Otherhoods: Some Thoughts After the Meta Ring

[Ethernian]

Here are my comments on your great post, guys!
I believe I have some (partial) solutions to the problems you have mentioned.

@wschwab

I believe there should be a central address for donations, managed by whoever, and that it should be clearly branded that while the fund is meant for the Magicians, that it is privately managed, and in no way represents the Magicians Foundation or anything of the sort, because no such thing exists.

I would avoid central funds management so much as possible. Central funds management will cause power centralization for sure.

In order to avoid the centralization, I have proposed a solution Donations to the un-organisations which I would like to implement at least in Ring of Architects. So I believe we don’t need an organization or central management to accept donations. Would like to see any feedback to the topic.

@wschwab

Malicious actors could make an event, call it a Council, shill their garbage while saying that they’re Magicians and the full weight of the Magicians says that this is Satoshi’s True Vision., and will Moon with Lambos imminently.
…
This is a serious issue.

What we can do against, we can create a short and standard “pubic disclaimer” that should act as a “creed” in public. Any Magician presenting himself as the part of the Fellowship should start his (public) speech with the “creed”. It may act a little bit religious, but it is not about religion. It is about self-determination in public and how the public perception works. If anyone will start his speech with the “creed” like “Nobody can act on behalf of Fellowship” it will become damn difficult for someone to collect money in name of Magicians.

In order to create the “creed”, we should enlist biggest misuses we try to avoid. A malicious actor collecting funds in the name of Magicians is a good example, but it is not only that one. Hereafter we could try to create a should and standard “disclaimer” preventing this.

@wschwab

I think a critical part of Magicians is the ability for each member to speak and be heard in a small, comfy setting.

I am very strong supporter of the freedom of speech, but there is no right to be heard. Human attention is scarce and anyone should have right to focus it as he like. What we should do, we should give people an ability and tools to setup meaningful information filters and workflow processes.

I am working here on some workflow system for similar case and would appreciate any help and feedback.

@gcolvin

I’ve always preferred to call us a non -organization rather than a dis -organization.

I would make the next step and create a name and rules for Un-Organisations, which are opposite to DAO. It could be something like DAU / DANO / DAUN , but we need a name for Un-Organisations.

We are already have some properties for Un-Organisation:

• it has a brand
• should be able to accept donations made to the UnOrgs
• it refuse any governance and centralization as much as possible but be able to use brand and donation for good.

As I mentioned above I have proposed some kind of token (or NFT) solving some of problems, but it may need deeper discussions before it get implemented.

@gcolvin

I’ve tended to think of reserving Guilds as a term for groups of RIngs when we get too many of those to deal with. But we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

I doubt it will be possible to group Rings into meaningful Guilds. At least I don’t see any process or suitable systematic. I believe, we should spend or efforts on interoperability between Rings, and probably propose re-organization for similar rings (strictly voluntary), instead trying to press them into some artificial scheme.

@gcolvin

But Ethereum Technologists"

If we are thinking about alternative names, I would prefer “Ethereum Engineers” as somebody who more focused on applied aspects of the Ethereum Technology. We already have “Ethereum Scientists” at https://ethresear.ch and I find this distinction between science and engineering very useful.

[Ethernian]

Guys,
We need a category for meta-magicians topics.
The “site feedback” I have used before is just not suitable for broader conversations about magicians as un-organization.

[jpitts]

I’ll create a new topic to gather those together who are interested in working on meta / un-organizational matters A ring needs to be formally formed around this.

Also, we need to process the notes from the Meta Magicians session at the Council of Prague. A lot of insight about how to self-organize and how to manage resources such as finances, domain names, and even the term “Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians” came up.

@wschwab does a good job in his post here to describe the spirit and content of what was discussed. It is not in order, but basically summarizes key points.

[Ethernian]

@jpitts,
would you move all the related topics (and other related texts) into the new category or anyone can do it for his topics?

BTW, I like the name “Ring-13”

[boris]

The tag #meta-magicians can be used to collect things anywhere.

“Older” accounts have permissions to edit titles and add tags / re-categorize.

[boris]

Notes are here:

Breakout Session #2: Meta Magicians

I was facilitator and scribe, because I am bad at handing off scribing / sharing the HackMD link ahead of time. I believe anything that is “actionable” (listed under TODO) should get turned into github issues to see who is “assigned” in actually moving it forward. Long form discussion can / will still happen in forum – but updates / moving things forward / accountability in Github. Participants Rhys Aidan TJ Rush Bryant issuing invoices Brooke William Simona events - inclusivity Amy …

[boris]

William, thank you for this extended write up!

@wschwab

I believe the idea at originally branding the Magicians as a disorganization sought to capture the commitment to frictionless participation.

I think somewhere in here, @gcolvin’s non-organization got transformed – we’ve used dis-organization to poke fun at ourselves, but non-organization is the term we should be holding up as an example.

Greg pointed me towards the Rainbow Family as a non organization, and I posted about it here:

Greg Colvin's opening remarks to Paris Council

From a call with @gcolvin today, he brought up the Rainbow Family / Rainbow Gathering. Lots of tips on running “disorganizations”: I love this quote: Some rainbow family participants make the claim that the family is the “largest non-organization of non-members in the world”

We are all non-members!

On decentralizing – yes, I think small groups can and should form and that’s how some of the noise is cut through – there are bridges between groups / rings etc and they bubble up to spaces that have more reach (but also noise), as perhaps this forum might.

Just to add this info here, I have attempted to document ownership of our “Infrastructure” on the Scrolls wiki.

