The Digital Life Collective and me
I’ve decided to step back from active involvement in the Collective, and to focus on my other projects for a while. In the meantime, the engaged members of the Collective are discussing issues which I brought to the table. I’m sure this seems unreasonable to some, and so I wanted to set out my reflections on how we got here, in a possibly futile attempt at explanation, and learning. This post is probably only of interest to committed Collective members, and those who have been watching our progress.
It is a tale in which I fail to spot that an organisation I co-founded was not what I thought it was for 18 months. And in which despite my repeated attempts to encourage it to pursue the mission I thought we set it up to for, it seems no one else noticed that we had fundamentally different and essentially incompatible ideas within the active membership.
What happened?
We set out in Digital Life with great ambition, it seemed to me, to provide (or at least try out) an alternative model to surveillance capitalism for providing everyday internet services to regular people. We created a co-operative so that everyone could both collectively own the technology and organisation, and play a role in governance. Some great, skilled and knowledgeable folks joined as members; but progress towards doing anything concrete seemed slow. At some point the active membership developed into a loose collection of at most perhaps 15 individuals, with bottom-up projects, mostly linked to a strong interest in exploring self-organisation and networked collaboration. Attempts to get things moving towards a tangible goal around membership or technology offerings were thwarted or ran out of steam. This summer I felt more than ever that we were missing out on opportunities from the visible mainstream concerns about Google, Facebook, Twitter and so on. I concluded that the core underlying issues preventing our progress, as I saw it, were the lack of clear and agreed mission, and a way to make decisions affecting the whole collective. In August (another) project set out to try to sort out governance, and so I focussed on mission. I decided to give it one last attempt, and to ask the membership at large what they thought — should we pursue a focussed purpose, or be a loose group ‘letting a thousand flowers bloom’ within a very broad scope? Unfortunately my idea that a membership vote on a written proposal would be straightforward proved wrong, and the discussion arising felt like nailing jelly to the ceiling. It wasn’t a debate about the proposal, but the opening of a much deeper philosophical divide. I realised this week that I don’t have the energy right now to engage with this, at a really busy time for my actual work (launching the Trust&Technology Initiative, and organising the Festival of Maintenance, plus starting to plan the Impact Union). So we’ll see what happens without me.
A big takeaway for me is how slow I’ve been in noticing that we simply weren’t what I thought we were. It feels like lots of different cognitive biases were in play for me here, helping me fail to spot the signs that we had a really divided membership even from the early days:
When the first governance/decision-making project didn’t get anywhere, and no one seemed concerned because we had some principles.
When almost no one cared that we weren’t signing up new members. Even when we still hadn’t hit the agreed target for a year earlier.
When the idea of having some shared goals across all of us was ignored or pushed back on.
When I ended up initiating a member survey to hear from those who weren’t active, and no one was interested in the results.
When talking about a business model was viewed as a pet project rather than an essential.
When feedback about how people experienced the website was dismissed.
These things all make sense for a collective of people, exploring self-organisation, with a general interest in ‘tech we trust’ in the broadest sense, pursuing projects that interest them personally. They don’t make sense for a co-operative trying to change the power dynamics between people and technology, through enabling new sustainable funding models and mass membership.
The bulk of active members of the Digital Life Collective see it as the former. I thought it was the latter.
Oops.
So I missed a lot of signs.
The encouragement of other members perhaps helped this — telling me that anything was possible in the Collective, that of course the mission includes the idea of mass membership, that my skills were desperately needed, that if I was just patient all the challenges would be addressed. It’s not easy to go against the flow in such a positive, aspirational, and abstract culture, with the inevitable communication challenges of a remote, multi-country, disparate time-zone, volunteer setting.
Purpose discussions
With this all in mind, it’s perhaps not surprising that my suggestion that a vote be held to decide on a mission was deemed disruptive and undemocratic. In a co-op with a shared purpose, it would be perfectly logical and reasonable to hold a majority vote to consider a mission change. But that’s not what the Digital Life Collective is. My proposal therefore seemed to go against the heart of what many active members thought and felt about it, seemed too top down, too focussing, and apparently dismissive of other activities (this was absolutely not my intent — it’s even detailed in the proposal that other work should continue — but I can see that the detail was lost in the sense of disruption).
I’m genuinely sorry to have caused so much disruption and distress.
