[Foundation-l] Barnraising (was: The fallacy of power)

[Florence Devouard]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> The Board restructuring appears ...

> Erik

This is a brillant email Erik. Thank you for it.

There is little to add to it. But I would like to expand one of your 
points.

Maybe am I getting too old that I start repeating myself, but I feel the 
desire to talk about barnraising again ;-)
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-March/040652.html


A month ago, I went to the office in San Francisco for the first time. 
It was very early in the morning, and only Mary-Lou was there yet.
She gave me a tour of the office (not that it takes a lot of time), and 
I played at guessing "who's desk is this ?". I looked at the Stillman 
Wall, just on the left hand side after the entrance door. The Wall 
displays pictures of wikipedians. In the middle of the office, there is 
a corner with a coffee table and sitting couch. With a bookshelf, on 
which sit various books, in particular those written about our projects. 
And a wall, with dozen of pictures of wikipedians in a variety of 
situations. Some pictures taken at Wikimania, some in various wikimeets, 
some in the office...
Behind this spot, there is a small kitchen corner, with a small table, a 
sink, two bins (to be able to recycle... took me a very short time to 
notice that the recycling part was not very well done...).

And a coffee machine.

Soon enough, Mary-Lou and I gathered around the coffee machine. And 
Mary-Lou made me a capuccino with this nice creamy top (be reassured, I 
learned how to do them myself afterwards). I looked around for plastic 
cups... and found brand new mugs. All the same.

The "be-bold mugs".

A creamy plain-looking, sturdy, stimulating mug.

This mug is right here. Near my laptop. On my desk. (I "borrowed" one of 
the mugs). With Brasilian coffee made in an Italian Coffee-Machine, 
topped with Swiss cream.
It is now my favorite mug.

During the board meeting, after we decided to create these two board 
seats to be "selected" by chapters, someone asked :

"Should we give guidelines to the chapters ? Perhaps we could suggest 
them the right process to follow to nominate the representants ?"

My answer was

"NO WAY".
Let them figure out all by themselves. It will be a fabulous opportunity 
for them to work together to achieve something in common. Afaik, for the 
first time. It will push them to "find a common ground", "cooperate", 
and certainly in the process "create bonds".
Hopefully, the incentive will be sufficient for them to feel motivated 
to go through all the disagreements that we can guess they will meet... 
to reach a decision.
It may be that this decision will be a bit broken, but it will be their 
decision and they will have worked it by themselves. And hopefully, they 
will improve it over time.

"Barnraising is not church raising. Although it is often valuable to 
build an immaculate example of some ideal or utopian philosophy, these 
projects often require a large investment and religious zeal to hold 
them together. Sure, churches are often beautiful, but they are 
unpractical en masses. Conversely, barns are practical, functional, 
cheap, full of horseshit, and you don't need to be a hallowed Prophet to 
  make one. Don't we prefer barns to churches here ?"

/me sips a bit of coffee.

Sj pointed out
"the wikipedia community is weakening.  This is not inherent; we are 
nowhere near our potential even as a meme; it is due to restriction and 
neglect.   This is also not new; though easier to see over time -- the 
community has been on a broad decline since 2006.  We have stopped 
founding major new projects, poured cold water on various community 
initiatives in the spirit of unification of brand, and generally eroded 
the community's boldness, authority, and implicit entrustedness with the 
success of the projects. "

I actually agree with Sj that we suffer an erosion of boldness.
Some suffers an erosion of boldness out of fear for their personal 
public reputation.
Some suffers an erosion of boldness out of fear of upsetting donors.
Some suffers an erosion of boldness out of fear of losing power.
Some suffers an erosion of boldness out of fear of being singled out.
Some suffers an erosion of boldness out of fear to ... just receive "no" 
as an answer, or worse, no answer at all.
We are ALL concerned.
Fortunately, we also RESIST and stay quite bold. But not quite enough.

In spite of actively resisting, the Board or some staff members are 
considered as the ultimate authority on many topics. Perhaps is it the 
human nature to try to build hierarchical structures, even in the 
flatter environments. But I do not think that is quite right.

A solution to avoid stagnation, foster various leaderships, and plan in 
case of the worse, is ... to ensure the existence of several parallel 
nodes of power.

The Foundation is such a node. A VC could be another. A Council of 
chapters could be a third. Or maybe will it be One chapter. Or a 
TradeUnion ;-) I do not know yet.

But balances of power can only exist in a multipolar context.

This might be our biggest challenge for the next few years. We can not 
stay a flat informal organization (as in 2004). We should not stay 
either a mono-polar bloated organization. And one way to foster the 
creation of new organization is to kick the new bird out of nest and let 
it fly by itself.


Ant


PS:want to join the mug party ? http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.105855895