Nova Web Development has set up a Decidim instance we can make an account and poke around the features here https://ustechworkercoops.org/
If enough people like the idea, we could take an indepth look and have a chat about MayFirst hosting an instance for our members?
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That’s very cool!
For the RCN (radical connections network), we were using Loomio which is similar in terms of purpose.
My only reservation is that Decidim is Ruby on Rails and I wonder if the MFMT infrastructure can support such a project and what the impact would be on the good work Jaime and Jamie have been sharing with TIAS.
Again, thanks for sharing!
I tooled around a bit on their online demo here (since I didn’t have a login to the link Micky sent): /processes/Esporte/f/6/proposals/16.
I am not sure anything internal to May First fits the use case well, but it does seem like what the World Social Forum folks were looking for. It seems well suited for a long term, movement building process composed of many organizations. Or along the lines of the Movement Assemblies that Project South was working on.
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I really love the idea of tools like these that support collective decision making. My impression so far is that they can work really well for groups or networks who are already heavily committed to participating and organizing together and really just need some help keeping track of things.
They do sometimes briefly get people excited about voting on a simple item just because you can… but the evolution of a proposal through several rounds of polls/threads requires everyone putting real time and work into it.
Consequently, my experience so far is that these platforms do not magically create community and connection within new groups just because the decision making tool is available. That commitment still needs to come from somewhere else and that is the hard part.
I still think these platforms can be really useful though. I would love to see us make these available or easier to host for members as a long term goal.
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I really appreciate @jaimev’s reservations.
I’m also working on several governance-tech projects, most ambitiously metagov, which aims to connect various tools (for instance, enabling actions in a Discourse instances to unlock funds on OpenCollective or the like. It’s not ready for the light of day, but might eventually be useful for groups like us to facilitate some processes.
In other co-ops I’m part of, Loomio has been an essential tool for enabling fairly smooth decision-making. But those tools in no way substitute for trust, relationship, and culture.
Hi there, just adding 2 cents since I gave Decidim a closer look some time ago - agree with what has been said about these tools only work if there is already a participatory culture among the collective that uses them. Tech tools are facilitators of social organization, often only after some committed onboarding is done but if the design is good they do take work off of the shoulders of organizers.
Decidim (Catalan for “we decide”) is heavily used by the city council of Barcelona where it was developed in collaboration with Ada Colau’s (she is so amazing!) administration. Last time I was in Barcelona I saw public advertisement of the platform everywhere so they are really engaged in creating a city wide participatory culture. Just thought I’d mention this since it wasn’t mentioned before. More can be found on software’s page: https://decidim.org/
Maybe interesting in particular for @ntnsndr who is working on similar tools the upcoming conference organized by folks behind Decidim: Open Call - Open Call - Decidim Fest 2021 - Decidim
Also: the link between decision making platforms and unlocking of funds in OpenCollective sounds really exciting!
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If there’s interest, we could explore testing our Metagov tool on the MFMT Discourse—it would enable people to participate in voting without having to use a new platform. But our existing voting tool probably does the trick fine for now.