In the last few weeks two things have happened that will go a long way towards achieving this goal. P2PU started talking to One Click Orgs and I decided to run a P2PU course on open governance, so that I could ask some of my questions more formally and find others who might be interested to explore them together.

One Click Orgs helps open communities to set up governance structures that allow them to become legal entities (with all the security and power that comes with that – actually little power, and a lot of hassle) while preserving their essential dynamic and participatory nature. They started working with UK community organizations, are currently applying their ideas, technology and model to a UK charity (a non profit organization), and are excited to look at doing the same with us for a US based 501(c)(3) (same thing, non profit organization, but different country and laws). I had been struggling with the idea of establishing all the traditional rules and structures that typical non-profit organizations have, because they felt so foreign to the way things worked at P2PU. And I was worried that by creating structures, we would invariably change the dynamics. It was wonderful to hear Charles Armstrong from One Click Orgs articulate exactly these kinds of issues – and even go one step further and explain how much of the paper-based procedures that are required by law, and which are highly annoying, can actually be virtualized using the open web.

Open Governance course. In this coming round of P2PU courses (sign-up opens next week 25 August – mark the date!) I will facilitate a course on open governance. If you are interested in working together on some of these questions, please consider signing up. If you have some thoughts or experiences to share, but are too busy to commit to the whole course, please do get in touch with me anyway – or leave comments and feedback on the evolving course outline. I am only starting to structure this study of open governance, but there are three concepts that seem like good vantage points from which to explore open governance: transparency, leadership, and participation.

Before going into these ideas in more detail, I thought I’d post a few notes on how P2pU makes decisions today. Looking at the structures that have evolved it is easy to see the tension between the underlying principles and values and the pragmatic realities of trying to move quickly and efficiently. Of course, the argument around efficiency is the most common, but possibly also the worst excuse to not be open. Anyways, P2PU currently has two spheres of governance. An open community mailing list that is open to all, but in practice the people who lead the discussion and work out the details of what P2PU is and does are a small group of committed volunteers (referred to informally as the gang-stars, because of the original mailing list that was titled “the gang”). And there is a second list for the five founders, that is closed and private, where we discuss things that are difficult to do in a public forum – questions about money, strategic partnerships that are just emerging, and ideas that could be fairly significant for P2PU and need a first reality check before one explores them further.

So what are some of the things we are rubbing up against (these are examples for the kinds of things I would like to discuss in more detail in the course)?

The gang list used to be private (but not really closed as anyone who made a significant contribution was invited to join) and a wonderful space for discussion. There was an awesome sense of community, camaraderie, and the conversations freely ranged from very high-level philosophical ideas about the future of education, to the color of the button on the home page. Amidst a lot of good natured joking the vibe was extremely respectful and tolerant. As P2PU grew we started rubbing up against the limitations of having a safe, but fairly small space that was reserved for people who had already made a contribution. Many of us would meet interesting people at conferences, who would have great perspectives and ideas to contribute, but there would be no way to easily bring them into the community discussion. We we were worried about loosing the vibe of the gang list, but decided together that opening it up was the only solution. Now p2pu-community has a new name and anyone can sign up. It is difficult to say what has changed – maybe it is a little bit less wacky, and maybe some of us are a little more guarded in our comments – but the “community” does feel a little different from the “gang”. But even if it is not just the illusion of my sentimental memory, I also see that the benefits of the open community list are much more obvious. It is now much easier for amazing people like Joe and Jessy to just sign-up, chime in and help us do more things better.

One thing that worked well on the council list (remember, closed and private for founders) was our ability to make decisions quickly and efficiently, and the trust that we had in each other’s vision and integrity. The problem is that the amount of decision making required started becoming overwhelming – and that for some of the questions we had originally discussed in the council list, it turned out we were maybe not the best ones to discuss or decide (or at least not without more people involved). We haven’t made any changes to the council list yet, but in the coming months, we will try to understand how it too can evolve – in the same way that the gang has. In the context of incorporation, we have to also clarify its role and responsibilities with respect to a board of directors, who are legally responsible for the organization (and required by law in the US). So … I think it’s clear that there are many more fascinating and challenging questions ahead and I hope some of you will be interested in joining me to explore them.