2020-09-21 Hypha Worker Co-op: One-Click Orgs convo

Who’s here? Chris Mear (One-Click Orgs), patcon

Notes

• what patcon knows (summary)
  • founded by Charles Armstrong (face), created by Chris Mear
  • partners: CoopsUK, NestaUK (interesting board)
  • platform that started for associations, and moved to non-profits and then co-op (~20 total, incl self, unincorps, hackerspaces, etc.)
  • ideological goal was to offer a means of bringing about emergent democratic systems outside state control and pressure
  • path was foremost about reimagining legal structure as outside state control and programmatic constitution (baked-in proto-loomio decision-making tools were a means to that end)

• misc intro (cm)
  • charles kicked off with his friends before chris showed up
  • started writing before chris arrived
  • heard about thru openrights group. like UK EFF
  • wanted to learn ruby
  • had set up freelance company, and wondered why so painful
  • taught value of having the visionary
  • part of it was very practical. lightweight legal structures
  • unincorp was legally easiest. perhaps not part of theory of change.
  • imagining a future of digital companies exchanges contracts and digital signings, etc.
  • help legal, help get members, help use decision-making machinery to do things
  • orgs come WITH these structures for decision-making. in practice, we guessed orgs didn’t go through this. even maybe when they should have.
  • idea = take existing legal structures and virtualize as much as possible. without sending ppl to board meeting.
  • v1 had option to set time-limit. could set to 5min.
• questions
  • what are you most proud of in regards to the project?
    • partnerships with co-opsuk. worked with our legal guy to adjust their constitution. francis davey. barrister with strong tech background. has gone undergroudn
    • right mix of skills. lawyer who understood the coding side.
    • co-ops were the most complicated
    • coopsUK provided funding. money to chris and francis. had heard of us. goals may have been a bit aligned. vague notion of we should be doing something
  • anyone working on project? maintenance mode until earlier this year
    • charles accidentally let domain expire
    • want to get domain set up again, but no time for real development work on it
    • no new francis for lega. david bovill.
    • no one came knocking on door
    • specific clauses for if server went away
    • people haven’t been poking in to respond
  • some people only want to store constitution on it, don’t want to use it regularly
  • target audience, in moment and longer?
    • communtiy groups, clubs, small NFP. with handful of people. first bank account or laon. hudrle of legal.
  • transition from unincorpo to nonprofit? no, discussed but not built
  • theory of change: this is charles Q.
    • good orgs that weren’t getting made bc of challenges in place. start small and work way up to enabling larger and larger member-organized organization like this. could eventually get into social enterprise space.
  • what do you wish you’d understood earlier?
    • reason project withered is lack of ppl. not having personnel.
    • early days had good association with london hackerspace. some core devs. but dwindled until just chris and side-project of charles
  • was there a sustainability plan?
    • bragging about “volunteer” in one talk at london hackerspace.
    • partnership with coopsUK is example. an org that was willing to fund development
    • wasn’t continuous flow of partnerships
    • other $$$ idea. if easy enough to adapt for commerical businesses, would people pay for it
      • would fund development for NPO
  • what did you and charles agree on? disagree on?
    • not major. very much his project, and chris was implementing.
  • it seems that the new, computer constitutional model was central. is this true? was that a good or bad thing?
    • managing constitution and decision-making was always taken for granted
    • looking back, that aspect didn’t see a huge amount of usage. but it was core part of vision for decentralizing running of orgs
  • how did the advisors guide you? did any have views that were incompatible or challenging?
    • not very active advisory board.
    • joi might not have actually ever spoken. was maybe more namedrop. practical getting off the ground. connections.
  • what were the project’s biggest hurdles?
    • staffing.
    • looking back, maybe didn’t do too much promotion outside like-minded groups
    • analytics?
      • no philosophy against, but just a bit naive.
      • colin tate was longtime contrib. analytics was his thing fulltime, so he helped wire up funnels and tracking. helped make some design decisions around that. no a/b testing.
  • did you feel the project was a success? how did others feel?
    • in many ways, achieved what we wanted to do
    • not success from sustainability POV
    • even if dead, there were some orgs who were able to set up and use it
    • didn’t really get critical mass (even just 1-2 big orgs using it). that didn’t happen.
  • what were the strongest aspects of the project’s vision?
    • practical aspect was getting orgs set up. but this was the most boring part of vision. a madlib form online could have done it.
    • the grand vision was kinda built but didn’t see it being used outside simplest case. used it as system of record. decisions happen outside system, them come in rubber-stamp.

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