Difference between revisions of "Platform roadmap"

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These notes are regarding a concept that is a work in-progress and are to help guide the development of such an organisation on the Organic Design Wiki. A functioning platform would be an example of an "Open Organisation". The question of how to set up a platform arises for people on [[the path]] when they want to surround themselves with others that are on the path to decrease their stress and increase their opportunities and companionship. What form can the living and or working arrangements take to ensure a smooth and harmonious interchange? This is no trivial question, experience has shown us that when communities or teams of any size fail to address it properly, stress, alienation and financial mismanagement are all too common.  
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This document is a business plan that specifies an event-line showing our activities to build and deploy the platform network.
  
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For people on the path, the next scale for organisation up from personal organisation is the ''Platform''. Historically this unit has been provided by the family, in modern times this could be looked at more like a team of like-minded people living and/or working together. The platform is a form of collaboration that includes elements of teamwork, flatting and self-employment, but what sets it apart from the contexts mentioned is that is that it is based on people coming together with clearly shared values using decentralised forms of organisation to get things done. It is also different in that it features a strong emphasis on life and work integration, the idea is that people with various interests and abilities come together so that each of them might do what they are most interested in, supported by the other group members. This can work if there is a clear shared awareness of roles and members are selected based on filling gaps in the teams spectrum of abilities.
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It forms the business plan, or simply the Roadmap. This document describes our ongoing work to implement the ideas and principles described in our [[manifesto]]. It is directed at those who share our goals and visions who would like to contribute to help bring them about.  
  
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The idea is that by having organisation in place, many things that can be quite the chore to do or expensive to access for individuals, such as a car or ensuring there is always fresh and healthy food on the table, can be provided by the larger group, thus allowing the individuals to focus more fully on whatever they are good at and enjoy doing. Furthermore, by having a group of well-organised people that are able to work together over time many opportunities may be developed and brought to fruition, allowing the group as a whole to act as a freelance service provider, meaning opportunity and cash-flow is created "in-house", in accord with the values of the group, thus allowing the members to overcome the challenge of "right livelihood".
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We call the outcome we are working toward “Platform”, a package of software technologies designed to provide a robust starting point and foundation to help any individual or group to achieve their goals. We envision that this technology can serve to unite existing groups to work together more closely and form larger groups based on shared interests, as well as empowering individuals with information technology that provides flexibility, freedom and privacy.
  
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Of course this way of working is flexible and could be adapted by flats, companies, families or mixtures of these kinds of groupings to add as many or few of these elements as desired.
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We propose that it is possible for people around the world who have shared goals and values to work together much more effectively and harmoniously. The path to achieving this will be to create a flexible framework that can serve as a living, evolving repository for proven and effective methods of collaboration and decision-making, which is easy to change, improve and customise. All users of such a system will be able to contribute to its improvement, much like the Wikipedia has drawn upon a large number of contributors to become the largest and most up-to-date repository of encyclopedic knowledge in a number of languages.
  
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== A Common Organisational System ==
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We now have a functional system that we've been using for our own organisation and project management. It still has some critical elements missing and is currently based on a MediaWiki framework (which is why we are calling it [[Wiki Organisation]]). This has been useful for us to develop and refine a prototype within, which also contains the initial content and structure of the Platform. We are currently “packaging” the prototype [[Wiki Organisation]] technology we have developed this way to allow the setting up of Platforms. A foundation exists, but further work is required to document the system and to make it more user friendly, easier to customise, technically efficient and robust.  
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The idea is that platforms are adaptable and can undergo change or be set up according to specific regional needs, so many diverse kinds of platform can emerge. What makes them all platforms is that they all form a unified network together and use it to share and re-use knowledge. The foundation of this system is the ability to keep all platforms connected and up to date with the current state of the system, and to allow them to help refine that state through communications and other feedback.
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*Vision: See [[Organic Design Vision]]
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*Values: See [[Values]]
  
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We have some ideas about an ideal network architecture built in accord with the spiritual principles from the ground up which is under development called [[nodal reduction]], but this ideal system can't be developed alone and requires the existence of a platform network to support its continued development. So we need to use existing technologies to achieve our initial collaborative effort.
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== Goals ==
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This is the specific sequence of goals we want to achieve in implementing Platform specification. Each milestone comprises a number of projects and their associated tasks. These "organisational milestones" are conceptually the same as [[W:Milestone_(project_management)|milestones within projects]], except at the level of a whole organisation.
  
