Lion.071231 - CommunityWiki? has been appearing in ReadOnly? mode for at least a couple of couple of days now. – HansWobbe?
Lion…
Does CurrencyDiscussion indicate that you intend to collect related information on this site?
– HansWobbe?
Yes.
– LionKimbro
Things I’d like to do at / through Saturday House:
I entertain several visions for SaturdayHouse?. I won’t be disappointed if they aren’t met, but I do intend to describe them.
50,000 People – SaturdayHouse? becomes so immensely popular, that 50,000 people want to come to Downtown Saturday House, every Saturday. (Points of reference: Seattle Population: 3,263,497. Sakura-con 2007 attendence: 10,000, and PAX 2007 attendence: 37,000 – both occupying the main floors of the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. )
This is a wild & crazy thing to dream up, but as long as we’re dreaming, why not? If 50,000 people want to get together, talk, and be creative, why not? We’d need to be a bit more organized about things, and we’d need computers to schedule stuff, but- if we have that many interested people, we’d have a lot of eager and creative people on board by then. You’d likely check out conversations, review the list of conversations on the Internet board during the week, and then go to the meeting room at the given time, and so on. If the culture grew organically over time, it could be a very inclusive, friendly, all ages and types environment. Every interest could easily meet. It sounds really cool, to me.
In many ways, this is the endpoint that makes the most sense to me. It just seems like a natural extension of some of our basic ideas.
No reason to stop at 50,000 – if the culture of sharing, friendliness, collaboration, openness, and so on, really catches on– then why not 100,000, or 1,000,000, which would be a third of the population of Seattle..? That’d be really wild. We’d probably discover fundamental challenges – equivalents of DunbarsNumber? at different points in the system. We simply do not understand what populations larger than, say, 150 “means.” Perhaps that’d change with time? I don’t know.
It might be that CommunityWiki:PoliticalSoftware? would have to evolve at the same time as the house did.
Some people might think that this idea is ridiculous, but I don’t see at all why it should be ridiculous. It just makes a lot of sense, to me: People like to be free, to have control over their own lives, to interact with others, to collaborate on cool projects, to share their passions. If people do indeed “turn on” after rediscovering freedoms and interests, and have the tools available to do so, then wouldn’t they in turn, turn their friends on?
We confine ourselves to the geek world, artificially. That’s a pretty narrow slice of the population. But there are musicians, there are writers, authors, singers, skateboarders, dancers, artists, mechanics, electricians, carpenters, activists, thinkers, readers, fans, sports players, and so on; Life expresses itself in so many ways. I see no reason why we couldn’t grow to meet all of these. If we can, … …why not?
I think I might be able to pitch a baseball. I wouldn’t commit to practice every day, and such. But if a few of us are in the mood to play one day, why shouldn’t we?
Federated Network of Creatives and Geekdom – Supposing we decide instead to follow the example of Goretex. Each house tops out at, say, 150 people. Then we help seed a new location– Bellevue, Tacoma, Bothell, wherever.
There are two ways we could do this: More towards “autonomous,” or more towards “connected.” In the more autonomous direction, each House is very different, has it’s own rules and ways, and so on. There’s just a list of, say, 3 or 4 things, that are basically in common between Houses. But other than that, they’re all different.
The more “connected” way, is like the (forget-the-name) church. In this church system, if you make a church, it’s registered with the main church. Each church sends out delegates, and the delegates discuss stuff at a central church, every so often. Then they go back out, and say what they experienced there. Lather rinse repeat, and out the other side, you get the collective speech: “This is what we think.”
I’m not strongly attached to either of the two forms; They have their trade-offs. The autonomous way, and you can make your own thing. Each place is very different, though there are some thematic similarities. Political influence is near zero, and if you meet someone from another one, there’s not much you can expect. That said, there’s no worrying about “grand messages” and such.
The connected way, and you have a federation of friends just about everywhere. If you go to a remote location, you are treated as a guest and a friend. “Passports” can be issued, like in the old gentlemen’s clubs. The federation can actually issue collective speech: “10,000 people world-wide agree: Software patents really suck!” You can’t do that, if it’s all autonomous, without any registration, because the lines of communication take too long to establish.
It’s Just Us – SaturdayHouse? could just say, “Screw spreading, we’re just ourselves.” We become one of a million clubs, isolated, cold, and all alone. We get to 100 people, or something, and say, “That’s it. No more. We don’t need anything any more. We’re here for ourselves, that’s it.”
I really don’t want to do that. It could happen. But I don’t want to do that.
Go back and read 50,000 people again. That’s what I’d really like to do. Or if every single person in Seattle wants to be in the Seattle Saturday House, that’d be even better. I’d be happy with that. It would basically mean that society had undergone a fundamental phase transition, into something else, like when a solid becomes a liquid. We’d be in Alpha Centauri's "Eudaimonic Society," or something like that. Neat!
This ends the section on vision.
I find a surprising amount of similarity in the organizing structures of presbyterian polity, Liquid Democracy, and the hierarchy of soviet councils. – DavidCary?
There are three parts to this: Agenda, Talking, & Deciding.
“Agenda” is: “What’s the issue? What question are we asking?” Since we’re a small group, (say, under Dunbar’s Number, ~150,) “agenda” is not controversial. We just trust that issues emerge. If we were larger, we would be concerned that the agenda were being set for advertising purposes, to make someone or something look bad, to influence thought by way of a question, etc.,. But we’re small, so we just don’t need to care… …I don’t think!
