Notes from the Open Organizations Workshop at ESF 2004

Open Organizations Workshop
European Social Forum

Saturday 16 October 2005
Room 2C
University of College London 7-9pm
Notes taken by Marie Duboc and Ben Geer

Background on the Open Organizations project

Ben:

The Open Organizations project was started by three activitists who were dissatisfied with the fact that activists didn't decisions in an open framework. In the seventies, Jo Freeman, a feminist, wrote an article describing how activist groups were organised around groups of friends and that this should change. Activist groups usually like to have loose structures as they feel this impose fewer constraints.

The Open Organizations project borrowed decision-making processes used by free software developers.

How many people are programmers in this room?

Audience: 3 programmers plus Ben.

A long reflexion followed on what kind of structures should be created. This included research on cooperatives, participatory processes, such as in Porto Alegre, that might embody these structures.

It is important that people are involved in the decisions that affect them. What kind of political systems would give people this ability? We felt that democracy is not an accurate word to describe such a political system because it often refers to liberal, representative democracy. So the term we chose to use is self determination.

First it is important to know what kind of work, processes might impact on you. E.g. if a factory is going to pollute the water you drink. Transparency and accountability are prerequisites for self-determination.

In free software, people produce knowledge that goes online and is available to all; it gives information about the history of the project and the bugs. This is a way to be accountable because people can find out what is wrong with the software and how problems were solved.

Organiclea is a workers cooperative of people producing organic vegetables in North London. Open Organizations helped them set up a website and a mailing list, so that other groups that might want to produce vegetables could learn from their experiences. It avoids duplication of work and errors. This is called public ownership of knowledge.

The Open Organizations project has developed 'how to' guides to document knowledge on organisational processes so that other people starting up new organisations could benefit from this knowledge, adapting it to their needs.

A participant: Have you applied this model to pilot situations?

Ben: We've tried to base Open Organizations as much as possible on existing practices.

A participant: I've just attended the Open Co-op workshop at the ESF, a group promoting the use of the Internet for democratic purposes.

Ben: One problem with this model is that many people do not have access to the Internet.

Participant: Is it possible to have an open organizations without the internet, email, mailing lists and electronic tools?

Participant: Yes, one of the finding principles of the Workers Party in Brazil is the democratisation of power. The idea was to be inclusive. Providing that you have the right kind of purposes, the openness is possible because people make sure that it is fed in all the layers of the organisation.

Participants introduced themselves [NB some of the names are missing, apologies to the participants]:

• John A, Israeli, worked for Green Peace and Friends of the Earth. Interested in non hierarchical decision-making process.
• A writer interested in developing discussions with people around this issue.
• A woman working on business
• A student activist
• A man working on accountability in international organisations.
• A man moderating an electronic list on the the world parliament (400 people). Problems encountered around decision making processes.
• A man from Spain
• David: Work for a website: www.oneworld.net
• John B: co-founder of the appropriate software foundation.
• A woman studying in Germany
• A Spanish woman in charge of the website and the list of an organisation.
• Susanna from Germany, student.
• Mark from a grassroots collective in Holland. Received the invitation from Toni. Wrote a brochure about the structure of his organisation.
• Barthelemy involved in political movements and NGOs in France: Love money for employment, active democratie, alternative citoyenne: how to be elected without having any organisations, 100/altermondialistes. The challenge I face within these organisations is how to be open and effective.
• A man involved in Indymedia
• A man working on the organisation of the left in Scotland.
• Toni: Co-founder of the Open Organizations project.
• Marie, works for an NGO, taking notes

John A: It is difficult to know about organisations that claim to build alternatives and don't talk about the problems of their models. Some organisations show the positive sides of their structures but not the negative ones.

A participant: People don't necessarily see the faults of their models.

Tony: In Indymedia, there are lots of people now using Wikis and technical tools to exchange documents. It is important to see documents on line and to be able to edit them collectively so that all the versions of the documents are available to all the users online. This tool is used in free software programming you can report all the bugs that have been experienced by the users.

Ben: I was talking to someone working for an NGO saying that at the end of the project a review or report is made for the donors. The review is never made by the actual beneficiaries of the project. This is therefore not accountable. If the beneficiaries where able to do the report themselves they would point out the deficiencies of the project.

David: This is a recurrent problem in NGOs.

Susanna: The availability of technical tools is not enough because you need to have the information about what to do with it. If Internet could make everything change, this change would have already happened. The basic is not just the technology but also the incentive. I would like the information I have about my organisation to reach everyone, not only people using internet.

Toni: Open Organizations focuses on internal structures rather than on how to present your organisation to the rest of the world. This is also important but the internal structures affect how organisations work. Political parties by definition are not a suitable model because they are based on representation.

