I think the goals I was mentioning places this in a language that is easily accessible to many learners. I can’t seem to absorb some of the language into actual real life actions. I’m very practical and as one of my friends says “scratch and sniff”. If I can’t see it I go crossed eyed and can’t relate;).
Not sure I’m lost again;).
I just posted the draft forum structure publicly I created yesterday. Working in the open 
But indicated that the actual reorg will be done by our community team itself. This way we keep people informed, and can collect feedback, while avoiding endless open discussion on what we should be and what not.
Got some good feedback from @Free about my draft of the forum categorization. I don’t feel much for his proposal, but agree that mine has too many subcateogories. As a result I made changes to the structure on that page (but not yet on the Wiki post).
I would like to discuss this during our Sunday call, can you add that to the agenda @micheleminno?
This is just a reminder note, to mention a good tip I got via PM by William Rice (@Mndctrl) about the following: to apply some of the agile principles from the Spotify Engineering Culture to how the community operates and divides its work.
I’ve worked with Spotify methodology myself and it is very creative and flexible, and - importantly - allows work processes to scale as an organization/community grows.
There is an animation in 2 parts that clearly communicates how this work (and need not be too technical to understand, I think). Part 1 details basic work process (which is less relevant to us) and break-up into squads + chapter leaders, while Part 2 goes deeper into cultural aspects. Here is Part 2, which contains link to Part 1:
Edit: In addition @laurex suggested the following resources to use for community building. One is the Snowflake model used by Obama for campaigning, and the other an interesting article on fostering community leadership:
Finally the inspiring story of David Jay and his building of the Asexuality movement (I removed the ‘friends’ code, as I am not at freedom to share as such):
I received an email from David that contained feedback on the Pyramids of Humane Technology that is copied below:
I see CHT and HCT as separate organizations which share values and and have strongly (though not perfectly) overlapping worldviews. Your pyramid is a fantastic articulation of what HTC stands for, and one that aligns very well with the conversations that we’ve been having about our work. I think that we’ve been particularly focused on what you’d call the Alignment triangle: thinking about how to move towards products that are aligned with our humanity rather than exploitative of it.
A post was split to a new topic: We will not have a HTC for Kids ‘parallel’ community
Now that we have a finalized Mission and Vision and the start of a methodology to take our members along an exciting, i.e. ‘The Pyramids of Humane Technology’, the highest priority is reorganizing the community along these aspects.
Important guidelines:
Most important is to not fall into previous trap:
I got good feedback from Michael de Groot (@stayingaliveuk) - who is a Storyteller by profession - on the ‘pyramid building’ analogy. He suggested to combine it with “The Hero’s Journey” storytelling concept.
His Pyramids feedback on public LI post:
I have been following (not that active though) the work of Tristan Harris, co-founder of The Center for Humane Technology and Arnold Schrijver, their community lead, just released The Pyramids of Humane Technology. An inspiring and courageous initiative to make technology an enabler for human freedom instead of what it appears to be being created for - M.A.D. = Manipulation, Addiction, Domination. You may have to create an account to access this article, but I recommend it’s worth it, there’s some great stuff being discussed.
#activism #inspiration #enablement #creativity #vision #philosophy #culturechange #entrepreneurship #collaboration #transformation #community
And privately to me:
Forgive me for responding in English, my Dutch is rubbish now plus the silly spellchecker will mean that it will take me days to write. Haha. I agree a story would really support the process of explaining the mission. I did see on the community that you asked for people with skills to come forward. I did consider pitching in but I believe you may have enough. The Hero’s Journey format would lend itself very well for the cause I believe. Anyway I do believe you have enough on your plate and you’re doing a awesome job. I do hope you’re getting paid for it. Take care and will dive into the community from time to time to see what’s occurring there.
Continuing from earlier post…
Some brainstorm of milestones after forum reorganisation (unordered, sub-bullets are not milestones per se):
Following up to my post processing @micheleminno’s categorization feedback, I’ll add some more thoughts to extend the Pyramid model, especially the ‘storytelling’ aspects of it.
In my post I suggested to wait with categorizing the Freedom pyramid, because I was unhappy with the subcategories it currently has. I’ll repeat the Github notes I created on the Freedom pyramid here:
Pyramid of Freedom
- Process: From engagement to flourishing
Adoption level Concepts 1. engagement involvement, freedom of speech / information / expression 2. expression creativity, human values, genuine emotions 3. flourishing purpose, synergy, optimism, vision, direction, innovation Candidate subcategories
These categories all have broader meaning, but we consider them as applied to tech.