No compromise is possible — the two alternatives, of what the Collective has developed into to date and my proposal, are fundamentally different philosophies and ideas of what we do. Either we are a home for people to pursue projects under a broad umbrella in a new collaborative style, or we are an audacious project trying to disrupt how everyday internet services are provided. You cannot attempt such a bold and risky project as building an alternative to the dominant business and ownership model of internet services today, and give it any plausible chance of success, within an organisation designed for something fundamentally different — the additional frictions will almost invariably block it.
It’s unpleasant on both sides, I think, as we all realise that we have not actually been aligned all this time. Whilst my frustration has been growing and continuing for well over a year, for others it’s a sudden realisation over the last couple of weeks, as I’ve brought to the fore the formal co-operative way of making a decision via vote, and the idea that a focussed purpose might be valid and desirable for some of the members.
Exploring next-generation collectives and finding new ways to collaborate, with all kinds of individual projects happening at their own pace, is not a bad thing, and could turn out to be valuable and change-making. It is just not what I, and I think others, thought we were investing time, energy and reputation in.
Learnings
Another takeaway for me in all of this has been that it was a mistake to set out both with no clear governance ideas, which meant we ended up going strongly self-organised, and no clear mission to align us. Each of these is challenging for a new endeavour; together, they form an almost insurmountable obstacle. Our discussions as to the interpretation of our only agreed mission (or vision, or purpose) clearly illustrate the different perceptions of the members.
“The Digital Life Collective researches, develops, funds and supports Tech We Trust, technologies that prioritize our autonomy, privacy and dignity”
I guess it means what you want it to mean.
Ironically I didn’t learn that having neither governance or shared purpose was a huge problem — I knew that before we set up the Collective, knew it was a glaring red flag right from the start, and had repeated warnings from experienced folks outside the Collective too. But I didn’t deal with it early on.
Definitely many things to learn from in my next project, whatever shape that takes. I still think there’s potential in some form of alternative, co-operative (in the sense of mutual ownership, rather than merely collaborative) model for future technologies. In October I’ll be having conversations with folks around the opportunities and challenges here, to see what plan might be possible. Pragmatic values, a viable governance scheme and a clear purpose will be essential components of whatever this leads to.
My thoughts for the upcoming AGM
Several “silent majority” members have asked me what they should do at the AGM.
I’m not sure what ideas will emerge before the AGM or whether any other resolutions will be put forward. Whilst I had a specific idea I hoped the Collective could realise (and thought was shared between many of the early founders), I know that that’s not necessarily the right course. It is right and legitimate for there to be many different ideas. However, there is a weight of opinion amongst many of those who have been active to date which suggests a certain direction. As another member put it to me — “ It’s pretty clear that diglife wants to be the place that tests the collective idea, whatever that means.” Perhaps the best thing is to let that happen. If the conclusion is that it’s a social hangout space for the people who like to hang out there, that’s OK. At least that means that those of us wanting something more, such as a project to create an alternative to surveillance capitalism, can get together and find the best way (and place) to build it.
Part of my frustration has been that a small number of active folks have created something they like, and don’t seem to be able to hear any other member voices. Those other voices include the small group of us who have kept pushing for action and a plan towards a mass membership mission, or the larger number of inactive members, whose contributions via the member survey and occasional emails seem easily ignored. I feel for those quiet members who hoped they were contributing to something different; it feels too late, now, to change significantly away from what the Collective has become.
If there are new ideas which can secure interest from people with the energy and time to make progress, though, that would also be fine.
So my hopes for the AGM are simply:
1. that members who are not always in chat or the frequent calls are heard, and their opinions on the mission/purpose of the collective are listened to. Regardless of what those opinions are.
2. that there is some progress towards determining what the Collective is for; and subsequently the publication of a clear and unambiguous description of this.
TL;DR: sometimes, I am very slow on the uptake
The full story from my perspective follows. We’ll all have our own stories, of course. I can only tell mine.
The Collective was set up in April 2017. I’m a co-founder, and wrote up my reasons for joining at the time. After various attempts to find sustainable ways to resource more trustworthy, privacy-preserving technologies, we came down to going to the people themselves, and doing so in a co-op where everyone could both collectively own the technology and organisation, and play a role in governance.