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== Current Implementation ==
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=== Milestone 1: Business, commercial and funding Structure ===
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Although we don't have a physical premises from which we run our operations, we do technically have a functioning platform because we already have a [[:Category:Procedures|re-usable set of procedures]] in place allowing users to set up the same systems that we have in place which will stay up to date as we continue to develop and refine them. The re-usable platform knowledge is maintained using the [[w:MediaWiki|MediaWiki]] software which was designed for the people to maintain and collaborate on their own knowledge in the form of the [[w:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]] project. Our system then uses the packaging tools that come with [[w:Ubuntu|Ubuntu]] to keep all the platforms connecting and up to date with the current state of the system, see [[packages]] for specific details about our packages, and [[wiki organisation]] for details about our plans for higher level organisation within the wiki environment.
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We are currently preparing to [[W:Crowd_funding|crowd-fund]] the first two milestones listed here to give us a fully functional, packaged system to deploy for partner organisations. At this point we will re-assess the most effective path forward. We will be in a position to focus on the development of the [[platform network]] and progress the rest of the milestones in parallel and with much more momentum.
  
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== Objectives ==
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In presenting our work to the public for crowd-funding, we intend to show how much work we have already put into the technology and that we have a solid plan moving forward. We are moving the development work into the public realm to offer transparency, accountability and credibility to potential backers. Our demo system will allow any member of the public to try and use the technology for themselves to see whether it is something they want to use or support. In addition, we plan to offer members of the public an easy way to set up their own wiki organisation for free.  
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In this section we will define the objectives we want to achieve with platforms. A significant part of our motivation to do this work stems from imagining the possibilities that are opened up from moving closer to these objectives. Some of them are emphasized here due to their relevance to the requirements of current times. These challenges include an increasing speed of change, growing political and economic uncertainty, and the need to implement solutions to a number of problems at great speed and on a massive scale. With all of this we cannot rely on the centralised, hierarchical organisations to come through with solutions. Instead, we need independent efforts at mass-collaboration to help us achieve a better future than the one in store for us if, as a global society, we fail to change quickly enough. Some of the objectives listed here may be stepping stones toward that good future.
 
  
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=== The Learning Organisation ===
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Organic Design itself is a virtual organisation, comprising members who share the vision of Organic Design, who use the [[Wiki Organisation]] prototype to collaborate on a range of projects, including the development of the system itself. The Organic Design wiki is also a collaborative effort, it serves as a development hub and repository for research and other documentation. [[About Organic Design]] elaborates further on the organisation, which has been operating in this evolving form for the past five years. [[Organic Ontology]] gives further detail on the structure of the current organic design departments and the scope of the work.
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We refer here to the learning organisation as defined by Senge. Such an organisation continually expands its capacity to create its own future. Employees at such an organisation are there because they can share a larger vision with the others and in being a part of the organisation are following their own path to self-realisation. Being a member of a learning organisations means understanding ones own part in relation to the whole operation and working with the others to extend the definition of such an organisation. The employees therefore do not show up merely because they have "a job", the work encompasses personal mastery as well as team learning (two of the five disciplines Senge describes) and is embedded in systems thinking, the employees understanding their organisation as a system and refining it together through feedback and dialogue.  
 
