Agendas - Original Copy Nov 21

Communities can cooperate more effectively by creating an agenda for group activities. In traditional organizations there is often a single leader who creates the agenda for the group, which comes with many drawbacks and limitations. Now, communities are pioneering new ways to schedule activities together to maximize benefit for all!

This article is organized into the following sections:

Eden ƒractal is a decentralized and autonomous community. Decentralized means that there is not a single leader who can unilaterally make decisions for the whole community. Autonomous means that community members can make group decisions and coordinate group actions. There are many leaders in Eden who are working together to help each other, make community decisions, and help people cooperate.

So, how does a decentralized and autonomous community come to consensus to create an agenda? In other words, how does a community with many leaders decide what to do with their time?

In the twenty weeks since the inception of Eden ƒractal, we’ve cooperated with the ƒractally consensus process during the first hour of meetings and then shared open discussions afterwards. In the eighteen months since the inception of Eden, we’ve cooperated with the Eden Elections process with hundreds of breakout rooms and delegate meetings. Our cooperation with these processes has produced thoroughly impressive results in building community and creating public goods, including helpful videos, tools, inspiration, and networking.

During our open discussions and throughout the past months, we’ve deliberated deeply about ways to structure our time to better facilitate group decision making. In recent Eden ƒractal meetings we’ve explored various interim consensus processes, contemplated the meaning of consensus and signals, and adopted the innovative Eden+Fractal process to help make great community decisions.

The Eden Elections, ƒractally, Eden+Fractal processes have helped the Eden community effectively structure time with fun, collaborative, and productive games for the first hour of meetings. These consensus processes provide the community with protocols for effective cooperation for the duration of the breakout room, but they haven’t yet provided ideal solutions to help us cooperate in the hour after breakout rooms…

After innovating the breakout room process with Eden+Fractal, the community is designing new protocols for effective cooperation in the hour after the breakout room. More specifically, the community is designing protocols to set agendas and create, review, and approve proposals.

The Eden community is innovating quickly. During Eden ƒractal Meeting 20 there were six proposals for agenda and proposal protocols. This is a new design space that may require much more exploration, consideration, and iteration to perfect. Our next step towards implementing an effective protocol for agendas and proposals is to carefully review current proposals, then discuss their relative merits and determine the best option.

The five proposals so far were previously scattered around discord and other community discussions, so we’ve curated each proposal and responses below. Further below you can read recommendations about the next steps for Eden.

The following proposals are curated below:

Dan Singjoy proposed Cagendas. Community leaders focused on Cagendas for

Vlad made the following post before Eden ƒractal Week 22:

Should we use following post break-out room meeting structure?

1. 15 min for announcements/updates concerning everyone. Max 5 min per person, or person can delegate to moderator to announce.

2. 1 hour max, councils discuss and vote on proposals one by one. Proposals are listed on Consortium in order prioritized by EDEN token holders.

3. Wild west, anyone can stay to hangout as long as they wish.

Vlad introduced his proposal during Eden ƒractal Meeting 20 at 1:25:45

Should use the following process to decide on the meeting structure for each week?

EdenFractal token-holders vote on polls on Consortium prefixed with "Meeting #N agenda proposal: ", where N is the number of the meeting. Agenda with the most votes wins and is enforced by a moderator during the next meeting.

Tadas introduced his proposal during Eden ƒractal Meeting 20 at 1:21:20:

Vlad shares critical feedback about Tadas’ proposal during Eden ƒractal Meeting 20 at 1:27:17. One of his concerns is that not many people would make proposals for full agendas and agenda creation may be more centralized with Tadas’ proposal.

Lennie shared a proposal in the Eden Discord and Eden ƒractal telegram channel. You can see Lennie’s proposal and some responses below:

Felix posted a proposal on Discord and introduced the proposal during Eden ƒractal Meeting 20. You can read this proposal below and watch Felix introduce this proposal at 1:45:29 in the following video.

