenBurton! I also occasionally wear a hat, but alas, no beard.

Welcome @oscarfonseca1! Would you be interested in telling us a little about yourself?

I'm a spanish software developer interested in collective intelligence, innovation management and how online communities are structured. Lately I'm focused on how extract useful information from online debates.

I think I can contribute with new ideas.

@hannahsalmon :)

I've been working independently for years on a digital solution for the troubles we have in U.S. politics and somewhat recently ran across this software. I'm cometely reinvigorated by the potential of what we can do with Loomio. I'm really excited by the prospects.

@BenBurton Hi Ben, Where are you based? I'm in Providence, RI and met Loomio team last year when i spent some time in Wellington and am now working with them from the US.

@mjkaplan Chicago, Il. I'm not sure what I can offer yet but I'm going to figure it out.

@BenBurton I have plans to be in Chicago mid-February.

@mjkaplan Guess we'll have to set up a time to meet. It would be great to start networking with US based folks.

Please welcome our newest community members!

@salvadortelloalapo, @abelloblancoana - would you care to tell us a little about yourselves?

@xurelofresco

Hello, I am a teacher interested in alternative education. Now I am in Denmark as a volunteer and I am using loomio to still in contact with a group of people from a social movement to work in a project.

I’d like to know more about loomio community and show this tool to my students.

@salvadortelloalapo, in response to your question about importing contacts, I might direct you to this discussion: https://www.loomio.org/d/EdVSGFxa/new-feature-import-contacts.

When you click the "Invite people" button on the right-hand side of the group page there will be an option for importing google contacts underneath the email addresses field.

If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to contact us. Alternatively you can start a discussion in the Help subgroup :)

Welcome to the community @neo! Thanks for the introduction :)

I live in the US and the government here seems terribly dysfunctional. I’ve been learning about things like facilitation, group decision making, and governance, and Loomio looks like a fascinating way to do some such things online.

Welcome @CamilleMosely! Thanks for the introduction!

Hi,
I’m about to become a discussion facilitator, and I’d like to learn more and take part in discussions on loomio and it’s functionality

A big welcome to our new community members!!!

@germanperezperez

Hola a todos, soy de Madrid y quiero aprender más sobre el uso de loomio, con el fin de poder moderar grupos.

@josemanuel15

He creado un par de grupos para mi círculo en Bilbao y tengo muchas dudas que espero ver solucionadas. Es un grandísimo programa.

Welcome to the Loomio Community @sarra! Thank you for providing us with the following introduction:

Find out more about how groups on here work to see if my group could use this platform

Care to tell us a little more about yourself?

If you have any questions about Loomio please don't hesitate to get in touch :)

Please welcome our newest Loomio Community members!

@gregorycassel

Hi, I’m critically interested in online decision-making tools, and Loomio looks most promising. I’m an admin at an unusual and ambitious social/political discussion group
( https://www.facebook.com/groups/bridgethedivide/ ) and I’m working on my own crowdfunding project to stimulate more consensus and supermajority based culture, economy and government on all scales of social organization.

@josetxo, we'd love to hear a little about you and why you're hear if you would be willing to provide us with an introduction?

@haithamshammaa

interested in loomio data

A big welcome to our newest community members! Wonderful to have new voices in here!

@valmirduartecosta

Sou um ativista politico e pretendo auxiliar grupos de pessoas a utilizarem a plataforma como instrumento de democracia participativa.

@fernandocastanedac

Me parece una excelente herramienta de comunicación grupal

Hello Loomites, or loomers, or loominosos or what have you, and thanks to @benjaminknight for the invite. i'm a digital video producer, both inside and outside of corporate structures and systems. i've launched various products over the years, including huff post live on the west coast of the US and various video channels, jash.com, vogue.com, wired.com etc. etc.

looking forward to seeing what can be done to make this the strongest collaboration tool in the world. i'm a more-features person, so that's probably what you're going to hear from me.