  
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While Senge has been hailed as a leading thinker in management circles, we have not seen an uptake of his ideas on a large scale yet. If his ideas are so worthwhile and could address serious societal issues such as the increasing levels of alienation in workplaces, work-life balance and the sense of contributing to something meaningful, surely they should be applied swiftly within multinational corporations and governments? We hope that part of the solution to this lies in making available the tools required for people to easily form learning organisations.<ref>Hopefully one day we will be comfortable just assuming that an organisation is of the learning kind; so that we will just say organisation" when we mean "learning organisation".</ref>
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Organic Design maintains a mutual benefit relationship with the Platform One project. Platform One will be a new kind of sustainable learning community in rural New Zealand, designed to develop and model new sustainable technologies and showcase existing innovative environmental, software and social technologies. The Platform One charitable trust, as the legal and financial management foundation, has a constitution incorporating the core of the Organic Design manifesto and will use the Platform technology as a foundation for all software systems and the IT infrastrucutre. In doing so, the trust will drive the development of the Platform technology and the Platform network, while ensuring that all operational methods and procedures will be available as a "living template", allowing the entire organisation to be "cloned" and implemented in parallel on a wider scale. This lends considerable leverage to the work done at Platform One, allowing effective solutions to be deployed rapidly and aiding the development efforts undertaken by exposing the work to global peer-review. In collaboration with Organic Design, the stakeholders of Platform One will be able to eventually foster an entire eco-system of learning communities.
  
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;How do the criteria relate to the "building blocks" of the learning organisation, the five disciplines?
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=== Milestone 2: Prototype Organisation System Complete ===
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*'''Systems thinking''' - this is implied since from the beginning we form the ontology as a system evolving through feedback and the communications amongst stakeholders is also system-related from the start.
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By the time we reach this milestone, our system will be available for use by members of the public, who will be able to set up a free, private trial version of the demo system. The first step toward this is to move the development work around [[Wiki Organisation]] to the public OD wiki, out from our private beta testing wiki. Packaging is at a level where someone can download the wiki technology with a basic set of records and subscribe to updates from the demo system. Development can continue in the form of releasing [[packages]] to extend the functionality of the org system. People can choose to set up their own "blank" system, one with user guides, with demo content, or OD default content ("live" projects to improve the system itself).  
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*'''Personal mastery''' - Personal mastery refers to the ability of someone to develop and hold a clear vision for their life while striving for a clear and objective view of the current situation. If someone can be honest while holding a vision, "creative tension" arises, which provides the driving force for self-improvement. A learning organisation must comprise members on a journey of personal growth ("being on [[the path]]"), for this is the foundation of other vital disciplines of the learning organisation, such as '''shared vision''', where creative tension is created at the level of a whole organisation. To support this, tools for self organisation need to be provided by the organisation, as well as a number of educational programs from various disciplines and spiritual/philosophical leaders.<ref>Examples for such tools would be the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" developed by Steven Covey, or David Allen's "Getting Things Done" a.k.a "GTD" methodology. The challenge is to seamlessly integrate these methodologies with productivity software such as "groupware" (email, tasks, scheduling, etc.) and project management software used by organisations.</ref> Personal mastery relates to the value of self-improvement and the criterion of "All Aspects Changeable" on a personal level. It encompasses a development of a clear personal vision, a commitment to the truth and the holding of creative tension between ''what is'' and ''what could be'' for the stakeholders. From this it can be seen how much of an overlap exists between the shared vision within the organisation and the personal vision of any given stakeholder.
 
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*'''Mental Models''' - This discipline points to the need to provide tools to uncover the mental models of stakeholders, to model, discuss and change them. From this a culture of decision-making arises, which is grounded on shared understanding. Within systems modelling software, aggregate data is used for analysis and simulation within organisations, possible interfaces for this would be related to TGAL and the Geoscope.
 
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*'''Shared vision''' - TGAL implies shared vision so if an organisation can fulfil the TGAL criterion, shared vision is a given. Software interface can show how shared vision relates to the role of the individual, development requirement for productivity apps. Openness and completeness are also important criteria for establishing true shared vision.
 
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*'''Team learning''' - Team learning refers to the ability of stakeholders to engage in constructive dialogue, to remain objective and able to discuss each others' strengths and weaknesses (this benefits from an application of personal mastery, of course) and balance advocacy with enquiry. A "collaborative" organisation provides tools for dialogue which support team learning, a wiki is very good for this aspect, it is a medium that just about enforces team learning. An organisation interested in team learning will therefore foster an organisational culture of dialogue and develop effective dialogue procedures for "face to face" processes such as meetings. With our approach, such procedures and techniques will be included with any organisational templates we develop.
 
