 This is a call about governance or things like governance second out of four, we're just going to have four of them. And thank you for joining us. I was just catching up on with a friend Michael Anton Dilla yesterday over coffee he's in in Portland for a couple days. I will be going to something he's running on Saturday around the topic all this grab now which is Oslo for AI. So Oslo for AI.org osloforai.org. And he's trying to talk about governance as well so I described these calls to him I don't think you can make this call here. But he's super interested in the topic we have a whole a whole mess of overlaps on of interests and passions and activities so interesting thing about Oslo for AI cherry and Oslo which you said you said didn't work or did work or didn't work. Nobody seems to know why it didn't work. Everybody's got different theories of why it didn't work or who to blame for it not working. Kind of fascinating. Yeah. When did BB go to the Temple Mount. It was sure wrong. That's right. It was alone and it was in the early odds, I think. September 29 2000. So that's way after the Oslo. Yeah, also was early 90s. Sharon went to Temple Mount and more into fodder resulted but Sharon is also who pulled Israel out of Gaza in 2005. Right. And dragged out Israeli settlers. So, which seems to often forgotten in the current story. Yeah. So on our last call, we ended with a structural question about these calls that I'd like to pose to us but also I'll type a couple of links in the chat. One of them is to the spreadsheet where many of us answered the questions that I put in the invite. So there's sort of nine answers there. I can put a link to the form as well. If you want to answer the survey, then please go to a link I will put in the chat and a moment link short mural copy. So if you haven't answered it yet. Here's a place where you can take this survey. And then the question that I had posed at the end of last week's call was really pragmatic. What do we do with the three hours we have scheduled on this topic. My intentions with these calls were to were to walk away with improved resources about what works in governance worldwide at any scale. And by resources. It might mean stories articles it might mean process pattern languages it might mean other sorts of things. Tom atley and crew have created the wise democracy pattern language for example. That's already on my on my list of delightful resources here. And I think a piece of what we might be able to do with our three hours for example, is tell each other stories about the best resources we know about in this in these topics. The second order best results I could hope for is the weaving together of a variety of these resources into a stack. I'm going to use geeky language for this of how you wish society ran how we helped co regulate or govern with one another and illustrated or demonstrated or mapped or described or whatever that would be my second order wish, but three hours is not a lot of time to develop all that but that's kind of where where I'm personally aiming go ahead Stacy. I may be the only one that doesn't know and if that's the case. I don't need to know but can you say a little bit about what the actual process process at the Oslo Accords work. I don't know enough to actually report that well and my voice is echoing in your background I think the noise canceling just caught up with us so it's not. I would have to ask Dilla because he cares about that knows a lot and I bet you that we could Google that and figure it out but I don't know enough to answer that question I'm afraid. Okay because Gil brought up a good point, you know, and I think if people have different opinions on whether it worked or why you know I mean not whether it worked on why it didn't work. Learning why it didn't work would would be really important. I don't think we can learn why it didn't work Stacy think we could learn what people's different opinions are about why it didn't work. But again, that would be important because there's probably elements of each of those things and in terms of going forward and creating a new process to weave in all of those issues would could only be a positive. I think. But maybe not these three hours. I will take it as homework to ask Dilla and either see that he reports in on that on a next call or I will figure out something on that for our next call which is in two weeks at this hour. But thanks for asking and I think that's a, if it was motivating enough for Dilla to decide to use it in the name of the structure then we should hold in conversation here. Thank you to your to your list of possible outcomes what you're calling the FAQ I'm thinking about as a collection of examples of approaches and experiments and realities on the ground kind of in the spirit of Eleanor is what's working kind of work. Because in my experience or I guess my change theory people, people get stumped trying to think beyond what is present right now we talked about imagination. And so things that are seeds for imagination of oh here look at this this actually happened. It may not be appropriate for me here right now but I can't say it's impossible because there it is. Also being one example Rojava comes to mind as another example of you know like what what what happened there what was different what was good about it what was not good about it what can I draw from it. So a catalog. I mean, just remind me the whole earth catalog which was enormously generative in my coming up in, you know, set like what late 60s early 70s. I'm just like, here's stuff to notice and explore and pay attention to that I never even imagined before. And so the amended the imagination can open stock with all kinds of goodies is is an interesting thing so you know, I'll spin FAQ into something like that. Well, Tracy just asked in the chat are we sharing these resources any place there's sort of there's two places right now and neither one of which is fabulous but one place. I'm busy adding all the resources I hear about and find into my brain so I will share a link to that in the chat, but the other one is a Markdown document that's on the ogm wiki, which is Pete Kaminsky runs massive wiki that's kind of the way I'm writing these days. And so I'll share a link right now to the page. That's there, which right now is mostly a link to these conversations and the recordings of the conversations as we go. There we go. But it is here and if you know how to use it. If you look at