Hi @robertgreen. Welcome to the network! I'm a team member based in Providence, RI and working on strategy, funding and growth. I hear often that we need to do better/more story telling. It'd be amazing to capture digital stories from users around the world. Your thoughts?

hello @mjkaplan and thanks for the welcome! what would be of greatest benefit to Loomio's funding and growth in the short term would be a video that shows how loomio is being used in the "real world" right now. the power of this tool is in its use cases, and its use cases are exciting, interesting, and compelling. making this connection would be easy--using user-generated and found and news footage mixed with testimonials...8 or 9 minutes later, you have something pretty exceptional.

but i would say that. i produce video for a living! as they say: "to a hammer every problem looks like a nail."

Thanks @robertgreen for your quick and thoughtful reply. How feasible is iit to produce this with low/no budget? The value would be enormous but our resources are spread thin right now.

@mjkaplan it's probably one editor, one researcher, and one VO artist. you need to get the research done by someone for free inside loomio & friends, and the VO could be done by a Loomio person as well, so it just comes down to a REALLY good editor's time. i can ask around and see what i come up with, but assume you will have to pay that person something.

if you don't want to show this video on youtube or in public (e.g. if it is only for potential investors, embedded in a deck and so on) then you are able to use any images and music/sounds without licensing issues, so that's worth considering as well.

Hmm interesting

Welcome new community members! Please make yourselves at home!

@hbz, would you care to tell us a little about yourself?

@knohl

Hi, I’m a member of a few Loomio groups. I’m Interested in direct democracy, collaborative decision making, participatory communities and cooperatives. I’d like to fallow the development of Loomio, and in the future contribute myself and connect more people and related initiatives to the group.

@podemsantapola

Nos gustaría pertenecer al grupo para ampliar nuestros conocimientos. Gracias.

@ilyakuchaev

Hi there!

I’m interesting in the Loomio translation and development.

Thanks!

Please welcome our newest community member! Thank you for providing an introduction @laura52!

Soy periodista e investigadora. Estoy haciendo una tesis sobre construcción de conocimiento en “espacios de interacción” en entornos colaborativos. Esta herramienta es ideal para compartir y probar el modelo que estamos desarrollando. Un saludo.

Welcome @toddscottanderson - great to have you join us :)

Hello, I’m an avid surfer in California with a background in software engineering for community-focused startups. Here are some projects I’ve been a part of that I’m very proud of: BeelineReader.com’s bookmarklet; Civinomics.com; theHomie.com (in development)

Hey @alandavison welcome to the community and thanks for sharing :)

My name is Clark and I live in the UK.

I was looking for an open source or low-cost tool to facilitate group discussion, voting and decision making. Having drawn a blank I stumbled across Loomio. As a Software / Network Engineer who specialized in User Interface Design and testing many years ago I was very impressed with the early beta and became a supporter through the crowdfunding campaign.

Very much looking forward to testing the mobile version and putting it to good use for local (to me) SocEnt and non-profit purposes, and of course recommending the platform to commercial organisations wherever possible in the hope that they will “pay what they can” to help keep this excellent resource free.

Also welcome to another crowdfunding contributor, @guillaumemarceau :)

Hi Rich,

I have been looking forward to testing this early release for ages, November seemed to go so slowly for me but I doubt that was the case in "Loomio Land".

I have also been reading through the Future Funding topic, there is so much to read I have not yet worked my way through it all. I do have some ideas for revenue streams but will finish reading the topic before posting.

Just a quick question :

Do you have rough numbers for the number of people using Loomio on a country by country basis, for example here in the UK? This may hemp me to flesh out my "Funding" ideas.

Thanks again for all your hard work.

Clark.

Hi, great to be here. First thing I'm doing is finding the discussion about monetizing options, I want to share an idea about gleaming a fee from of any crowdfunding the loomio platform may facilitate.
-Todd Anderson
@thehomie

Hi @richarddbartlett, I'm a software dev and an occupy activist here in New York. We're working on an eviction defense project, as well as creating a learning collective where domain expert in social justice can learn how to code of their own hands, instead of having to rely on the (sometimes misguided) generosity of professional developers.

I've been tracking loomio for quite a while. I'm really impressed with the new loomio with all you work. Congrats!