  
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=== The Seed, Self-containment ===
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The goal is to define the minimal set of features and content required for this stage and to separate out development work that can be handled as part of the package release cycle. In addition to being able to maintain a synchronised system, the users are also able to share selected data with other trusted entities or the general public using the system. This allows users to create and publish projects within the trusted network. Some design and UI improvements will round off the initial system.
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Completeness gives rise to self containment, because it means that every aspect of itself is part of the description. Combined with the concept of openness (in the sense of making it as widely accessible as possible) allows this description to act as a seed which can grow in diverse environments. It can grow because all aspects required to create the same kind of organisation are made available in an active reproducible way.
 
  
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=== Independence & Resilience ===
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=== Milestone 3: Prototype Fully Packaged and Deployment-ready ===
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We must accept that we currently depend on corporations and the financial agenda to some extent because the bottom-up systems cannot currently manufacture hardware and other necessities. But we must bear in mind that we need to strive for ever more independence and use open-source community developed solutions where ever practical.
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By the end of this phase, we will have the packaging of the system refined to the level where it is self-contained and can run offline. What we mean with that specifically, is that anyone could cheaply obtain an installation CD or memory stick with the current version of the desired Platform software package and install it on any computer they desired, to "boot up" into a free operating system complete with any software required, as well as a range of copyright-free content such as the Wikipedia. Upon opening a web browser, the user could then access a fully functional [[Wiki Organisation]] containing the Platform interface. Some people may also wish to do this using a "live" system that could be removed again without making changes to the host computer.
  
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Applying this principle successfully leads to decentralisation. We believe that people should have as much local autonomy as they need in order to make decisions and live their lives. We would like to practise localness on Organic Design by working with people who are providing localised solutions and creating tools to allow individuals and organisations move from dependence to independence to interdependence. There are many forms this striving can take: In the creation of software tools we aim to give people the ability to change the tools in any way they wish without needing to be specialists, and without needing anyone's consent. In doing work for clients, this means giving the client all the information and settings they need to solve their own problems or choosing other contractors if necessary.  
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The Platform software package could then be set up on a number of other computers to be used by the members of the platform to do work, locally or further afield. Users of the Platform software package will then be able to choose from a number of methods to exchange software updates, emails, organisational records, files and other data, rather than gambling the continuity of their work on the assumption of uninterrupted availability of broadband Internet connections. This is not to say that the Platform software package would not take full advantage of fast Internet, the availability of which would allow for dynamic video and 3d interaction between members. This approach also brings with it the ability to distribute data securely across a trust network and securely log into one's own personal "roaming profile", containing all up-to-date personal files and settings. In this way, people using the Platform software package will have access to [[W:cloud computing|cloud computing]] services with the peace of mind they offer, without having to sacrifice their privacy.
  
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Another aspect of independence is network connectivity. Many remote groups do not have readily available Internet access and many more people will be in this position if some of the larger problems get worse, such as the credit crisis, peak oil or the environment. The network of re-usable knowledge and organisation needs to be able to operate with minimal technology if necessary and this means a strong lean towards established convention rather than heavy reliance on high-level applicational features.
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We intend to use the technology at this stage to expand our network of aligned organisations using a shared system, by offering customisation and consultancy services around Platform implementation. This activity will presumably result in a boost to the development efforts around the Platform software packages and an ensuing decentralisation of development work, taking the pressure off Organic Design and giving rise to other flavours of Platform, with other names, in other languages, which would necessitate the development of a language- and technology-independent specification of the Platform, so that in spite of increasing diversity within the network, effective collaboration will remain easy.
  
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Applying this principle successfully leads to organisational strength and adaptability. We live in times of uncertainty and change, therefore we follow the principle of resilience, which allows us to adapt to circumstances, so that we are not devastated by rapid or intense change such as natural catastrophes or war. We know that over a long time and geographic span all kinds of events can happen. Rather than hoping it will always strike somewhere else, we can prepare for it and maintain agility. The Resilience Alliance puts it like this: "We define resilience, formally, as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure and feedbacks - and therefore the same identity." Source: http://www.resalliance.org/564.php
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=== Milestone 4: Technology-Independent Specification and Development ===
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The focus of this stage of development is to develop a specification of Platform technology that is technology and language-independent, an open standard that can be implemented in any technology or language while maintaining interoperability between the numerous implementations. The result of this effort will be the full decentralisation and internationalisation of the Platform development work. It also means that the Platform can be implemented in the most up-to-date technologies, to allow for effective integration between functions like email, project management and social networking, while making communication more dynamic, adding voice and video collaboration where the bandwidth is available. [[w:Extensible_Messaging_and_Presence_Protocol|XMPP]] currently appears like a good standard to use for creating such a specification, the potential of which has been demonstrated by Google with their "[https://wave.google.com Wave]" application. We envisage a subscription model, where different aspects of the Platform, including the interface, are "curated" by different groups and the users can specify which groups' settings, updates or content they would like to see reflected in their own Platform.
  
