OpenOrg meeting at Royal National Theatre, 2 October 2002, 21.30
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Notes on revising the Intro to OpenOrg document
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For each definition of term, add justification.
Reorder: public ownership of knowledge requires respect for
skill, so RFS must come first.
Knowledge is power. We don't want to concentrate power; we want
to spread it. Therefore:
Two kinds of knowledge. One kind, 'experience' or 'skill', must
be transmitted in a special way: skill has to be recognized ->
proportionate power is granted -> tasks and problems can be
solved better -> then it can be passed on (elders in society) ->
and the result is public ownership of that knowledge.
Responsibility to transmit knowledge through a mentor
relationship.
Accountability requires transparency: why?
Justifying transparency: to be aware of the consequences of your
actions on others, you need to be aware of interdependencies.
Therefore you need transparency.
Expressing the idea of respect for skill: 'approach to problems
and tasks'
Something to write about somewhere: attributes of effort
Life is a very functional business. If a job is worth doing,
it's worth doing well.
Then something about adhering to, or at least reaching towards,
the recognized best practices in the field in which you are
working. There are usually only a handful of these in a
particular speciality. It is your responsibility to seek out
those practices to the best of your ability at the present time:
this means lots of effort.
These may seem to be static definitions, but these values are
actually choices about processes continually at play, which
create and sustain the organization.
For first sentence: First paragraph mixes higher-level values and
organizational values. Say that OO is the expression of our
higher-level values in organizational structure.
The journey is the destination. We want a world based on these
core values. The way to get there is to fill the world with
organizations based on those values. The two levels are
interdependent.
Public ownership.
Diversity means allowing for collaboration between different
working practices. Different ways of reaching the same goals can
coexist as long as they don't interfere with each other, and can
even collaborate. Justification: maximum probability of success
in reach goals, and of discovery of new working practices.
Diversity allows us to challenge and improve these best practices
in any given speciality.
'lead to' those decision: recast sentence to make it clear we're
talking about present and past.
Better to talk about self-managing groups, transparent work,
groups accountable to one another, whenever possible, instead of
using pure abstract terms (accountability, etc.), because we show
how values are choices about processes. It is meaningless to
talk about accountability without talking about processes.
Tasks
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Ben: revise intro as above.
Richard: draft document about 'best practice' vs.
'lowest-common-denominator practice'.
Toni: draft one or more HOWTOs: (a) how to set up an OpenOrg, (b)
how to resolve conflicts between working groups. Also maybe
update existing documents to reflect new terminology.
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