Invitation to the Open Organizations workshop at the 2004 ESF

The Open Organizations Project[1] invites you to participate in a workshop, "Political Structures for Today's Organizations", from 7-9 p.m. on Saturday 16 October 2004, at this year's European Social Forum[2], which will take place in London. The workshop will be held at the University of London Union in Malet Street, Room 2C.

A map of the area can be found here:

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?P2M?P=WC1E7HY&Z=1

We will post updates here:

http://www.open-organizations.org/view/Main/EsfWorkshop2004

Short Description

Organisations that want to bring about a better society should implement, here and now, principles that a better society could be based on, including SELF-MANAGEMENT, TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILLITY and PUBLIC OWNERSHIP of KNOWLEDGE and of any other resource neccessary to implement the above. What political structures can they use? A project to provide a range of proven answers to this question.

Long Description

Before starting the Open Organizations project in 2002, we had spent a year implementing open, transparent organisational processes in activist groups such as Indymedia. Many activist groups and volunteer groups have no explicit structure; as a result, power tends to be exercised by members of friendship networks, and decision-making processes are opaque[3]. Other groups have simply adopted the structures used by corporations and governments, in which decision-makers are largely unaccountable; as a result, the decisions taken lack legitimacy, and abuses of power are difficult to prevent.

We were inspired by the openness of free software development projects, and the way the knowledge they produce becomes publicly owned. We adapted some of their organisational processes to our work in activist groups; to this end, we made a web site containing simple, practical instructions, intended for anyone who wanted to work together in this way.

Since then, the scope of the project has grown. We see our work as part of a strategy for social transformation, with the goal of building political and economic models which, unlike capitalism and conventional representative democracy, will give everyone power over the decisions that effect them, and will knowledge a public good. We aim to describe, in clear, straightforward language, processes that organisations can use to implement these principles, in order to be part of a transitional form of society.

We want to propose a wide range of processes suited to different kinds of organisations, of different sizes, involved in different sorts of work, including material production as well as activism. If you have implemented processes that promote transparency and accountability in your organisation, your participation in this project could make it possible for others to benefit from the lessons you have learned.

One result of this work could be a framework for writing charters for organizations. This framework would consist of a set of basic commitments (e.g. to transparency, open participation, etc.), with different ways of implementing them, so that each organisation could select the commitments it wanted to make, along with the most appropriate means of fulfilling them. These options could be given standard names (a bit like the standard licences provided by the Creative Commons project[4] for creative works) and could be used in an organisation's charter. Groups using such charters would share certain principles, and would easily be able to recognise other groups sharing those principles. Networks of such groups would then have a strong basis for cooperation.

We have come a long way in two years, but the project is still in its infancy. This workshop will be an opportunity to learn more about this project, and to propose additions and improvements.

The main language of the workshop will be English, but some informal, partial interpretation will be available in French and Croatian and, to a lesser extent, in Spanish and Italian.

Please forward this invitation to anyone you think might be interested.

Contacts:
openorg-dev@lists.socialtools.net
http://www.open-organizations.org

[1] http://www.open-organizations.org
[2] http://www.fse-esf.org
[3] http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html
[4] http://creativecommons.org
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