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We practise resilience here on Organic Design by making sure data is backed up and regularly in a distributed way and that any IT infrastructure we set up comes with procedures for disaster recovery.
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This stage of development, with Platform no longer being constrained by limitations of specific technologies such as MediaWiki, will be ideal for creating a user interface standard for Platform that is based on the most current technologies and is focussed on making the platform as user-friendly as possible. The challenge will be to create a consistent experience across the whole range of software packages used, while still allowing for flexibility in customisation and making effective use of resources such as broadband Internet or hardware graphics acceleration while not assuming the availability of such resources. The challenge of creating a unified "look and feel" also encompasses creating a consistent experience across a broad range of currently separate applications, such as browsing the web, working on emails, managing projects or updating accounts in the book-keeping application. We need a simple, consistent and solid interface that ties together all aspects of creating and growing an organisation, which can reveal complexity where desired.
  
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=== Reuse & Utilisation ===
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At the end of this stage we will have an evolving set of turn-key organisations that can be used by members of the network to set up new organisations in response to the demand within the network. This is an important aspect the specification mentioned above will need to cater to. We envisage a "wizard" interface that consultants can use to create a new Platform, which is able to tap into any existing resources to create a full inventory and then compare such an inventory with current demands within the platform network to suggest products or services to offer. Having technology abstraction means that all the consultants and their clients need to discuss are everyday concepts such as what kind of skills employees have, what kind computers and software are available to the organisation, what kind of financial and production capital is available. By providing forms to fill in this information, the Platform software then converts these everyday concepts into machine-readable format and publishes them within the Platform network. The software can then suggest the most efficient legal structures and most rewarding value propositions based on the data within the network. The foundation technology to do this has existed for some time and it is often referred to as "[[W:Semantic_Web|the Semantic Web]]".
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An often-overlooked obstacle to achieving sustainability is the need to "reinvent the wheel" throughout our society. If we could effectively reuse our collective creativity and extend each other's ideas we could as a whole get by with much less work and drudgery. An example of this would be to create a best-practice procedure for a client and then to add it to a shared repository of best-practice procedures. There are often technical and language barriers to this form of reuse, meaning that we have to keep re-inventing solutions other people have already perfected somewhere. However, the main obstacle to reuse is legal and commercial in nature, specifically it is the [[w:intellectual property|intellectual property]] concept. We don't believe that information should cost money whether its binary or conceptual. Only the things which have a direct correspondence to resource should cost money such as man-hours, processing or storage.
 
  
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While proper reuse allows us to free up an abundance of time, utilisation is the key to freeing up vast material abundance for the people of the Earth. If we could properly manage and share our resources we could all be wealthy ''and'' live in a sustainable society. Think about the fact that in any so-called developed country even people in the same house or block are unable to share household tools or vehicles, requiring everyone to own everything, even the things they only need ever so rarely. Can we afford to apply this kind of wasteful behaviour to the entire planet?
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=== Milestone 5: Currency and Trade ===
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With the foundation of the previous milestones in place, at the end of this stage of development we envisage a range of new services to be supported and enhanced by the Platform network that were previously too complex to orchestrate or which require a certain economy of scale. These services include the provision of currency, insurance schemes and investment capital, allowing Platforms to be set up in a wider range of industries, including farming projects, high-tech fabrication plants for computer hardware, hospitals, universities, banks or even civil engineering projects such as roads and railway systems.  
  
