Commoning Standard

= "convening researchers and practitioners in synthesizing, publishing, and disseminating standards for effective self-organization." [1]

URL = https://www.roundskysolutions.com/

Context

Round Sky Solutions:

"As a species, we stand at the edge of extinction due to human-induced metacrises caused by our inability to cooperate across differences. The ability to reliably self-govern/cooperate across difference could unleash our capacity to solve these crises and create a thriving planet. And we are not alone in identifying the significance of this potential. This holy grail of unlocking our capacity to self-organize as a species has so much potential that the last decade has seen an explosion of interest in and experiments with new forms of governance: from the teal organizations’ movement to the technical world of DAOs, to solutions for conventional polarized politics, to online platform management, to multipolar geopolitics, to the question of AI alignment."

(https://www.roundskysolutions.com/commoning-standard/?)

Description

"This convening of aligned stakeholders around a commoning standard aims to increase collaboration between projects and build tools and infrastructure for collaboration grounded in the recognition that an ecology of practices for effective self-governance is itself a commons and as such needs governing as a commons by:

• synthesizing our learning and research into an integrated operating system of best practices for self-organization (orgware) for offline and online use; and

• publishing this structured methodology that integrates our diverse efforts while honoring our sovereignty; and

• implementing the system via a coordinative platform that enables global coordination in service of a thriving planet; and

• evolving the operating system/orgware through using the tools in the commons and by conducting further research.

As experienced technologists we have converged on the need for an increase in coherence that an integration of research and practice could generate—better orgware. By articulating open standards into a streamlined coordinative platform, we will facilitate better training and more meaningful social connections across existing platforms and protocols. For examples, see this table linked here.

This project is building upon thirteen years of research focused on questions around healthy power-sharing into organizational and individual development that has been integrated into our orgware, an ecology of practices called Collab and implemented in a wide range of organizations from colleges to coops and community organizations to banks. Research is ongoing and Collab has been through three formal evolutions so far with input from users. The success of this work has inspired the launch of the Commoning Standard based on the recognition that any such orgware belongs to humanity as a whole and should be evolved into the future by a commons. Please see this table linked here for summaries of methodologies and theories integrated to date.

Going forward, we propose the creation of an ongoing symposia process characterized by multiple interrelated, simultaneously offered, opportunities in which to engage multiple networks indefinitely in the process of evolving a set of open commoning standards."

Bios

"This convening is being called by:

• Cecile Green is a visionary, entrepreneur, homesteader and builder with a passion for researching practices for healthy shared power. As an integral scholar-practitioner and life long learner, she holds a B.S. in Community Supported Agricultural Systems from UMass Amherst and three decades of experience in entrepreneurial environments. As the innovator of Collab, an ecology of practices for effective power sharing, she has researched and experimented with questions of human social power, systems of decision-making, and efficient operations in both academic and applied contexts, and is the author of the book “Collaboration that Works: A Ruthlessly Practical Handbook for a Generative World,” a training manual which summarizes her research and introduces these tools for practical application in organizations. She is the co-founder of Round Sky Solutions, a worker coop, and instructor for the Cooperative Leadership Certification Program. Her academic publications include “The Organizational Power Matrix: Toward a Metapraxis of Power” (2013, Journal of Integral Theory and Practice) and “Instantiating a Global Governance Commons” (in publication 2024, Journal of Archdisciplinary Studies).

Cecile was raised in Istanbul Turkey for 10 years as a child where she learned French in an embassy school and spent hours exploring ancient ruins and the waters of the Aegean. In her spare time, she enjoys the wilds of Vermont, dancing, and building community through growing food together.

• Dr. Seth Frey is a professor in Communication at the University of California Davis, an affiliate of the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University, and a Research Director at Metagov.org. He specializes in computational institutional science, using online communities as model systems for emergent institutional and organizational phenomena, particularly commons management.

Seth is also an organizer for the cooperative movement, with 20 years of experience developing intentional communities and transitioning them into collective ownership.

Seth earned his Ph.D. in Cognitive Science and Informatics (complex systems) at Indiana University in 2013, and a B.A. in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley. He was a behavioral economist at Disney Research in Walt Disney Imagineering. His research has appeared in PNAS, Nature Scientific Reports, and Proceedings of the Royal Society. It has been funded by the NSF, NASA, and the Ford Foundation."

(https://www.roundskysolutions.com/commoning-standard/?cn-reloaded=1)