there is still not clear and well documented idea about – What & Who is BoST – which is necessary for decision making for example. I write down what I have understood so far. So we can discuss it already in the next BoST Call and make a decision about it in the next one after this one on October 31.
#BoST Is Permanently Open
Joining OSCEdays BoST calls and discussions and doing jobs from the To-Do-List is permanently open for everyone. Everyone can join at any given moment. And we work under the general agreement that everyone who cares enough to join the discussions and participates in the calls and contribute to the work has a voice, also in votings.
#Critical Decisions
However there might be cases – at least in theory – where more critical decisions need to be made and where a vote in this should be justified by more than just having joined 2 or 3 calls. (Like for example when we decided whom to hire for the DIF-Labs Collaboration )
I think the idea is to have ‘Stewards With Responsibility’ (we need a better name). They are set every year. Like we had it somehow this year: Till September 30 everyone can sign up to be such a steward – for example if she or he as at least participated in at least 2 calls and did a little bit more as well.
In the unlikely case that someone is a troll or something worse the current ‘Stewards With Responsibility’ can reject this person.
#Control Through Openness
How to prevent that the ‘BoST With Responsibility’ becomes a strange in-group excluding fresh ideas and impulses using their right to reject new people and doing stuff with OSCEdays most people don’t like.
Openness could be the protecting mechanism. Everything about OSCEdays should be as open as possible and easy to fork. For example there should be a public backup of the forum everyone can download and set up with all content. So if BoST goes crazy OSCEdays is not lost because everyone can fork it.
It should be the responsibility of the Stewards to make sure this is possible at all time.
There may be points in the discussion where it’s hard to integrate people who don’t know what it’s about. People who want to join in have to have read the current issues documentation. Joining the BoSt requires being informed and genuinely interested, and knowing how to work with the platform. In order to join you need a profile here, have introduced yourself and shown by some active participation anywhere in the Forum that you understand the collaborative nature of the OSCE work.
Joining the BoSt should mean that you’re willing to stay with it and actively contribute until the end of the year; unless you have a good reason to drop out (e.g. things change significantly in your life). Rights should be connected to responsibilities and vice versa: if you do things for the community you should get a say in it’s further development.
I do think we should leave it to the community to decide who’s in the BoSt. People can suggest themselves or any other member of the OSCE community for the job. The community should then be given a timeframe to voice objections. If there are none, the person is in. The BoSt can exclude people, but they should have to explain why and allow the person excluded the right to comment on it. Who is in and who’s kicked out for which reasons needs to be transparent, at least within the community.
The community should have the right to replace the BoSt with a better one (That is: the BoSt has to leave if a significant part of the community suggests different people to do the jobs, and there are no vetoes from the community against that). We need a place for voicing concerns that is not controlled by the BoSt to allow dissenters to start a debate if needed.
I think the majority of ppl will know that and just listen first – check the atmosphere which is: be careful and respectful, emotionally smart, listen and if you think you have something valuable to add, suggest it.
(2) I think that is pretty much how I see it. Everyone can join. And in the unlikely case someone needs to be rejected there must be good and transparent reasons for it
(3) Ok, we can add that. Community can ask with a majority to replace current BoST. I think the forum has space for that. But we can suggest to use Loomio as an alternative. But you can’t take away to forum quickly, because you can always send private messages to each other and to huge groups. Not even an admin can see those.
On Loomio, I think that OuiShare has some parallels to OSCE Days being an open collaborative community, albeit pushing the sharing economy rather than CE. This video highlights how Loomio has made things very effective for them in terms of decision making.
From a wider perspective, it may make sense to look at OuiShare in more detail or talk to them to learn from them on governance, any struggles they have had, etc.
Hello. here a little think about this than meybe can help in the future:
BoST Is Permanently Open
this is important and i think than @BoST can invite people from the world (participants or not of the OSCED) to be participants and listeners of the meeting and can help make the vision of @BoST is always kept open and not become a closed group.
Critical Decisions
I believe that @BoST have to create a mechanism to know the rules to be part of the feedback in big decisions. I do not think that only with having participated in 2 or 3 meetings (it may be that the 3 are not sequential) is enough to vote, in this case I think it would be better for example you can expose an argument but it can not vote, besides the numbers of votes to accepted or not a decision, etc.
Control Through Openness
I believe that each year (for the period of 5 years) all members of @BoST (apart from entering or leaving during this period) close the cycle and put into consideration its participation in the next period and this is brought to a vote as suggested @transitionmaike