How can a group of thousands of people talk about and decide anything? How's this 'community' concept supposed to work at scale, even in theory?
Any Free/Libre Open Source Software project will have elements of do-ocracy (rule of those who do the work), but not all decisions should devolve to implementors. A better ideal is that decisions should be made by the people who are most affected.
Particularly when a decision strongly impacts more than those who carry it out, we need better ways of making decisions that give everyone their say. This starts by letting people by heard by everyone else. Fortunately, we can scale conversations and decisions in a fair and truly democratic way.
- Learn why meritocracy ("rule of those with merit") is a bogus and harmful concept.
- Gain a passing familiarity with various ways decisions are or have been made in Drupal and other projects.
- Add sociocracy and sortition to your vocabulary and understand how these esoteric concepts can help our community scale.
- Get introduced to (and give feedback on) Visions Unite, non-Drupal free software for mass communication mediated by the participants.
The most important things we have to do need to be done together. And our work together is most powerful when we make decisions about it together.
This session is for people working on developing large communities about Drupal, with Drupal, or otherwise— or existing in society.