By summer 2017, it seemed that we were not getting much done towards this. Steve Taylor and I tried to review the state of things. We hadn’t hit our launch target of 150 members (our only concrete goal), and despite several working groups existing it was hard to find out what was happening, and what we could uncover were quite disparate, unconnected activities. We hadn’t managed to come up with a viable initial way of organising and governing ourselves, and the energy in that project seemed to evaporate by August. All this time I was working in the emerging field of responsible technology (or ethical technology) and meeting people who seemed like obvious potential members — frustrated with Silicon Valley, worried about privacy, control and accessibility of today’s internet services, disempowered by the lack of alternatives. I could often persuade them with a verbal pitch but they didn’t convert into members. I got quite a lot of feedback that our website was offputting — confusing, impossible to navigate, unclear message, doesn’t explain who we are or what we do, and seemingly not representing what I’d talked about. Despite trying to discuss this with other active members, most of them seemed not to think there was a problem, and that there was no reason to try something different. We added more content to the website, ‘launched’ with fewer than 100 members in October, and the burst of publicity didn’t significantly increase our numbers.
In late 2017 I catalysed conversations about value propositions for members, and business models (how we’d get money to do things, so we wouldn’t be dependent on volunteers). There was some interest in some projects, such as “open space” conversations about tech we trust, but it didn’t sustain. Partly this felt like it was because most of the active members were content with how things were — only a couple of us felt we ought to be doing something more. I tried hard to be positive in our 2017 annual report, and to feel that we were about to get going. I wondered if maybe we needed more evidence to motivate change. I organised a member survey, and at the end of January we discussed the results — quite a good response rate, but worrying numbers of people feeling we’ve done nothing for members or society, doubting if they would renew membership, unclear about what the Collective was all about, and so on. This still didn’t seem to spur interest in coming up with a clear value proposition for members, or a clear purpose we could use for marketing or to help volunteers choose what to put time into. Graham Mitchell worked to create a strategy, or business plan, for the coming year; we drafted potential near, mid and long term goals that could help us. But there was very little interest in this — it felt like having a shared plan was simply not a fit for the bottom-up culture and self-organising values which our group had acquired and which most active voices were content with (or, indeed, strong advocates for).
We continued pushing for a clear statement of what we want to achieve in 2018, and what we need to do (GDPR compliance, for example), so that current and new members could see where we might contribute. This catalysed some action, resulting in a project to turn the business plan into a slidedeck which all members could use as a plan. I confess the result left me baffled. It is not the simple “conversion of the business plan” I was expecting. It’s long, beautiful, aspirational. It doesn’t help me see what we need to do, or how I might make an effort on any of the listed projects — a long list of projects, with no prioritisation, and a lot of aspiration. Much of the deck sets out some quite abstract concepts, to me; a duality of nurturing and co-operating. I know our members all think in different ways, and need different kinds of information, and this evidently works well for some of us. However, those of us who were struggling with the lack of concrete plans and signposts were perhaps least well served by the result. I have made no attempt to see if reality is matching the plan, 6 months on, and I doubt anyone else has.
This was dispiriting, and I didn’t do much for a while. I couldn’t relate to the activities underway, and in any case the calls where most of the action was were at times I generally couldn’t attend due to work commitments. I couldn’t see how to make progress on the idea of growing membership (to gain volunteer effort, fees money, and credibility to secure other forms of resource). The website, a critical component of signing up members (as they join online), remained a problem, and I couldn’t see how to motivate change here. Nothing worked — evidence of user feedback, failure to convert people into members, and even when I made a full written up usability report of the site based on conventional web best practice guidelines it was ignored or dismissed. We agreed a different membership fee, but somehow this didn’t get implemented on the website. The board found we’d made a rookie error around the quorum level in our rules, making it impractical — notified members, went through a formal change process; no one seemed concerned or interested (despite this highlighting a formal voting process, which arguably against the culture we’d developed).
The Collective has been clearly working well for some members. Folks have created new ideas, like the Social Ledger, and new maps of organisations and projects in this space have attracted interest and partnerships. We’ve made some good efforts —for example, submitting funding proposals for interesting research projects (not successful, but that’s the luck of the draw). There is obviously a core of folks who enjoy hanging out, talking and learning together, and in some cases working on projects of deep personal interest. The whole co-operative setup feels like overkill if we want a volunteer hang out space, though.
I felt even more in recent months that we were set up to do an amazing, ambitious, unique and distinctive thing, but were not doing it at all. The mainstream media and policy-makers are concerned about Big Tech — and a key part of that is the lack of alternatives. At a time when almost every work conversation I had was about the problems of tech today, and the lack of alternatives, and the lack of agency of the concerned person, here was the idea of a Collective which could have offered hope and a route to something better — and a reality which did neither.
