Inclusive Organisational Technology Research
Self-Organizing is the natural way that cells have made it through evolution to become the magic that we see all around us everyday. Many animal formations are great examples of this today, such as colonies of ants or geese flying in formation over long distances. It doesn’t seem to come as naturally however to many of modern society’s organizations and groups of people. Which tools and technology do we have available to us as a movement to become better, and more inclusive, at organizing ourselves?
Project Aims
Development & research into inclusive organization modes (technology and tools) within self-organised bodies / communities to be developed and revised by teams / circles.
Research, testing and prototyping into inclusive ways that is documented and shared widely within the community.
Team
Research: Aimee Fenech, Meyi Lekuona
Consultant: Andy Goldring
Reporting Officer: Aline VaMo
Area
Prototyping, Next Steps Project
objectives 2023
Objective 1: Review and update the aims of the CoLab as an exercise in simplification.
Objective 2: Simple review of available tools (S3 etc).
Objective 3: Description of current situation (working / not working / gaps).
Objective 4: Development of simple new ‘User Guide/Handbook’.
Objective 5: Documenting the process of how the above is done to be shared as a case study.
OUTCOMEs 2023
Objective 1: Simplified Mission, Vision and Aims consented by the CoLab community: https://www.perma.earth/vision/
Objective 2: Review of available tools:
Form sent out to all CoLab members, explaining what our research is about:
https://cloud.perma.earth/s/bHxeKjNkZqzST7Z
Results gathered in NextCloud sheet:
https://cloud.perma.earth/s/BkbxFzeAFpQoT3J
Futher tools researched and added to the following baserow database:
(link to come)
Objective 3: Description of working – not working – gaps
Survey was included in the form sent out to all CoLab members under Objective 2, results were harvested here:
https://cloud.perma.earth/s/rXgCDccSSN4k77r
Observe by Mapping, for ease of Analysis – Miroboard
https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVM_VWswI=/#tpicker-content
PDF for ease of sharing visuals
https://cloud.perma.earth/s/C5E5RQjjGtJxSEQ
Objective 4: Development of Simple New User Guide
https://wiki.app.perma.earth/books/international-permaculture-colab-user-guide
More translations underway
Objective 5: Document the above process as a case study:
https://cloud.perma.earth/s/RA4Yb47WpAScBqz (edited)
objectives 2024
Objective 1: Research and document the term INCLUSIVE
Objective 2: Research how others do it
Objective 3: Train on the optimal use of and document the use of open source digital Tools for collaboration
Objective 4: Research and share an article (in English, French, Spanish) on the topic: Simple English and Gender Inclusive Writing
September 2024 update
In our project “Research and Design in Inclusive Organizational Technology (IOT) we aim to dive into the topic of online collaboration tools for self-organized organizations. As we are a permaculture laboratory, we would want the technology that we are researching and proposing, to be as inclusive as possible, caring for the people, yet also caring for the planet, as well as the future.
First we look at what the title of our project really means. What is inclusive? What is organizational technology? So far we have researched the topic and requested feedback internally in the CoLab on a draft article written with our findings. We are now working to include this feedback and some more resources in the article and present our findings in a final document towards the end of this year’s term.
Then, we have wanted to learn from other experiences in the world, and will share several case studies with you. 4 are currently being documented, which will give us some idea on how others actually do it, and on which inclusive organizational technology they are using.
In a third workpackage we have been showcasing some digital tools designed to help self-organizing teams and team members work more efficiently, mostly open source. The videos are published here: https://www.youtube.com/@permacolab
Lastly, we are putting together an article on inclusive communication, on how to put across our (permaculture) message in the most inclusive possible way, to reach as many audiences as possible.
All in all we believe that the IOT project offers practical tools and insights on how to work together in more “natural”, self-organized ecosystems. This year 2 of the project is proving to be an interesting “experiment” in itself and we look forward to sharing our findings with the rest of the community shortly.