the bottom of this page and click on the link to go to the page and get you could use the get editor to edit that page and make changes to it right there. That that should work. Otherwise, I can help you out or Pete can help you out to co edit or you could just say things and mention things and we will sort of glue them in. If it was more interest we could start a spreadsheet and air table or something else. But I think, you know, collections of resources and spreadsheets are interesting and there's probably a few people who've done those already. I would love to find, you know, if we have good resources. If anybody's done that let's find them and add them to our list of resources. And Tracy's say more if I'm not answering your question. I think I'm tracking thank you so I'm in the wiki and I'm, and I'm not familiar with this wiki so is there a process you said for getting oriented. Yes, so it's it's nearly a wiki but not quite because on most wikis there's an edit this page button and this one kind of doesn't have that. If you scroll to the bottom of the page there should be a link to that page on GitHub, and then GitHub has an editor or it doesn't. Go to it and see what's up. Central repository it's only to the central repository that's interesting it doesn't go to this particular page alright I need to talk to Pete. But we are actually going to create for massive wiki is a header or a widget of some sort that says hey if you'd like to edit this page click here, and then we will gradually improve the ways of editing the wiki. Right now, if are you familiar with using GitHub Tracy. Not at all. Okay, so GitHub is is mostly is where a lot, maybe most open source code lives these days. So where is this the best use of our time talking about governance. I'll do this for one minute just up because how to collaborate I think it's important. So GitHub is mostly for code except there's a bunch of people doing things like writing books and collaborating on documents using GitHub as a way of doing the sharing. GitHub saves a different saves all the versions so that's what the wiki back end would normally do so we're borrowing get up for that. So GitHub has this technique called fork and pull, where you can fork a repository, make changes to it and then send a pull request to the author of the page who then accepts or declines each of the pull requests. That's a clumsy but well known among programmers collaboration method. And we want to make that a lot easier as would happen on other wikis. So thanks for asking. I just want to say I still don't see resources and I'm happy to find another time to kind of understand how to use this. I've used other platform other resources on GitHub and I agree with you there's maybe more narrative in places and so. Thanks, though. So a thing I can very easily do is I can take the spreadsheet that is the has the results of the survey that I just shared. I can create a new tab there. I can just we can just label it resources and use that and I'll put a pointer to that spreadsheet in the doc in the page I just shared so that anybody who wants to and find you know figures this out can go there. Shall I do that, because that's because everybody knows how to use a Google spreadsheet and at least we were starting with something that's that simple and common. I hate having a high barrier to participation in a conversation like this. Other thoughts. What would what would do we need to redefine the purposes calls or do I need to re explain them a bit. And if the purpose is relatively clear what what could we do together in this hour plus two more that would make you smile and be really happy that you would spend this time together. Simply state the purpose as you understand it. Sure. There's a lot of really good critiques of our present systems of governance like democracy is broken. I have a thought in my brain that says was 2006 peak democracy because there's so many like a liberal democracy is growing up around the world including Trump wants to make ours into one and there's a whole bunch of other. We just had a call of the regular ogm weekly call which turned out to be about misinformation and disinformation, which is breaking our ability to govern with one another. I'm trying to figure out what actually does work for governance at any scale because I have a suspicion that things that work might might work really well where there's little pressure at a very local scale might scale up well if we applied them at, you know, city scale or state scale or international scale whatever else I don't know. So if we can figure out what is working and we talked about examples like the Mounder gone cooperative or Lynn Ostrom's principles for governing commons. There's a bunch of other things that are sort of the things that people put in the spreadsheet as answers for starting points for things that are that was the beginning of this conversation. And again, if we if that could be constructed into more of a stack or a structure so that somebody in any community on the planet who was like, I'm really tired of our methods of decision making right now in collaboration. What's better what could we use. I would love for them to be able to reach out and find resources that we're not going to do in three hours but we might do if we find a better way to do that together. That was a bit lengthy but does that help. So is that is that looking for a pattern language. And there are a couple of pattern languages that are kind of related here there's the wise democracy pattern language. And there's also liberating structures which is a pattern language for facilitation or facilitators, which isn't quite a pattern language is a set of modules and ways to do facilitation it's it's not quite structured as a pattern language, but and I imagine that there's others I haven't heard of but those are good starting points, and I am a naive fan of pattern languages I think that distilling wisdom into patterns is a really really great thing and I wish we had more of them. In some sense I'm another piece of wish where for me for this project idea is a pattern language that talks about these different aspects. And that doesn't try to replicate what wise democracy is doing but rather builds on it, kind of a meta pattern language that says hey there's a lot of really good stuff over here, what's missing from that is over here, and you know curating and collecting up some of those things ourselves. There seems to be at least