Working with the other conveners to organize the conference was a great experience. For the last year, my main project was organizing a water symposium for BC that was held in August in three locations simultaneously. As you can imagine it was a lot of work, worked with a lot of great people, and together we delivered a great symposium. There was a sense of team work but I wouldn’t say we were self-organizing. At the start I sent out a committee org chart, roles and responsibilities, and time lines. This worked but I wonder how efficient it was.
For the OGW BC conference, I saw a lot of dedicated people looking for ways to contribute and be helpful without a set structure. Everyone’s time was limited as everyone was volunteering yet by the day of the conference all the details fell into place. There was definitely huge effort on the part of some (hooray for Donna and Bowen) and the conveners seemed to be self-organizing. The principles of Open were used throughout the planning process (google docs for everything) and I’m wondering, is a shared sense of purpose and openness the only ingredients for self-organizing communities or are there others? -Angeline Tilllmanns
2 Responses to “Open+shared purpose=self-organising communities?”
Actually, shared purpose is a debated topic in community research I’ve done, particularly researchers who are interested in complex systems. In the complex line of argument, the quality of relationships between participants, and the fluidity with which resources and information flow between them have a greater impact on what they do than their shared purpose. The interaction of difference strengthens relationships and develops communities, even if only by making clustered sub-groups aware of the larger system. That definitely happened for me at the conference as I realized this little old research study I’ve been working on the for the last year actually has a specific/clear intellectual home!
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