How can we work better together?

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We must be uniquely good at working well together. Rather than using their tools, which perpetuate dominant models of competition and capitalism, we need to work together. A node's value is not stagnant (money in the bank), but rather how it moves and makes connections, moves information through the network. Individuals are in this sense like routers, moving traffic / information from one node to the next.

How do you know if a network is healthy?

  • Neighborhood communication flow
  • Look to natural ecosystems - prey / predators. Sense of competition fragments - competition for funding, ideological battles.
  • When it comes to social justice we need to show a face of solidarity
  • Come together over a shared goal
  • Sense of ownership
  • Moments of convergence and celebration
  • Fallbacks work out because ways of working together - processes - are clear
  • With mesh networks- it's a mentality of 'we own it ourselves and create it together', that the network won't work if individuals don't learn to share and feel secure in their sharing - that they're creating the network
  • When one feels compelled to invest in the community
  • The things that people pay attention to everyday, making the edges visible - ATTENTION LITERACY
  • Redundancy and resiliency
  • Joint purpose problem
  • Reach people where they're at - don't push a platform
  • Anyone can emerge and lead
  • With Wiser, hard to measure, hard to quantify the health of the network
  • Efficiency of the network more nuanced - the ability of the network to adapt and change in different scenarios is essential
  • What is intended by 'health'? Will vary depending on the individual perspectives
  • Planning how the network will scale is importantC
  • Coalition of LGBTQ orgs for people of color - the big orgs with lots of money (and strings), twisting the grants to help the smaller orgs - without homogenizing the work any given individual is doing.
  • Jane Jacobs, organics of city planning - how communities come together and self-regulate. A sense of shared ownership gives way to a sense of shared responsibility
  • Trans-local Autonomous Organizing - trust in the other components of the network functioning independently
  • Being able to respond at scale appropriately
  • Adaptability and flexibility
  • Main impediment to ownership in a network is sometimes resources - capacity to participate and explicit invitations
  • Heterogeneity and diversity of voices and perspectives in conversation
  • Network of service providers / trainers for human rights organizations - very heterogeneous nodes
  • Common vision vs. common threat -> threat seems to be a better organizer of people