three aspects to do in that one is collecting. Yes, I just just you know just wrong, you know, big net gathering stuff that seems to be somewhat generally relevant to what our concerns are here second is curating is sifting and giving it some sort of, you know, curating a cataloging And then third which is what you started with is distilling, which is, you know, how do I harvest useful things out of this and that might be a multi, you know, that might be a user function as well as a curator function you give them something, provide something that people can distill what they need from it in their own situations. Yes. So is what Jerry said what we're here for. Does that resonate for anybody would you change it. You see, do you mind introducing yourself a little bit and talking about your work, because I think it's quite relevant to what what we're doing here and I think you're with circle forward partners right. Mm hmm. Yeah, so this is. Tracy before you do Jerry, did you satisfactory answer or not answer to your question. Not yet but I'm hoping we get there by getting to know each other a little bit more. I heard about this. These calls to the global regeneration co lab, and I recognize Gil from there, I think, and I just started participating in a group around governance and thinking about regenerative governance and so there are a lot of resources there's a shared slap channel and and then I heard about these conversations so my partner and co founder with me, we founded circle forward in 2015 around collaborative governance and that's really evolving into collaborative network governance. So, a deep desire to shift our systems, which are fragmentary fragmented and deny our interdependence. And so shifting that, and recognizing that to shift systems that no one individual organization agency business sector can shift systems, but that we need the requisite variety this is our belief from across the system to shift systems and so we focus on bringing people the skills tools and practices for collaborative network governance because we believe the form at a systems level a systems level governance the format is network network structure pattern network pattern where anybody can connect with anybody else. And so that's a little bit about us and so we've been working mostly across the US and nationally with multi stakeholder networks of different geographic positions and scopes and issue area so we don't focus as much on issues as we do on the governance that people are practicing, and we've done some international work. Still pretty much in the West, Western world, the Western world, the weird world. You're reminding me of several things I apparently added you to my brain some time ago, because I've got so I've got you under circle for partners, but then I also have the collaborative governance accelerator. And at some point back in 2019. I found this document and I added the eight governance design issues that you have purpose participation value propositions reflection coordination decision making operating principles and resources, which is lovely and I put it at the time under enumerated wisdom, which is a thought that I'm going to use people it's got lots of different lists of things that are good. I won't distract our conversation with that. But this is the kind of resource that should be on our resources less so I will, I will put a link to it there, unless you want to but this is a great start and and thank you. Other thoughts. Is this a good framing for you. If so, what should we do with our time together. What would make it a better framing. Go ahead, Kim. So, it seems like we've jumped to what's out there that works sort of resources we can compile and wouldn't that be useful for folks which I don't disagree with. I come at it from a slightly different standpoint of one, everybody here looks like they lack a lot of melatonin in their skin so we're all pretty much. And we're guessing we're all US based Eleanor are you in the US, you guys see American flag behind you there. So, you know, none of us has grown up in a former Soviet Republic or under a different rule of governance. So we're really inside of a box that we're trying to think outside of so I think we need to recognize that. I'm always interested in before we jump to what's out there of hearing what people think of when they come when they think about governance you know what what principles what functions, whose voices count how do they get a result. You know, we handle the issue of power, you know, power is rarely talked about I just watched some show and and and there's this line where says, you know, naive people always go for the light but power always hides in the shadows, and it was a political thrower you know it's like, yeah there's a lot of power in the shadows how do we shine light on the power structures how do we develop checks and balances, you know they used to have checks and balances in this country they've been pretty much at first point so we know it's not working but is it possible to design a system of governance that can't be gamed or is very difficult to game and as people recognize as being gamed it can reinvent itself so that it becomes ungameable. Those are questions I'd like to explore. If that feels appropriate other people here without jumping into what's already out there because that's, you know, you can use chat GBT to generate a list like that so how can we use our time together in a in a dialogue that's going to uncover some stuff for us and help us draw and work from each other. Love that can. Anybody else. What does governance mean to us. Sorry, FTS, FT SOW. For the sake of what for the sake of who the second how. Sorry, go ahead, Eleanor. Yeah, thanks I guess. What interests me right now and I'm not sure this aligns with the group intention, but I'm deeply concerned about the state of governance in the United States and certainly across Europe, maybe longer. I think we're at a point similar to the founding of the United States where they were overthrowing, not just King George but the whole idea of Kings and former Republic, where the power resided in the citizens. They, at that time, Madison and Jefferson a number of them did intensive study into the nature of governance right, you know, from Greece all the way on to the present day. And I, one of my guiding lights from the founding of the United States is Thomas Payne who asked, you know, we have it in our power to begin the world anew. I think our