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== Global Organisational Concepts ==
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We see a growing demand for groups to effectively formulate policies and goals and to raise the resources required from their members to implement them, with full accountability provided by the underlying technology. This technology should also ensure access by all stakeholders<ref>Loosely: anyone affected by the project, department or organisation</ref> and empower them to review, question or provide feedback on any aspect of the work undertaken. We hope that the Platform network can help meet this demand. It is even plausible at this stage that some of the new non-territorial nations could be represented within the Platform network. Those nations could offer their "customers" citizenship, protection, standards development and welfare services in return for moderate "membership fees", while maintaining full transparency of accounts.  
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These are ideas for an integrated business management system which platforms may use to manage their own activities as well as coordinating with other platforms. We require a portal to the platform-based organisation, where everything runs together and which is used to run the organisation. The true test of the effectiveness of this interface will be whether [[Business Sitter|someone]] (or a team) with no prior context but experience in dealing with the system could run the organisation using it.  
 
  
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=== Global ===
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We envision this trend resulting in significant empowerment of individuals and families worldwide who are now free to choose between number of economic and legal systems, leading nation-states and other sovereignties to compete for potential citizens by offering more efficient and transparent services, pristine natural environments or more opportunities for social, intellectual and spiritual advancement. All of the above, we hope.
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The "blue" aspect (goals/knowledge/global) contains information about the platform, relevant research, values statements and links to related organisations as well as the overall goals of the platform network. There is is a definition of the organisational structure the local organisation would like to move toward, this is expressed in terms of products and services as well as roles and resources.
 
  
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=== Schedule ===
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== Related projects ==
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In the red section we find the timeline of the local organisation, which gives access to the schedule as well as past and future activities and events within it. Here we find the necessary filters and reports to give us a good understanding of what is happening with the organisation in terms of time. News and updates will also be available through the red section. Currently timeline views are fragmented into email inboxes, wiki-recentchanges, spreadsheets and scheduling applications. These are unified in the red section, which is also where the creation process happens. This is handled through the process of nodal reduction at the nodal root and consists of roles completing tasks at the level of organisations.
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Some organisations and projects involved in similar work:
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*[http://www.thebusinessclass.net/ The Business Class.Net] ''- Setting up workspaces with accommodation to ensure consistent standards for people working around the world''
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*[http://www.dreamfish.com/ Dreamfish] ''- Creating a worldwide network to collaborate on projects''
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*[http://www.couchsurfing.org Couchsurfing] ''- Creating a world-wide peer-to-peer trust community''
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*[http://www.gaiasoft.com/index.shtml Gaiasoft] ''- Facilitating the development of shared templates''
  
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=== Resource ===
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== Related concepts ==
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In "green" we have access to the local aspects of the organisation and can see its current state in terms of roles and resources. This allows for the management of local infrastructure and other resources. Proper accounting and a complete organisational description allow us to see the current state accurately (sight/awareness) and take this into account when moving toward the goals defined in "blue". For an existing organisation wishing to implement the platform template in order to gain a unified organisational interface, the green interface section is filled in via the process of "[[Borgification]]". This is a service performed by a [[Consultant]], assisted by an [[Operator]] who can aid the process from any Platform via a control uplink established from within the organisation about to be borgified.
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*[[w:Body of Knowledge|BOK]]
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*[[w:Commons-based peer production|Commons-based peer production]]
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**[http://blog.ted.com/2008/04/yochai_benkler_1.php TED talk by Yochai Benkler]
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**[http://www.we-magazine.net/we-volume-02/the-emergence-of-open-design-and-open-manufacturing/ The emergence of open-design and open-manufacturing] ''- Michel Bauwens''
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**[http://www.qualityfoundation.org/peer-production/ Quality management of peer-production]
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*[[w:Wikinomics|Wikinomics]] ''- see also the [http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781843546375/Wikinomics/?a_aid=od Wikinomics book] by Tascott & Williams''
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*[[w:Mass collaboration|Mass collaboration]]
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*[http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/02/20/p2pbased_economy_the_political_power.htm P2P-Based Economy] ''- The Political Power Of Peer-To-Peer Networks''
  
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== Media channels ==
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== Notes and references ==
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Platforms and [[sanctuary|sanctuaries]] both exhibit an [[education]]al aspect as part of their system design. This is accessed as [[channel]]s of information and media such as documentaries or platform [[news]]/[[newsletter]]s. These channels ensure that all members have a good shared context and are all up to speed with their plans and current state of affairs. [[The project]]'s channels will include many [[documentaries]] about the state of the world and the conceptual nature of how these ways have come to dominate as well as about the many groups which are successfully making a positive difference and their common patterns of success.
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<references/>
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=== The Project ===
 
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The big-picture project of which the Yi is an instance of an attempted solution, ie supplying tools to the common people allowing them to grow organisation in accord with the fundamental patterns. Organic Design is an organisation that is set up like a "branch office" to carry out work on behalf of the project in the region covered by its nodes.
 
