Dear peers,
PLEASE TAKE SOME TO READ PATIENTLY. DO NOT SHALLOW SKIM.
Even though i am a bit aged than others in the EC, i feel that i am not
experienced or sometimes feel dont have common sense to participate to
reach the collective goals. My mistakes span from slacking, writing
everything in internet messaging instead of properly emailing, most of
the times behaving individually in the name of independence often that
undermines solidarity.
However, from the day i landed in Puducherry, my experience have been
very well and good amid differences and slumps. We learn from criticism
while doing mistakes, and not necessarily from mistakes directly. There
is a big difference.
It seems most of the times i prescribe ideas, suggestions, proposals
that are splendid, and seems working on paper, because i mostly interact
with paper and pencil than with peers.
Many have criticized me for being dependent on low quality
communications such as internet messaging, etc... and the number of
criticisms as i think now is long. It took time for me to change that
habit, and even then i have been following the method of sowing
prescriptions wherever possible from im chats to forums to documents to
wikis.
I have to accept that i am doing that because of gratification and ease
(that comes with lazyness) of putting things as thoughts emerge and
materialize in me.
--------------
I would like to make few suggestions. I believe these are collected
based on my experience with some other communities that have similar
goals like us.
*First* : the hard reality & negative patterns
* Based on the periodic "etherpad" suggestions/tasks we are trying to
divide our labour to reach a collective goal, which creates a
dependency on each others share of work for a overall work. That is
one particular work is divided and tasked to each one in the EC,
where eventually one waits for the other to create a collective output.
* Since we are not full timers in community, we have to understand and
accept the hard reality that each of us only can contribute in the
time we have towards a particular task. That is the degree of
commitment that every member can able to contribute and promise - in
the hope of reaching the desired goal.
* Individual members like me talk a lot over im, and make it informal,
diluted and thus goes unnoticed for anyone who is really interested.
This also increases the social noise for every other members and
creates a sense of constantly looking for im notifications.
* We need to divert ourselves to serious, formal discussion forums and
emails rather than im's and circumscribe its usage only for a
defined usage and that too can be replaced by phone calls.
---
*Second* : the way "division of labour" needs to the revised
* As a community we have the responsibility to keep constant
representation in public minds. This is where social network
influence is key, and most of the organizing part is geared towards
it. It can range from conducting workshops in educational
institutions, tech. sessions, public debates, social media posters,
etc....
* the conventional way of division of labour, has *strict dependency*
on each other that causes "Waits" or "Delays" that some times cause
frictions in community.
* As EC members of community, all of the members must have a *minimum
set of common technical skills*, that are mostly towards creating
content.
* If we agree on that, we can reorganize ourselves as *Regulators* who
took responsible for one particular social interfaces like : FB,
Instagram, mastodon, blog, postering, memeing, etc.... These
regulators will not have the responsibility to create content, but
to regulate it and think from publics point of view and review it
before publishing. They are the *gate keepers* who abide by the
principles of community. So they basically handle communication and
publication.
o *ex* : Noordine can regulate Instagram, Twitter. Ghanesh can
regulate desins for Posters. I can regulate wiki. Arun & Kamal
can regulate Blog. Maniraj can regulate Facebook. etc.....
* On the other hand, session volunteers, handlers, can handle content
generation that can range from poster creation, essay writing,
illustrating, presentation, documentation, etc... This requires the
members must be capable of using all foss tools, workflows,
templates, resources, information on workflow commonly, that can be
sourced from community git repo and wiki. Any doubts on specific
topic can be clarified by making phone calls directly to the
corresponding regulators.
o This breaks the conventional linear dependency chain, and
creates a common ground where the content creators (tech session
volunteers, etc.....) can go on create documents, presentation,
videos, eassays, illustrations, etc... based on some commonly
available templates, resources without depending on the others.
* A common calendar schedule is needed that needs to be synchronized
to each one's laptop and smart phone so that individual can plan the
work and prioritize accordingly.
Dependency is not essentially harmful or negative, but if must be
shifted from haunting us to us taming it.
---
*Third* : Legal representation must be the effect of real community work
flow.
* In future a legal representation is needed if we aspire to build a
maker space or use it to apply for funding resource and really
intervene in some social issues that we wish to. This as Sharath &
Others say requires a *common Standard Operating Procedure* that
needs to be practiced by the EC.
* We are all aware that how current era is brawling with informatics,
computation and automation, which will keep us in increased pressure
as other social movements both locally and globally expect
communities like us to act. Already we have been involving some of
the key critical theory learning with respect to them for instance
in AI, Data Privacy, Hardware repair, Ecology & Informatics, Fake
news, Computation capitalism, and other hegemonic forces.
* We also must really start to think in *INTERSECTIONAL* terms. We
cannot afford to think in isolated chambers of specific issues.
However with prompt emergence of some social issues must be faced
with specificity. Actions can be coordinated based on specifc issue,
but the thought process of every member must be almost uniform.
---
*Fourth* : Work for a common tangible output
* I have learned that conventional collective outcomes are :
o technical sessions
o socio-legal discussions
o petitions
o public statements
o software/hardware freedom day
o collective study circles
* However, a more tangible outcome like a co-authoring of a book or
periodic magazine would also create a real respectable output. I
suggest it because we all discuss, learn, criticize several things
from several different disciplines as far as i know. But it becomes
internalized within each individuals area of expertise and needs
explicit communication between individual and a certain threshold of
learning to even observe. Instead if each individual in EC has the
common skill set, they can communicate what they learn and criticize
and communicate it through the common medium like a book or magazine
will be more useful and catalyze our presence in publics mind. I
feel this is necessary, because in addition to other forms of tech.
platform driven social presence, this will have a
recorded/accountable history before we seriously engage in
registration or even to have a respectful intervention.
* Instead of keeping the website a static one, we can create some
dynamic content like recommending tools, education content in
interactive form, have a geo portal specifically designed for pondy,
a crowd sourcing medium for fund collection, etc....
I might have missed other interesting ideas, please feel free to add to
the thread. With that i think i have cleanly summarized what i have
suggested informally.
regards
Ganesh