“Talking” is a legitimate question though: How do we talk? Do we encourage people not to talk “off-line,” to prevent back-room decisions? Do we do all our discussion at a meeting with everyone present? Do we talk on Saturday about House issues? When? Where? How?
My belief is that we’re (A) large, (B) fast, because we’re physically proximate in different ways, (C) in an information age. I’m for fragmented and disconnected conversation, punctuated by occasional mass meeting and mass address, in person. I think that if an issue is really really important to someone, they should be able to command face-to-face interaction, for the purpose of the discussion of the issue. Hopefully, this shouldn’t happen often.
Perhaps the healthiest thing to do, is to say: “Once every 2-4 weeks, we have a big meeting, and everyone who’s been active lately, who is a voting member, are expected to meet, from 30 minutes to 5 hours, whatever the issues at the time require. At a minimum, just a check in.”
People who are Saturday House people, but who aren’t voting members, can come as well. But people who are voting members are expected to come, in a way that suggests “required,” but ain’t quite so.
I would disconnect “Deciding” (voting) from the discussion. This is because there will be people who might not be able to be able to make the vote. Our issues tend not to be time-dependent.
I strongly advocate that we use “Consensus Polling.”
This is a discussion in itself, but see:
We may want to permit delegation of Yes / Not-Yet, as per Liquid Democracy. “On subjects regarding X, I delegate my decision to so-and-so.”
We need to get some clarity on our purpose (the PurposeConversation) before we do much advertising.
That said, we want to continue to grow– some advertising clearly makes sense.
I believe we should continue to advertise to:
We do have an urgent priority of deciding what our advertising should say to these communities, though, and what “our story about ourselves” is.
The 6 Hour Startup is a rousing success, and it’s exactly the sort of group that we envisioned could come out of Saturday House. Yay Saturday House! Yay 6 Hour Startup!
And yet, it’s a little bit of a mystery:
In some respects, the SatH? person should remember the Law of Two Feet, and just go away. “Freedom is Rule #1,” and a person can do whatever they want, at Saturday House.
In other respects, this is pretty damn confusing behavior, and causes one to wonder: “What am I doing here, with these strange people who do not want to be near me?”
There is both attraction and revulsion. What is the answer?
Stepping out a frame: “Should we reconcile these two entities?” I believe that the answer is yes, for a number of reasons:
My personal belief is that our difficulties at the present Saturday House with 6HS is due to one thing, and one thing alone: space.
If we were larger, and cost were not an issue, then “whoop-dee.” There’d be no friction. Everything’d be great, in my book at least. The only problem was because some people had to stand in the hall because the main “labor” room was so totally full of people, and the neighboring room was having people spilling into it, as well.
I take that not as a sign that we need to break apart; Rather, I simply take it as a sign that we need a bigger place!
As far as I can tell: If groups of creative people are meeting, and we’re helping them, that’s a good thing!
I personally believe that we should incorporate groups as a special class of “member” to the Saturday House. I even think we may want to give some number of votes to the incorporated group, to account for the fact that there are people who are in that group, who are not necessarily part of the SatH? voting membership, yet still have a stake in the House. Their stake would be represented through the voting rights of the group that they come in through. This way they are honored as participants of their group, that we take seriously, (as represented by the votes,) and they participate in our discussions. Perhaps they can reciprocate, by way of voting and communication rights granted to the Saturday House, in turn.
Going along with the 50,000 person vision – if we could get Seattle Perl, Ruby, Python, C & C++, Knitters, Clothing Designers, Gaming Leagues, Activists, Roboticists, Educational Groups, Tai Chi groups, Hunters, Sports Groups, Transit nuts, Anime fandoms, what have you, sharing the space, sharing ideas, relating through our family, etc., etc., etc., … …it sounds great to me! We just need to grow in space, as more groups come into the fold.
I’d have them recite some pledge of allegiance and congeniality, or something. I wouldn’t vote to include closed groups, doing “we’re private” stuff. If they’re truly private, and don’t want strangers listening in, just meet at somebody’s house. But if they don’t mind strangers walking by, perhaps sometimes asking a question, don’t mind having a relationship with the broader society – it sounds good to me!
(procedures for finding initial bootstrapping membership, and then voting in 1st & 2nd wave membership.)
Bootstrapping Membership:
The Bootstrapping Membership will then vote in the “1st Wave.”
Then we will vote in “2nd Wave.”
Since much of the 2nd wave came in on 6HS, I anticipate that there might be some greater scrutiny there, than elsewhere. This is because we may want to balance the character of the voting block. I was n the founding, I know most of the 1st wave, but I only know a handful of the people in the 2nd wave. I suspect this is true for other founders and 1st wavers, as well. Yet we still want to invite the 2nd wave into the group, after we have clarified our story, and the relationship with the 6HS.
I would like to start recording a history of the house, for purely personal reasons at the very least. But I believe it is a good thing to do.
Initial naming considerations: “The Reform School” (Nelson,) “Xavier Institue for Higher Learning” (Lion,) just “House,” ..?
LionKimbro’s doubt, re: “Saturday House” – “What if it meets on Wednesday, somewhere?”
Miles Van Pelt’s response: “It adds character. Someone asks Why does Saturday House meet on Wednesday, and then someone else answers, Oh, well way back when, … See? Adds character.” Lion was convinced.
Months later, Miles would tell Lion, “Wait– you wanted to call it the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning?! I must have missed that– I would have supported it!”
Stages of questioning:
This where we are, 2007-11.
My attention is on the growth of the Saturday House concept beyond just the SODO house; Lately, I’m helping out at BothellSaturdayHouse?.
just making edit to ensure site stays alive