current structure of governance has brought us to this point. And it's obviously feeling a lot of stresses and strain, and a lot of corruption influence pushing it towards big cooperation towards very wealthy towards very destructive environmental decisions that are against the Commons and against the regular people. The question I have is, we are living in this moment. What can we do if we understood we can begin the country in the world anew. What, how do we deepen our understanding of the nature of governance. So we know what we can be fighting for moving towards talking about talking and working into being. And it's not clear in my mind I mean I love the idea of the United States even though obviously we had flaws at the beginning that the Native Americans pointed out. If you don't have everyone in the circle you're setting up for trouble and they left out enslaved people and women, and it's been, you know, 250 years of trouble because of that. So obviously there was some flaws but the basic idea of the power resides in the citizen was a good one it's been stripped away by the nature of how power has played out. I understand the current system I understand the dynamics that are corrupting it and distorting it right now. What I don't have clear in my mind is what are we aiming for, are we trying to clear corruption out of the current system. Or are we talking about a new design in some way that gives greater assurance and protection to both the earth itself and to the the regular person in terms of power of self governance. And if this group could help me get more clear on that like do we need to fix this system in some way and if so how, or do we need to envision and create a new system. And if so, what does that look like. Thanks, I'll take a swing at that. And I'd love anybody else who feels strongly about the question you asked to jump in also. I think there's a lot of ways to try to fix the current system and a lot of people have tried really hard already so Lawrence Lessig created an organization called root strikers where he was trying to strike at the roots of corruption in Congress and a bunch of other things, which I don't think has made a lot of progress, or has sort of conquered anything. So I'm really excited that there's a whole bunch of legislation and things that I could point to that need to be fixed overturned whatever to fix the current system. I'm not sure that's our charter here. I'm really interested in all those issues. I think the more productive. Well, it would be really productive if somebody could fix all those things sorry. There's a more generative path for us might be to think about what. And by saying other I don't mean not democracy but I have a lot of problems with democracy as its as its model. And by the way, there are a lot probably dozens of variants of democracy itself. There are probably multiple methods for voting or collecting up what people think about an issue and making decisions about them that like between voting technologies and how you assemble issues and all that kind of thing it's crazy the the rich variety that even exists under the umbrella of democracy. Weirdly with a couple of things like citizens United where money equals freedom of speech, you wind up with a situation where the elections are almost 5050 all over the place because for both sides are pouring even amounts of money into the races and it turns out that money and advertising replaces citizenship and participation and collective decision making too much. So, I think I'm looking for ways out of the idealist in me is looking for clever ways out of those Mexican standoffs. Sorry, Mexico, you just got co-opted into the Mexican standoff trope but. Are there successful ways of being together in large scale where we don't get trapped by those kinds of those kinds of dilemmas and things. There's a whole set of conversations about for example, we have a two party system here should we have multi party system. That's an entire long trope that would take more than three calls to get through a lot of groups have tried to work on that. Every now and then somebody launches a third party effort like RFK is launching right now in this election cycle doesn't doesn't seem to help our elect electoral system but that's an issue, a rich issue of its own that I don't particularly want to spend our time on here. I'd rather look positively into into other places. I could probably if I sat and thought a little longer think of three or four or five other major things that that need attention that need fixing in the current system like that. It might be interesting to have a laundry list of things you would fix in the system without debating how to fix them that could be useful. That would be a thing that some of us already have or have found. I would love that. That would be interesting thoughts. Yeah, I want to put a plug in for for it. Something I've been working on for a long time, which has to with when coping with wicked messes. If you approach them as problems to be solved, you're going to make them worse. They are situation is that you're, you know, you can't get people to agree on what the problem is so that's that's a real challenge. You know, the resources, once you expend them, you may not have any more to to expend and can you make it better or worse because you, you can't fix it. So I think it's my approach that is before you ask how do we solve problems you first ask what would it look like if it was working well for everybody concerned. And you get all the voices who are involved to say, here's how I think it would look. And then you can say, okay, now what what systems already exist that would support that which is, hey, how do you look in the world for models that are working. What systems are in place that could be tweaked a little and repurpose that would serve those purposes or need to reinvented or invented from whole cloth, which then takes you into the problem solving level. So it's a little bit of a cart before the horse to say, how do we fix what's broken, because it puts you in a engineering mindset and leaves out the imagination. So, once again, I'll go back to, can we imagine together whether it's it doesn't matter if it's possible doesn't matter if it's doable. What would our imagining look like of I can imagine a world where governance does x, y and z and people thrive and are flourishing, you know, I want to hear those stories from people. It's going to be really interesting to