ECA governance infrastructure & organising

Summary of Call this morning

-We will have regular governance and assembly organizing calls every 2 weeks (open to all). Since I (Nicole) am working regularly on the ECA, I will refer to this group for overall direction/strategy for the Assembly. I will publish summaries like this on the list after every call.
- We decided to hold an open vote on Version 1 of the Charter of Working Principles (via the list) to formally "adopt" it. If adopted, it will go on the website as a reference.
- We spoke at length about the proposal to have an ECA Moment at Madrid as part of the TransEuropa Festival, the last week of October. Everyone agreed, although we do not like the terminology "ECA Moment" as a public title for the event. While the First ECA meeting in Brussels was quite general, this event should be more thematically targeted, possibly on issues relating to urban commons. We touched on ideas for having "laboratories" on specific topics, or creating templates that could be adapted to different contexts... but these will be further elaborated in a call dedicated to the Madrid moment (framadate coming soon). We also underlined the importance of having someone local, fixed in Madrid to coordinate.
- Some people expressed difficulty following the happenings of the ECA or could not understand our structure, so I will work on cleaning up pads, writing up a clear overview document and also perhaps a timeline of what's gone on in the assembly.

Cheers

As @ivorstodolsky suggested, I tried to create a timeline of the ECA. I wonder if it is helpful, let me know

I also tried to do a mapping of the Assembly Groups, though this is much less clear. Note that: Two initial processes led to the “creation” of these groups: The Policy Proposal Co-Creation Process, and the last day (November 17 at Zinneke) of our First Meeting in Brussels. They are at various stages of maturity/activity. This mapping erases some of the initial work/collaboration done in the first round of the Policy Proposal Co-Creation process in October.

Blue: Event-based
Green: Work-based (from 2 main processes)
Purple: Institution-based

Here they are in jpeg, rather than pdf format (please read comments above)..

I also consider the intiial Master Table for Policy Proposal Creation a good resource: https://europeancommonsassembly.hackpad.com/Policy-Proposal-Co-creation-WnSX18B6o07

I don't know what the next steps are... should we aim to create a full directory with everyone's names? This overlaps with some of the mapping and bio work that @fredericsultan is doing with Remix the Commons. Any ideas on how to better organize the assembly is welcome. I think this division into "Work", "Moments", and "Institutions" by color can maybe be a useful start...

Thanks Nicole, it's really helpful !

Thank you @nicoleleonard for this!

Re the Timeline: I think this sort of blocking of milestones is good.

However, I actually had something different in mind, for internal use by ECA commoners. I realised that, because I hadn't had time to follow for a couple of weeks, I had lost track of which 'internal' documents/pads/loomio groups etc. were in active development, and which had been merged, retired, archived, etc.

So I was hoping for some way of knowing, at a glance, what had happened. Say I took part in the policy-co-creation pads/loomio.. that's been moved and consolidated. But I can't find my group's input in the new place. How do I checked what happened? If we had some sort of map, I could find out the process: aha.. it's been moved to this and that new medium/table/pad..

Best I

Hi Ivor. I agree and I know what you mean, but frankly it's a huge effort to re-organize everything that has already been done and I don't have that capacity.

I don't think that much has really been moved - it just isn't well organized. Do you have a specific example about something that has been moved or deleted?

Realistically, I think this is a project for the summer when I have a bit more time (finishing my Master at the end of May). We also want it to feed into an effort to re-design/update/make more accessible the website and wiki. (see my next post...)

Update: a group of us here have been drafting a set of "work packages" so that we can seek out new funding for the ECA. Draft to share should be ready soon. There are parts for communications, e.g. maintaining the web tools, and also creating a directory for the ECA.

I copy/paste here an extract from a message that @fredericsultan sent to the mailing list. I think it is worthwhile to discuss it also here in Loomio:

Sustainable ECA (Villarceaux, Oct 2017)
So, at the end of July, we have invited people to self nominate for a 3 days meeting For a Sustainable ECA. 10 persons were volunteers to dedicate 3 days of their life to ECA, that is not nothing ! The gender balance was respected : 5 women and 5 men. We had 3 days for thinking ECA as a tool for the commons movement – meaning in part talking about how to organize it, and how to govern ourselves. It was a very challenging conversation. The result is a report made by Ann Marie from P2P foundation. She did an incredible work to synthesize this difficult conversation.

What is the result of this gathering in Villarceaux ?
First, we realized that it was not possible to solve the problem of governance in such a short discussion. The solution is not to create a board and centralized a coordination. It is not enough to imagine a procedure of membership. We definitively need to be more imaginative.

So we propose to dedicate time to do seriously this strategic analysis. What is our movement ? What kind of infrastructure do we need for it to be functional ? How to organize our work all together, how to make decision, etc. The issue is : How could we redesign an ECA and organize it to be at the service of the commons movement ?