Subcategory Description Collaboration communication, co-creation, cooperation, partnering, synergy Growth sustainable business, sustainable growth Innovation prudent adoption of technology improvements, innovation models Evolution not revolution / disruption but evolutionary development Opposing harms
- Possible dark pyramid:
- Pyramid of Decline —> individualism, suppression. bondage
Now extending the storytelling of the model…
We will add Treasure and Mystery to our model to make it exciting to work/contribute in our community and - for others - to discover its information. We can say that treasure + mystery is what lures people to know more about the pyramids.
As we all know from the tales and experience Pyramids come with hidden treasure to be discovered (i.e. in ‘hidden’ chambers).
We are building our pyramids from building blocks that already exist (i.e. mankind’s knowledge that is out there on the internet, and that can be added/extended by research and discovery), and we will stash our pyramids with treasure.
The treasure in our case are the solutions that we’ll find: treasure == solutions
Pyramids also come with a significant amount of mystery, and this mystery fascinates people. Pyramids have secrets to their construction, like in their geometry, from which hidden, spiritual forces arise.
We’ll also add this mystery to our model. We have a number of ‘sweet spots’ and concepts that are hard to define. So we do not define them, but are on an ongoing quest to discover their true meaning.
These hard-to-define sweet spots and concepts are:
The sweet spots. They are the top of each pyramid, that creates its magical force
The Pyramid of Freedom in its entirety. ‘Freedom’ is a very elusive concept, and we have trouble defining it in the real world, let alone in the digital realm.
The Fifth Pyramid, also called The Hidden Pyramid…
I think the whole Pyramids of Humane Technology is becoming a very interesting framework that we can model our entire community to. I am getting very excited about the possibilities.
As I mentioned before I followed the Coursera Gamification course (note: a new iteration of the course starts tomorrow. I highly recommend this course, if you are interested in the concept. It is not IT-specific).
With the pyramid storytelling as a guide we can create a gamified experience that both involves our audience as well as our members. In this experience:
Of course, it is also possible to consume community content without participating in the gamification (if you don’t want to be playful, but ‘business-like’). The gamification is optional, but functions to bring the fun and rewards into community-building.
I really appreciate the feel and dense context of these maps + classifications + visuals.
I love the idea that community members are both players and game designers.
In a sense the spirit of forming + fleshing out such maps is a way of designing [infinite] games. Encouraging that can be as important as making any one map complete or balanced. Perhaps there can be a space in the community – and in these categories – for gathering and naming other compelling categorizations and concept-maps.
Over time, groups of similar maps might be aligned or merged; or it may emerge that two approaches cover roughly the same ideas using very different dimensions – suited for different sorts of observations.
Thank you @metasj
It is good idea to make a space for this. We have an exciting road ahead, that’s for sure.
@NSaikiwiki, did you see this thread? I think you will find it quite interesting in light of your HTC contextualization.
okay, just when I thought I was maybe wrapping my head around it all 
Ha ha, yes, but don’t worry.This entire thread contains a brainstorming exercise with ideas, loose strands and breadcrumbs that indicate possible ways forward. Thinking out-of-the-box, and in no way providing a solid model yet.
Some of the thoughts behind all this storytelling ideas was this:
Treasure + Mystery + gamification are not things that are easily rolled out to forum and community website, but they could be excellent for e.g. Hackathons we organize with our Meetup groups, or even a global, synchronized Hackathon involving all groups together.
A real problem that a community with only a small amount of really active members faces, is that it is really hard to start projects that entices others to become active in too. When you facilitate a (‘serious’) project, people start asking “Where is the full picture?”, “Where is the complete documentation?”, “What is the intention behind this and that?”, etc. They forget that we are just volunteers just like them, and only have so much time to prepare, elaborate solid foundations. With growth of the community this problem grows. Only a very small percentage of people are willing to be active if projects are not chewed out in fine detail for them.
So part of the ideation behind all this, is to make “incompleteness” and “quests for discovery” part of the model. Something to be expected, and exciting to - together - get to know more about. We have been asked countless times “What is Humane Technology actually?”, and we tried to explain it over and over again with varying success.
Another way to go about this is to answer truthfully: “We only know so much about this answer as you. It is a new field. An entire body of knowledge that is still to be discovered, and you and I can do the discovery and become the experts in a new profession.”.
Bring pyramids storytelling into the mix and we could say “We don’t know… we found this hidden Pyramid of Freedom buried in the sands of time, and we know it has hidden treasure chambers for us to uncover. We are sure they hold tremendous wealth and wisdon for humanity. Do you help us search the hidden entries?”, etcetera.