hear each person's view on that doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. It's just like this is an imaginative space and you're a free to write whatever fiction you want. And who knows, maybe there'll be something in there that will will trip somebody into Wow, this could really work and we get something very different than let's look at what Norway and Finland are doing. Love that can a lot that resonates really well for me. Sorry. It's weird because I tend to think of paths to getting there a lot rather than the end state that much, but I'll explain what I mean. So on Mondays we have a standing call to create neobooks, which is the kind of the deconstruction of books into nuggets of ideas that are reusable recomposable in different ways. And one of the reasons I love that project is that I think that if we can start thinking together by by comparing nuggets improving nuggets, etc, etc. We might actually be able to express our political platforms as a collection of nuggets that live in this space, and we might actually participate in democracy in an ongoing way through this debate, rather than once every four years at the major elections with with one vote for one of two parties that are remarkably similar. All things told. And so the decentralization of decision making is one of the reasons I'm excited about this neobooks project. And I can envision a world in which I proxy my vote to Ken, because Ken is an expert in community building and a couple other sorts of things, because he and I have been comparing notes and building a body of work that we sort of agree on. And I think that's one of the benefits in this in this in this idea space, which is holding what we believe so that anybody can come in and investigate it in the interest of transparency. And so that other people can say, Well, this isn't this is a faulty assumption. This is flawed logic, this the evidence doesn't support this. Here's another way of doing it, we can compare notes and improve those sorts of things. And for me, a healthy world out in the future would involve people much more engaged day to day on these ideas, and then not everybody on every idea because that just doesn't pencil out, but people only focus on the ideas they really care about and then proxy their care or their perspective or to people they trust deeply, who then declare and show their point of view on whatever those other areas are in this funny new space where we share ideas. So, David Reed is a brilliant guy on telecom spectrum, I would let him vote, especially if he was regularly polishing what he's going to do and what he's up to. I would proxy all my votes over him and I would stop paying attention to that area for maybe a couple years until needed. So, people would then gravitate in open space style toward the issues that have heat and usefulness to them. I've had another idea about what this might look like in the future which is maybe more of a path to a future is that there could be a game think of a role player role playing game online that doesn't look important doesn't look interesting, but this role playing game is about how do we make decisions together around bio regions and watersheds. It's a game like civilization only different maybe it's even a fork or a branch of civilization or something like it, except while doing it people start actually treating it seriously and may and using it to make changes in their community so it's a game connected to real life, so that we turn LARPing live action role play into actual change in the world. And this thing is contagious enough that it catches on unfortunately like QAnon, a thing that came up in our last call, which is that QAnon is kind of an alternate reality game of its own that really caught on a lot. And what if there were a beneficial game that caught on that because it looked like a game and didn't look serious wasn't stopped by the political powers that make sure they will they retain political control and want to keep playing games and that we all enjoyed playing that game, which is a really high bar I think, because most games have a few things going on that people object to. But but in that world we were playfully improving our world and making important decisions that started being treated seriously outside of the game. That would make me happy as well. So those are two different visions I've sort of been harping or building. Mike, do you want to talk about policy bill. Mike, maybe in a place where you can't talk right now so he's chatting well in the chat but go ahead Stacy. Well, just similar to what you're talking about earlier this morning on Facebook in a community group, somebody reported wanted to know what people thought about a new law that our governor wanted to enact. And ultimately somebody started saying something negative about it, and I suspected it was only because it was coming from a Democratic governor. So I asked her specifically like what was the different, you know I reworded it and I said well what's the difference. And the answer I got, I was able to show her that if that's how she feels, and she'd actually want to support it. It was very obvious and other people saw the same thing, but other people responded in an insulting way. And she said you know I didn't want anybody. This is just my opinion and I went in I said to her, I wasn't trying to insult you I really wanted to hear what the opposition was. For me the idea of working together to hear all the different opinions and then deciding it would be a new way of doing things it's unfortunate that the only place I can have that forum is on Facebook. It's not where I want to be having it. But I just want to say that I think we need to recognize that never be. I mean, the media, social media and traditional media is forever going to be a part. It's never going to impact our governance. Any system. I don't think we should be thinking how do we stop it. I think we should be thinking about how do we redirect it and you know change things so that it works together. And that's why I come to all of these calls. That would be why he was participating. I am doing something I've not tried before. We have an hour before the rain starts. So I decided I needed to get out. But just going on. Jerry is the specific application of this weird idea I've had for three or four years. Policyville would, if we do it right, involve millions and even tens of millions of people like some of these intergalactic massive online