And we propose :
• First, to take a pause of 3/4 months and during this time, to have someone do a real research on this issue for us : someone that will look at the ECA archives, all the did and said until now, including the discussion we had in Villarceaux, and look at the models that been developed so far by networks to organize horizontal action and the various movements. The task of this person will produce a proposal of governance senario for the assembly.
• One we have this possible scenario, we will invite volunteers to self nominate for a new « Villarceaux meeting » that will finalize a proposal for ECA and submit it to the members. We will then be able to discuss and adopt a form of governance and functioning for the ECA.

The result of this process and collective work should even be put in the form of a manual, useful to the ECA and its members but also potentialy to others.

Meanwhile, we also proposed that Thomas and I try to develop a consensual proposal to carry on with already planned activities (see the document Work Packages) for the coming months without jeopardizing them.

What do we need to do that ?
• it is needed to re-alocate to this strategic process, the funds we already have. There are remaining funds on the different activities of ECA. So we can finance this research and process without extra funds. We only need to clarify exactly how much there is in each budget of the actions scheduled.
• It is also also needed to define clear terms of reference for the reseacher and of course identify the proper person with the adequate skills. All the proposals are welcome as we know that ideas are already in minds.

So at the end, I am confidente that we will have an Assembly with a bottom up model of governance, and I am looking forward to the discussions we will be having now on this.

To Fredrics text @timothyflitcroft replied the following questions:
1) The aim at Madrid was to formulate concrete proposals at the municipal level - is the idea for those proposals to happen within the work packages like "ECA advocacy" bearing in mind proposals are supposed to have a December deadline for a January budget. Or would they happen independently and seek funding independently. Or is the idea to suspend all additional activity until after the governance process is established (in which case it makes the Madrid ECA process rather redundant)
2) Is it sensible to have only one person for the research position who will inevitably have a particular perspective. Obviously funding is an issue but would it be better for one or two more people who have experience and expertise be also involved even if only in a consultative way.
3) Could you expand on this statement
"we will invite volunteers to self nominate for a new « Villarceaux meeting » that will finalize a proposal for ECA and submit it to the members. We will then be able to discuss and adopt a form of governance and functioning for the ECA."
Who are the members? How will it be discussed? How will it be adopted - if by consensus what form of it? Will there be a quorum of some kind in order to confer legitmacy?
If these questions are left for the Governance proposal to formulate it means the Governance proposal will decide the form of governance by which the governance proposal is adopted. This circularity could be risky if it is seen as self serving eg if a quorum is set too low or the discussion is too restricted. The discussion period after the proposal is made is crucial - I hope that Loomio or whatever online tool is chosen will adequately represent it. It would also gain greater legitimacy if it was also open for an offline assembly meeting to discuss and adopt. I also hope too there will be a procedure built into the Governance proposal that allows for changes to the Governance under certain conditions if it is later felt it needs to be altered in any way.

Thanks Oliver for copying and pasting to Loomio. i did not know where to put my questions as Fred had put his report out on the email list. Gaelle's comments too were also sent by email. So there remains this confusion where is discussion supposed to go. Email seems to reach a wider audience than Loomio but the list is supposed to be only for announcements. Loomio is felt to be being misused if it is used for discussion - in my view although Loomio is primarily a tool for decision making it is also a place for discussion. It is good to keep things all in one place. I am not so concerned about the perfect tool as that we stick to a method and use it.

Best Wishes

Tim

I agree, for me the choice of platform is not so important, more important would be to have people active in one place (for example Loomio), and on a regular base so that the discussion goes on all the time. In the moment it seems there is a drop-in and drop-out culture, which is a problem for many volunteer based organizations.

In terms of @fredericsultan proposals I think it is a good idea to hire a person (or two) who are responsible to collect all the existing materials from the numerous pads, google docs, loomio, mailing list etc. perhaps edit them for clarity and add commentary. But I would slightly change the emphasis of the job description for the hired 1 person (or two). Instead of developing and presenting a ready proposal for ECA governance the hired person would work more like a moderator, facilitator and provocateur for at least 6 months, the main task would be to get as many members active in loomio, pull them into the discussion, reach out to the mailing-list, meet face 2 face and report back to loomio, merge suggested ideas into an online draft proposal etc. I think we have enough of knowledge in the membership to come up with a coherent ECA constitution, but we need to establish some routine in online collaboration and exchange. That seems to be the more crucial task to kickstart our online communication.

Hi Oliver

I like your proposal very much for the research period. Do you think it might still be worth having a face to face meeting of a smaller group to evaluate the proposal and then put it to a formal vote - or do you see that as unecessary. I am just worried we do not have a very good use of loomio as yet. I also feel it should be put to a whole physical assembly if possible.

When Frederic responds to my queries lets put these ideas on Loomio

Best Wishes

Tim

I personally would emphasize the online collaboration aspect on producing a constitution (that's what I call it for now) – if ECA wants to be sustainable as a distributed organisation we need to be quite good in online collaboration, because face-2-face meetings are expensive, time consuming, ecological problematic and create exclusion. I could imagine that local groups would meet face-2-face and then contribute to the online process. If people feel strongly that they want to meet in Villarceaux to move the process forward, that is of cause great as well. The final voting on accepting the constitution should anyway happen online in my opinion. We could look at the Iceland constitution writing process for some inspiration.