I’d been asked to speak about our work at Open.coop in July, and motivated by this opportunity and deadline, we managed to make a few small improvements to the website, reducing the navigational noise. I paid for my travel and accommodation myself; I don’t particularly mind, but that we haven’t worked out how we make decisions about what to spend money on, and that we don’t seem to regard members spending personal funds (as well as time) as an issue, feels symptomatic of a culture which prioritises self-organisation and personal choice over inclusion and collective responsibility. The conversations at the event were great. It was not the first time that experienced folks in the co-op and open tech spaces told me that they felt the Collective couldn’t succeed, given the combination of very broad mission and loose self-governance. This is the diagnosis I had made myself for why we aren’t making progress (in terms of member numbers, let alone impact on the world) — the combination of almost any activity being valid, and no way to prioritise other than personal preference, does not lead to getting things done in an aligned direction. But this time I felt I needed to do something — either getting the Collective going as an alternative model for tech provision, or starting a new co-op to do this. The members I met at Open.coop encouraged me to do this within the Collective — I got repeated advice that setting up something else would be damaging to the collective and a bad idea.
Back home, I drafted a resolution for member vote, which would focus our purpose onto growing membership, and delivering services (of some unspecified type) in exchange for member subscriptions. This would be a practical attempt to create (or try out) the alternative to surveillance capitalism which I, and some other members, thought we were trying to be. It would still support other activities — all the other projects could continue — but the focus would enable decisions to be made on key things like marketing and the website, and for volunteers to identify where their efforts might be most useful. This would be different to the “letting a thousand flowers bloom” of practice to date. No compromise is possible — these are fundamentally different philosophies and ideas of what we do. Either we are a home for people to pursue projects under a broad umbrella, or we are an audacious project trying to disrupt how everyday internet services are provided. You cannot attempt such a bold and risky project, and give it any plausible chance of success, within an organisation designed for something fundamentally different — the additional frictions will almost invariably block it.
I shared my ideas with a few people; shared the document open for comments with those members who were in a relevant Mattermost chat channel; posted it on Loomio for discussion. The Loomio responses helped me clarify and strengthen the proposal, focussing on the need to test a new business and ownership model. I really wanted a written vote, so that all members (involved in chat or calls, or not —the latter being the vast majority) could consider and contribute, but it was hard to work out how to organise this. We had a requirement to hold our first ever AGM, and as time was going on, I figured I’d put my resolution for vote there, and hope the 2 weeks notice to read the papers would encourage a good turnout, including some of the mostly silent voices.
I was surprised in the last weeks of this process that the debate from members who didn’t like my proposal was not that the focus was wrong, or the plan impractical, or that we should in fact stay as a broad project based community. The arguments were that a member vote was disruptive; that consideration of our purpose or mission was disruptive; that calling a vote goes against our culture and principles; that offering a binary choice goes against our culture; that having a focus would require all other work to cease; and also that the proposal was unnecessary because not only can we do this work, we already are doing it. These were such unexpected responses and suggested such fundamentally different world views that it was really hard going to try to clarify, understand and discuss the ideas. This was nailing jelly to the ceiling.
Some members asked me to be patient, that new governance ideas being gradually introduced would make a difference, or that “collaboration as a service” was about to change everything (a stretch for a fairly abstract idea). But it feels like that’s what has been said every time we’ve tried to make progress or focus — just wait. How long do you wait? (You can see our progress over 18 months via what members have seen in our newsletters here.) Others asked me to withdraw the resolution, because it was undemocratic. Then there was some confusion over sending out AGM papers, and they didn’t go out in time. Then suddenly some new ideas were apparently appearing.
On one level, I’m delighted if I’ve catalysed productive work towards this vision. On another, right now, when my main work is busy, I don’t have the time to join calls and watch videos and respond to requests to chat. If we were simply discussing a proposal in advance of a vote, that would be one thing, but this is something else, and so I’m opting out for now.
No viable community effort can depend on only one person. I’ve shared all my ideas, and the rationale, so those who are now working on some change should not suffer much from my absence. If the result is a Collective which can actually make a difference and provide (or test) a better business and ownership model for internet services, I’ll be delighted. But I can’t say I am holding my breath.