games. And what's cool is you could actually have something more than just a game if you earn points by donating to a cause, you know, every, every party in this game would have a party platform, you know, four or five planks that are essential to its being. And they could be something like Merrill legalized marijuana everywhere, and members could donate to normal, or some other group fighting to undo the marijuana laws and build build up speed and build up momentum. The best part is that if there are some new ideas, something more interesting than legalized marijuana and declassify all the UFO files. Maybe some politicians would wake up and go, hey, 300,000 people think this is a good idea. And you'll actually start having discussions, but it's actually not something that costs a lot of money to do. The hardest part is getting something like Reddit has to elevate the most enlightened useful innovative thoughts, because otherwise you will have the trolls take over and destroy the whole process. Thanks, Mike. You're what you said reminded me that one reason why I don't like sort of separate item websites, maybe like move on but there's other ones that that do issue based I'm forgetting exactly what they are but that they sort of pause it. They try to vote up. This is sort of what Dallas were supposed to do digital autonomous organizations you have a bunch of a list of issues and you vote them up and down. And the one that gets the most votes gets gets acted on is that there's actually systems interacting that that none of those individual initiatives really have the reach or capacity to map or understand. I mean, the system thinking that a lot of the richness and interesting power and jujitsu capacity shows up. So I like the idea a lot and I just proposed a game, but for me the game would need to and would have to entail. And I got I hesitate to say understanding the systems dynamics, because those are so difficult that almost nobody will, but taking them into account as part of what these platforms or policy initiatives might do and how they might work. A second thought from what you just said is, maybe what we do is we borrow some existing platforms we take some we take a we create a subreddit. I'm friends with the founder of idealist which has volunteering and he's doing a big project right now to help people change the world and then add third at a third or fourth platform. And let's just hack together a game that in fact doesn't have its own platform but exists on these other distributed platforms that might be interesting. The other thing that you need for a real political system is you have to have a deadline that forces people to come to some semblance of consensus so they can move forward. And most games don't have that. As a matter of fact, the perverse incentive is to keep the game going forever so people just keep arguing and going on and on and on. And the other. The other challenge is that games here so I go ahead. Yeah I was going to say the other. The other challenge is that you need to have some way of pushing back against falsehoods so that you're not making decisions based on bogus information that's being perpetuated by people with an agenda. This just reminded me of the book finite and infinite games by James Kars. And he says the, a lot of games have rules and endings but the more fun games are the infinite games and what I'm proposing as the ongoing civic discourse is kind of an infinite game of co governance. Right. Even see my lips move did you when I wrote that in the chat. Oh my god there we go. Well, you can have both you can have a system that's infinite but you have deadlines to get stuff done along the way. So that's what I see most most volunteer organizations never get to. Yes they never get to real accomplishments without that kind of self imposed deadline they blackmail themselves. I think deadlines are really important and you know something I've done a lot in my work in corporations is using World Cafe principles. When someone puts forth an idea that think is really simple. I have people say okay, what's great about this idea what excites you about it and what's confusing to you about it, and that you're not sure of and then what are the questions you have they need to be answered for you to take this idea and run with it. It's incredible the amount of information that you get and because I have people doing maybe two rounds on each question. It's different than crowdsourcing crowdsourcing is put your best idea up on the website here, you know, and we'll, we'll vote them up or down. These are in depth conversations of 40 minutes or people go well I have you thought about this and you know we tried that in the past and here's what here's we're into problems how would we accomplish it now. Yes, you get really carefully thought through robust answers coming back, and then those get put into the pot of here's what's important to us as a group. And because it's not individual ideas that are just off top of mind but they're really carefully thoroughly discussed ideas they tend to be really well thought out and have a lot more groundedness to them and a lot more. That's the right word here. They're just much higher quality. And so the participation thing is really challenging because one, a lot of people don't feel that they matter in the system so for me a good governance system I mean everybody involved would say, my voice matters I see how it matters, I get to participate. And to I can't be an expert in everything so I need to have people like Jerry was talking about of somebody read you know I would I would give him my proxy, you know he's an expert I trust him. And someone else say I don't trust him to somebody, you know, and so you have that dynamic going on but if people are sitting and talking either online or face to face, where they get to talk through the things are important and then say, yeah, I can agree with this statement, and this can lead to the end of the governance system. That would work a lot better. I think the one we currently have. Thanks, Kim. Before I go to Gil and Tracy. Are we getting close to answering the question you asked earlier of us. Are we heading in directionally toward it. We're not getting close but we're doing really well. Okay, to me. Do you have more to say on that. I, not to that I have more to say but not to that. Yeah, I was just pinging, pinging Ken to see if around on the trail. So go ahead. I'm just, I'm very happy to sit back