It needs proper links to the various infrastructure, of course

@wschwab

Tl;dr: I propose keeping all individual assets in the hands of individuals, and branding them as not representing the totality of the Magicians, putting the Magicians brand in the public domain, creating regional Chapters of the Magicians, creating more small-group online Guilds of Magicians with like interests, and rebranding as an Otherhood.

I think this is perhaps where we’ve ended up.

Is there even a brand to put in the public domain? There’s the UTF8 symbol of sparkles and … that’s it?

The most recognizable asset is the domain name, as owned / managed by @jpitts.

[boris]

After having written this – @wschwab, I think this is pretty much where we are at today!

One thing is, we haven’t had people run with the wand and actually DO other things. We have some signs that a smaller group will create an event, and creating an event template may spur further action.

I still see not a lot of consistent doing, and not a lot of consistent “this needs to be done”. That is, I think, a side effect of a forum for long form discussion.

As I mentioned in this post on processing video – I believe these true “doing” items need to move to Github.

[boris]

@gcolvin

I’d suggest that we have a single, yearly Council, a week in length, and do other work online and in other meetings organized as smaller groups see fit. I think a face-to-face meeting of the Fellowship as a whole is necessary to maintain community cohesion. That would need to be coupled with a single online category on this website as a place to reach consensus on issues affecting the Magicians as a whole, including the Principles themselves.

I’m most interested in this as well – a summer meeting that has a couple of days of everyone in plenary – and then time after for further doing in smaller groups – maybe with one more day at the end to summarize for everyone.

One week is a BIG ask and won’t be accessible to most people unless their day job funds them to do that.

[gcolvin]

@Ethernian

If we are thinking about alternative names…

To be clear, I wasn’t saying we should change our name, just a suggestion of an alternative name to use in some contexts where Magicians might not fly. We already have, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and seven uses of “technical” in our Principles. Engineering pe se is mentioned nowhere.

[Ethernian]

@gcolvin

To be clear, I wasn’t saying we should change our name,

TaIking about the name for non-Orgs I do not mean to change the name of FEM (it is another topic).
I mean, we should find a good name for non-Orgs because it looks like some standard case for many other cases (like DAO is not only TheDAO) and it will make sense to describe it properly and implement processes around it.

[gcolvin]

@Ethernian

I’ve always preferred to call us a non -organization rather than a dis -organization.

I would make the next step and create a name and rules for Un-Organisations, which are opposite to DAO. It could be something like DAU / DANO / DAUN , but we need a name for Un-Organisations.

A little Googling finds precedent for the use of both with similar meanings. E.g. the Rainbow Family and the International Academy of Nurse Editors call themselves nonorganizations, the process of unorganization is currently popular in management consulting, and Opus Dei calls itself an “organized unorganization.”

[gcolvin]

@Ethernian

TaIking about the name for non-Orgs I do not mean to change the name of FEM (it is another topic).

Our comments have gotten mixed up, sorry. I was talking about our founding name “The Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians” versus the many abbreviations and alternatives we use tend to use also–FEM, Magicians, Magi, etc. I suggested “Ethereum Technogists” might be good for expense reports and such, and more inclusive than “Ethereum Engineers.”

[Ethernian]

@gcolvin

–FEM, Magicians, Magi, etc. I suggested “Ethereum Technogists”

As one can see, the trend (and the demand) is going to short names and abbreviations. People are looking for it. I am fine with “Ethereum Technologists”, but it is a long name. What could be the short name for “Ethereum Technogists”?

[Ethernian]

@gcolvin

“organized unorganization.”

So would you consider Unorganisation as the good name and the UnOrg as a good abbreviation?
I am just thinking about disambiguation to UN.org

[gcolvin]

@boris

One week is a BIG ask and won’t be accessible to most people unless their day job funds them to do that.

It’s a big ask, but really a small amount of time to get a lot of work done. IETF meets for a week three times a year. Standard C meets for a week twice a year. And so on. For those with no other support, some sort of charity fund could be started? And the fact that not all can be there is why we have streaming and a principle of finalizing most consensus online, not at meetings.

(For me it’s too small an ask. It’s hardly worth the airfare to get so little done, and airfare is by far the biggest expense.)

[gcolvin]

@Ethernian

So would you consider Unorganisation as the good name and the UnOrg as a good abbreviation?
I

Hmm. Which has worse English connotations, “disorganized”, “unorganized”, or “nonorganized”?

[gcolvin]

@Ethernian

As one can see, the trend (and the demand) is going to short names and abbreviations. People are looking for it. I am fine with “Ethereum Technologists”, but it is a long name. What could be the short name for “Ethereum Technogists”?

In the community, “Magicians” or “Magi” seems to have stuck as meaning us, and I’m fine with that. Were I filling in an expense report for a meeting, “Ethereum Magicians” would raise eyebrows, whereas “Ethereum Technologists” would not. Just plain “Technologists” would raise the question, “which technologists.” But mostly a personal choice, I guess.

[Ethernian]

@gcolvin

In the community, “Magicians” or “Magi” seems to have stuck as meaning us,
“Ethereum Magicians” would raise eyebrows, whereas “Ethereum Technologists” would not.

“Magi” as short synonym to “Ethereum Technologists” will create confusion at least among newbies, IMHO.

[gcolvin]

@Ethernian

“Magi” as short synonym to “Ethereum Technologists” will create confusion at least among newbies, IMHO.

I think we misunderstand each other. Jamie and I founded “The Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians.” It would take consensus to change that as our actual name. I’m just talking about the various alternatives, abbreviations, acronyms, and descriptions we use for various purposes. My only big preferences are “nonorganization” over “dis-” and “un-”, due to fewer bad connotations. And “technologists” over “engineers” due to greater inclusiveness and prior use in our principles.