Dan has made several proposals to help organize time, set agendas, and process proposals. You can see a couple of these proposals below and learn more about them in our articles about Consortium and Time. Dan is planning to create a more concise and comprehensive proposal after further reflecting upon the ideas on this page.

You can watch Dan share thoughts on proposals so far and introduce several proposals to help organize time during meetings at 1:40:44 in Eden Fractal Meeting 20.

Here are two proposals that Dan previously made and are now withdrawn:

Should we allocate 20 minutes during the next meeting to discuss the proposal to change the start time for breakout rooms?

Should we allocate 30 minutes during the next meeting to discuss proposals to use Consortium?

During Eden ƒractal Meeting 20, Jesse proposed creating a second community room in the hour after breakout rooms. One room would focus on discussions about proposals and the other room would focus on welcoming new community members.

You can hear Jesse introduce this proposal at 1:28:04 in the following video. Dan asked Jesse for clarification about this proposal and signaled his support for this initiative at 1:36:35.

Our recommendations are organized into the following categories. Please note that we are in the process of forming opinions about these proposals and these recommendations are subject to change.

Each of these proposals offer unique value that can benefit the community. For example, there are benefits to a single system where there are formal rules and the agenda is voted on in only the way that Tadas described. Perhaps it is best to use a comprehensive single system like this, but I think it is probably best to be flexible so that both full agendas and single topics can be proposed.

I’m looking forward to considering this more thoroughly and open to changing my mind, but at this point I think we should proceed with a loose combination of several proposals here, along with some natural on-the-fly communication, leadership, and fluid decision making. In our next meeting and over the next week we can decide if we want to hone in on any of these proposals in particular, but at this point I don’t feel compelled to choose any of these proposals and I’m looking forward to learning more about each.

We should remember the limits of setting agendas and avoid becoming too constrained by the systems that we create. Like any other proposals, agenda proposals are expressions of opinions about what should be the agenda. It’s up to the moderator and community as a whole to use their discretion judgement to effectively facilitate the best meeting possible. If there are new people who need attention or some other issue, the host(s) may need to make a judgement call to push everything back 5 minutes, or whatever other on the fly calls from the community. Sometimes a proposal may need 2 more minutes over time, and it’s up to the host and/or community to make a snap decision to allow it.

Let’s keep in mind that any proposed agenda is a guide, not an instruction that we must follow exactly. We should remember that the opinions from a proposal 2 days ago may not be fitting in the current moment and be flexible to enable natural leadership/empathy/cooperation/subjective feeling when it is right to do x, y, or z. Over time we can speed up cignals with Consortium, but especially for now we’re technically limited in our ability to share a high throughput of cignals. In either case, and especially now, we should remember that the agenda is a guide to help the community and the agenda does not rule over the community.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve thought about how different interfaces may be able to help us better allocate time for the community. I like all the proposals above in various ways, but ultimately I think that all of these proposals are somewhat clunky and can be further innovated to help communities cooperate better.

I’m not yet sure what form these innovations will take. Perhaps Eden may cooperate better by using a tool like Doodle with Consortium Cignals or the Eden+Fractal council. Fun fact: the current timing of Eden ƒractal meetings was decided with Doodle back in May. There are also many other scheduling tools that we may want to explore, such as Calendly. Maybe we can integrate Web2 tools with the latest cooperative technology via APIs or open-source alternatives. Maybe there is an app on EOS or EVM that may already help with this, such as Clarity.

The Eden community is innovating quickly. During Eden ƒractal Meeting 20 there were six proposals for agenda and proposal protocols. This is a new design space that may take much more exploration and iteration to perfect. Our next step towards implementing an effective protocol for agendas and proposals is to carefully review the current proposals, then discuss the relative merits of each and determine the best option.

With our tools and wits, we can learn to cooperate way better than ever before. We should be patient while thoroughly exploring these proposals to learn to cooperate as effectively as possible. We can try different aspects of each proposal and iterate gradually, then play it by ear. We’re making great progress with Eden and should take some time to get this right. I’m looking forward to further exploring these possibilities and much more with the community….

More updates will be published soon. Thanks for reading!

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