and let us talk. Okay, so I'm back on games and deadlines. Deadlines aren't bad things. The term is maybe a bad term. But the thing, you know, there are consequences in time and space in the world. It matters sometimes if things happen in a certain time or not. And, you know, I'm not going to, I don't have to list examples for you. You know, all of them. I like the idea of the game. I've been in a bunch of multiplayer multi day role playing games. Long before the online stuff and it's been fascinating and enriching, particularly to have people take on particular roles in like a city or a state or an international situation. That may not be the familiar role they want to play, like, you know, actually live in the other person's shoes for several days. That's fascinating that reveals it strikes me that games have roles and rules and refs. And that maybe got a lighted and how we kind of jumped into the topic, but that that's part of the setting of the context of how folks can play a game. And it may be a real challenging point here because you got to agree on the rules for the game to work. And we're in a kind of mess now where we don't even agree on the rules. So, so the experiment is sort of like, you know, we declare a game. Here's a game. Here's how it works. Here's what the rules are. You don't have to play, but if you want to play here's what it is. And there's ways to sort of, you know, boundary coach to keep us in the game that we're playing. Unless of course we decide to do a different game. And in a strange way, we're already in the game right now. We just don't call it that it's life, but it is it is a game with rules and all that. A small side note ultimate frisbee is self refereed. There are no refs. It's an honor system basically on the field and seems to work really well, unless you get up to the world titles and then it gets a little a little techie. And if you watch, if you watch, you know, basketball games, you see games where somebody raises their hand and says, sorry, I fouled him. And you see games where people fight and deny and have to be called out by a ref so different different ways. I'm talking about dream on green going sorry I felt him. Sorry, can resist all the time. Tracy. Yeah, I, I think I'm what this conversation reminds me of is thinking about like theory of change, right, like what is our story what is our narrative of how change happens and I think that was one of the questions that was it Eleanor that just left but that she was saying like, are we talking about reforming and preparing the systems and the government that we have are we talking about something new and and I actually yeah so this framing that you're talking about reminds me of the way I hold my theory of change around the government shifts is actually somewhere between this like repair and new but it's actually, and I think you said it in the chat about an appreciative inquiry. It's like more of seeing like I think our systems are changing right like well this changes always right but I see our systems. Shifting quite a bit and I see a lot of different people people across the planet. I'm thinking it upon the responsibility upon themselves to make their communities better. And I see that that gets very sophisticated in terms of initiatives. There's one I have in mind that I'm really curious about that's like across the grasslands that extends all the way from like Canada through the United States and Mexico, and like an initiative of of across national jurisdictions, state jurisdictions local jurisdictions. Native peoples and tribes nonprofits businesses right so they have this commitment to that kind of like taking responsibility together and. So, what I like about the game so so my theory of change what with this is bringing up for me is I think of the change in power. And that's what I think we're talking about is how to shift power, and I don't think we can play it on the same field, right. Like we're not going to go to that right where this we're talking about like some kind of like disruption right and it's like so where's the leverage and so that's what I like about this game because I have often thought that the shift in power is not going to be. Revolution or violent it's like it's like more like water rising right so if you've ever been in a flood it just there's nowhere to go it's just rises the water rises, and that kind of sense of. So, so I, so I agree with the sense that we, we self organize, and that sense of taking responsibility and it's kind of a safer responsibility. And, and some of the folks that I see doing this work that I think is really exciting like because it's such a mindset, like cultural shift, it's a shift how we relate to each other it's a shift in so many ways because when you think about the diversity like it confounds me at times, like not in this group this group is like easy diversity. And groups of neurodiversity and cultural diversity and racial diversity that has like long standing historical equity, you know, patterns. It's confounding like to create spaces of belonging so. So, and I think that work is happening to right like. And so yeah so I do I think that like, we are, and I love it that people were nodding to the like piggybacking and connecting things that are working and and and and creating to me a key is a mutuality ethic. Like, like that we're all benefit from the relationship because I think our extractive systems is like and I think people experience that and they know. And like this whole like the elections been stolen to me is embodied sense of what has literally been stolen from communities, you know, and so, so this sense of mutualism to me is really central to like something that grows and and so I'll stop there. And I'm, and I love the idea that this is a game. That's the new way for me to think about that connection. Thank you so much that's I'm on board with what you're saying a lot are killed in me. Yeah. Thanks Tracy and thanks everybody I'm thinking about game a lot to here and you know it's funny I've, I find myself speaking about games a bunch lately in this context of a designed into a set of interactions and a lot of folks have very negative reaction they think when you say game it's something that's not serious. Like hey this is serious stuff I can't play games with this know so like very different approach to game. And Mike I'm back very much to what you were saying before with the policy bill or something like that. It seems that one