A participant: What are the characteristics of a mailing list and how could they be replaced in places where there is no internet?

Ben: The Internet is like a billboard where you post your information. In a town you could use a board somewhere to disseminate information.

Toni: Capitalism relies on the Internet. If there was no Internet anymore tomorrow lots of companies would collapse. So we should use the Internet to our own benefit. It's like talking about a society without telephone and books.

Susanna: People don't necessarily participate even if they have the tools.

Tony: Most people are not active and do not participate because they don't have the possibility to have an impact.

Man from Spain: I've been involved in a political party in Spain: another democracy is possible. The status of the party have been decided on the internet. The members of the party do not have a mandate, they rotate. In Barcelona, I know another experience called Agora: people who meet in the middle of the street every week. The agenda is set the week before. This is an example of acting outside the Internet.

Ben: What matters is not just technology but the human processes that are going to be used and then you can decide which tools are right to be used. People don't participate because they don't see the benefit for them and that they don't have control over the processes.

Does everybody know what a wiki is?

Susanna: No

Ben: This is a webpage that people can edit online. For example there is a project called Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) which is an encyclopaedia on the internet that anybody can use and edit online. You click edit and can add or change the articles. The quality is pretty good. I went to a talk with the founder of the project who said that people are very focused on practical objectives and that when people have a concrete goal, there are less useless talks.

Man from Spain: We wanted to use a Wiki to make proposals for changing the world. It would be very difficult for eveyrbody to participate on the Internet. The internet should be adapted to the people rather than the other way round. The problem is transparency and how can the tools can be used to achieve so.

Ben: If anybody can see and complain, that's a way to be transparent.

A participant: Are you focusing on a specific type of organisations? Is the project just dealing with internal structures, because it is important for people outside to have a say about what organisations do.

Toni: We work on how to restructure an organisation from the inside so gradually organisations become accountable and transparent to those outside who are affected by the actions. Michael Albert said that people should be able to make decisions on actions that impact them. Eg Shell is a business that have an impact on societies. We should therefore have a say in their actions.

A participant: So, reporting to what is not working well should be made by external people that are not inside the organisation but whose actions have an impact on them?

Barthelemy: I'm a bit confused about this workshop. Organisations should be shaped according to their targets and their objectives. This will be different if it is a neighbourhood organisation, a company, or a political party. Internet is just a tool, it won't solve problems. I'm looking for rules that give a balance between efficiency and openness. I'm looking for experiments and examples of organisations in which people are involved. Seven days ago we decided to create a political party founded by people involved in NGOs and social movements. They decided to create a political party and made the difficult choice to get involved in political representation. There was a big discussion about who and how decisions will be made. I said that the trust would be very important. Now, we have to come up with a proposal for this political party structure. We are requested by political representatives to provide solutions and ideas to build participatory democracy. To me, whatever the rules are the trust is essential.

Toni: Of the principles we have established, trust came first. Activists are paranoiac about the police, the government, other activists etc.

Ben: A charter must be established to set up the rules, the decision-making processes.

Toni: You need to consider the skills and knowledge of the members. The charter should reflect the different skills of the constituency. For eg in Open Organizations we set up a rule that summaries must be available on the list because people have little time to read the archives.

A participant: The issue is not just the rules but the people when you talk about trust. 30 years ago there was much more trust between people.

Ben: It is less risky when you don't have to trust totally because that's what political parties are doing: they abuse the trust they have. If you are able to revoke delegates when they don't fulfil their mandates you are more in control of the trust you can give to a delegate.

MPs can do whatever they want once they are elected. It is also opaque and not representative.

Toni: Two years ago Ben and I met Bernard Cassen from Attac France, the most opaque social movement. During the organisation of the first ESF that took place in Florence, we set up mailing lists so that there could be a transparent process. Because there were no rules, the SWP was able to manipulate the process. They stopped announcing meetings on the list and recalled meetings when they didn't have the majority. This shows how important it is to have rules.

Ben: If you are a delegate you should have a short mandate (6 months at most). I just heard tonight about a group in Japan that elects 5 delegates and picks up one randomly among the five. Therefore, you don't have to trust too much.

Barthelemy: We launched last year 'Alternatives citoyennes' to gather people that felt that political parties are not creating a real change. The process started through mailing lists and then it was the people that were available and had the time to go to meetings that were able to take power.

Ben: Yes, I call that 'meetingocracy'

Barthelemy: But 'Meetingcracy' is not democracy. There is a major hypocrisies because the initiators of a project don't want to appear as manipulators but they know how to control the meetings. Representation is not just about having money to run the campaing but it is also about having the time and the confidence in being invovled in political movements. Then we had a vote and the candidates chosen were old, civil servants, white and there was no diversity.