move we could make is to just declare a game, announce a game here's a game. Here's what it is. Here's how it works. Here's a play and have it be something that is cool enough that people really want to play it. And it might need resources and logistics and etc behind it but those seem to be the fun that the two fundamental moves like, you know, invent it or three and we invent it we declare it and people want to play it. And then see where it goes. I love that idea. I want to throw a different thing than a game. Well, this might look like a game as well but it's very different religion. So, Scientology was a bar bet. Somebody bet on Harvard he couldn't start a religion. And he did. He went and started Scientology. And I bought that sort of thinking about this kind of stuff I bought the domain foobarism.com which I don't think I mentioned on the last of these call the first of these calls. But I bought foobarism because foobar means, you know fucked up beyond all recognition, but it also food bar is a placeholder file name for programmers. And I bet that a placeholder religion. And I'm half serious here because one of our friends Jordan so good, I had a conversation with him last year we said I want to run for president, because he has a whole program he's thought about everything he's got a whole, and he is sincere, grounded deep thinker etc and I'm like, you know, sincerity is not going to get you that far. Why don't you make yourself into a Jimmy Hagger. Well anyway, name your favorite televangelist or something like that. Jimmy Swagger. Jimmy Swagger, thank you for good. Like, like, do something a little bit more unique and outrageous, but bring it in toward like solving stuff like Sun Ra or something I don't know. Anyway, that's a different path. It's not a game because then, then you're not going online and racking up points and doing gamification which games kind of require. But you're in. And by the way, games and religions all have rule sets. Right, sometimes extremely elaborate rule sets sometimes rule sets that make no sense. And a small side note, Molly Melching helped reduce female general relation in West Africa by a lot by going to the imams in villages and saying hey, where in the Quran, does it say that FGM should be practiced. And they were like, golly, it's not in here. And then convince them to just let go of the practice and you've got to do a lot of other stuff and I don't know the details of the story, but the numbers went down, which was great because FGM is a, I think a terrible stupid thing. So that was hacking religion to make some social good. Go ahead Tracy. And it's also, I think what's important and this is what to me distinguishes I solicitation, but I've always wanted to, like for me, just having a good conversation amongst folks was never quite enough which is why I ended up doing governance work. I mean, how do you connect whatever that portal is in, how do you connect that actually to change, like to something that's visible, and that's meaningful change and responsibility. So that would be the question I'd have with these different approach. Stacy. Yeah, I just so want to jump in there because that feeling that you expressed about that conversation never being enough. There's a whole world of people and you see them on Facebook, and they're the people that you want to save from misinformation that are longing for conversations. And they, they have been sucked into Trump, because he made them feel like they were smart, and they bought into any conspiracy theories because look, connect the dots. And when this one sees it and that one sees it and they all see it. We're the smart ones. So I just want to keep in mind that there are curious minds out there that if shown a pathway would love to have those conversations. So I just want to not forget that. And Stacy, thank you that totally marries up with a thought I've had for a long time, which is that Trump is having a side conversation with his followers that liberals in the media don't hear and can't understand and don't think about and one way that it works is, Hey, watch, I'm going to do something outrageous again today, and it's going to froth up the media and it's going to froth up the lefties and they won't be able to talk about anything else for the next three days. And then after three days I'm still going to be here. Look, and, and part of that conversation is about proving that he understands modern power, better than anybody else does in the political arena, and how, you know, eight years of Obama and his wearing a light gray suit one day is his biggest scandal. And every day, every day has 10 things that Trump does that are that are like pretty egregious beige suit, sorry. And I, you know, gray would have been okay. I'm not like great. All right. Anyway, so so this conversation thing is important because Trump has figured out how to use new media and old media to host that conversation for him. And a piece of his conversation is about how he's hacking them to talk to everybody. No, he can, he controls the media brilliantly. Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's like the version we've been talking about what you're saying is like a deer in the headlights strategy is do something that makes the Democrats apoplectic. So all they can do is sputter and be outraged and pointed like did you see that you see again and go nowhere. It's a remarkable control strategy. So to that point, I think that before we have conversations about what policy we should have to have conversations of what do we want to see come out of the policy at a basic level that anybody could start thinking about because those are the conversations that don't usually get had it's all, you know, the policy level conversations are already up here. Thank you. We have gone through the hour that I had. Yeah, bills got to go. We've gone through the hour that I sketch up this call. Thank you very much. Ideas for what to do for the next two calls LMK or post them on the matter most. And we skip next week. Remember, we skip next week I will be I will be in Bahrain next week. So, I'll be back and then we'll talk for two more sessions like this but thank you this was really generative for me and I'm very fruitful I appreciate your being here. Thanks for hosting. See everybody. Thanks for showing up Tracy that was great. Perfect. Nice to meet you Tracy come back to me. Yeah, come back to me. Come back, come back. Oh, I'll be back. Thanks y'all.