Toni: Did anybody read Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian philosopher. He does not care about insulting people into his books and he can do so because he has a strong knowledge on political theory. He says that we are blackmailed by liberal democracy because it locks up identities. It makes us think that what is most important is that a woman is black and not that she is a mother, a wife, a worker.

Susanna: In Germany we built up a young political party in the local government. It was positive. Schools are another circle of communication in addition of the Internet to create a social network with other tools such as radio.

A participant: Is it possible to make an account of what is affecting people's life.

Ben (to all): It would be great if you could put the knowledge of your organisation with the experiences you faced. Maybe you could distil the knowledge and the difference between mailing lists and other means (like radio college) to make your organisation open and transparent.

Toni: We are trying to do something allowing for massive participation (internally and outside). Potentially you could have a large number of participants.

John B

[Missed it] Discussion about patterns in programming. .............

Toni: A pattern is something that's repeatable given certain conditions. You have to define the conditions under which it might be useful, and how to implement it.

John: Terry Eagleton says that his interest in structuralism was driven by the search for a "structural invariant".

Ben: We're getting too theoretical.

Toni: In order to do something useful for other people, it has to be something that people can reproduce in other contexts.

Susanna: We have to not confuse the pattern with reality. People always want to give more power to objects than to themselves. The Internet is not a human being. It's useful as a communication tool, but you have to focus on yourself sitting in front of it. So the objects don't have the power, it's you who has the power.

Toni: But in a consumer culture, that's how people feel about objects.

Susanna: but this is already breaking up.

Barthelemy: I am involved in 4 organisations that aim to be international. One is political, one is more a think tank, the idea is to collect proposals for another world, another is more about alternative economy, and another is about, let's say, "good will people". As it's difficult for us to set up our own organisation that's both efficient and respectful of everyone, we'll be in even more trouble when we go international, so we have to become a network. So I'm particularly looking on how we can set up networks of local, regional and thematic groups. We are desperately looking for a model that we can use. All the people who started the European Social Forum said that, OK, the social forums are what they are, but now it's time to create other organisations, to do things between the forums. This is a major issue for people in social forums. It's fine to meet and socialise, but we need something more, and this is why your initiative is good. The next challenge is how we can structure a different kind of movement, dealing with a different dimension of work.

Toni: If you're interested, we can at least look at what you have so far. Two or three years ago, when I talked to people from organisations, I didn't know how to react. But now for example looking in the constitution of my student union, I can see right away that they can't be transparent and accountable. Through this project, we are developing skills to analyse organisations.

John B: I'm very interested in that secondary effect. I've just been working at Greenpeace, and they should just be closed down. They have an atrocious state of affairs. So many people there hate the place, and they have so many ignorant people, and many of the good people have already left. It's really important to develop patterns for doing these critiques. You should be able to destroy the reputation of an organisation.

Toni: I once applied for a job at Greenpeace UK, and I was shocked by the kind of hierarchy they had.

John B: It made me very angry. I've actually got a long term process to take Greenpeace to pieces, it's called Greenpieces. And at the same time I'd like to replace it with something that works.

Tony: I was really shocked by how much NGOs like Greenpeace spend on bureaucracy. It's amazing how many organisations don't put their own principles into practice. When we started we had that experience in activist groups. In Indymedia when we started to document what we were doing, we had online meetings that were simultaneously translated into several languages and posted immediately online. A lot of organisations have done similar things, even ATTAC in some ways.

Barthelemy: ATTAC was started by a group of close friends, and it worked because they all trusted each other.

Toni: But it was really important for the World Social Forum. It was started by a bunch of friends from Porto Alegre, and a bunch of friends from ATTAC.

Barthelemy: Maybe I can tell you a useful pattern. Today I was in another workshop where a mathematician presented a model that attempted to represent friendship networks. The audience was mostly composed of specialists in economics and business, and it was pretty interesting because he tried to represent people's feelings about the efficiency of friendship networks into an economic model. If I like you, I'll give you whatever I can, and we won't need any contracts, and the transactions will be faster. So maybe these are good patterns for demonstrating to business people that doing business in an ethical cooperative way is even more efficient.

John B: You could say that the whole of society is a desiring economy. We desire technology, health, organisations. You can flatten all that depth out into desire.

Toni (to German woman, Susanna): Lacan said no one has access to reality.

Susanna: Yes, but at the same time we all do.

Toni: The Internet is just as much an illusion as physical labour.

Meeting adjourned.
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