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=== Requirements ===
 
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*'''Writers''' - general and specific ([[user:jack|Jack]] is currently making an attempt at describing the nodal-core in non-technical language)
 
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*'''Programmers''' - there are strict conditions on this which have made it impractical to try to integrate other programmers so far. There are many threads of development that could be assigned to different kinds of IT-specialists, but the problem is that the organisation is not of a scale to support this properly. We have not found any financial support solutions that could abide by the projects principles and work sustainably so far. It's not as bleak and stagnant as it sounds though! since what we're developing is a ''distributed development environment'', it means that development can help itself more as it progresses.
 
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*'''Administration''', The role that's needed to hold all the other work together is administration, which would include the management and maintenance of content, contacts (responsive communications), routing of information to roles (eg. driver updates to the IT role). This role is also has crossover with the ''general-writer'' role. [[user:milan|Milan]] is working "In the field" on setting up a sustainable situation supporting this project-role.
 
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== See also ==
 
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*[[Set up a Platform]] - procedure
 
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*[[Platform network]]
 
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*[[Channel]]
 
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*[[Sanctuary]]
 
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[[Category:Glossary]][[Category:Platform]][[category:Vision]]
 

Latest revision as of 03:11, 9 August 2011

This document is a business plan that specifies an event-line showing our activities to build and deploy the platform network.

It forms the business plan, or simply the Roadmap. This document describes our ongoing work to implement the ideas and principles described in our manifesto. It is directed at those who share our goals and visions who would like to contribute to help bring them about.

We call the outcome we are working toward “Platform”, a package of software technologies designed to provide a robust starting point and foundation to help any individual or group to achieve their goals. We envision that this technology can serve to unite existing groups to work together more closely and form larger groups based on shared interests, as well as empowering individuals with information technology that provides flexibility, freedom and privacy.

We propose that it is possible for people around the world who have shared goals and values to work together much more effectively and harmoniously. The path to achieving this will be to create a flexible framework that can serve as a living, evolving repository for proven and effective methods of collaboration and decision-making, which is easy to change, improve and customise. All users of such a system will be able to contribute to its improvement, much like the Wikipedia has drawn upon a large number of contributors to become the largest and most up-to-date repository of encyclopedic knowledge in a number of languages.

We now have a functional system that we've been using for our own organisation and project management. It still has some critical elements missing and is currently based on a MediaWiki framework (which is why we are calling it Wiki Organisation). This has been useful for us to develop and refine a prototype within, which also contains the initial content and structure of the Platform. We are currently “packaging” the prototype Wiki Organisation technology we have developed this way to allow the setting up of Platforms. A foundation exists, but further work is required to document the system and to make it more user friendly, easier to customise, technically efficient and robust.

Goals

This is the specific sequence of goals we want to achieve in implementing Platform specification. Each milestone comprises a number of projects and their associated tasks. These "organisational milestones" are conceptually the same as milestones within projects, except at the level of a whole organisation.

Milestone 1: Business, commercial and funding Structure

We are currently preparing to crowd-fund the first two milestones listed here to give us a fully functional, packaged system to deploy for partner organisations. At this point we will re-assess the most effective path forward. We will be in a position to focus on the development of the platform network and progress the rest of the milestones in parallel and with much more momentum.

In presenting our work to the public for crowd-funding, we intend to show how much work we have already put into the technology and that we have a solid plan moving forward. We are moving the development work into the public realm to offer transparency, accountability and credibility to potential backers. Our demo system will allow any member of the public to try and use the technology for themselves to see whether it is something they want to use or support. In addition, we plan to offer members of the public an easy way to set up their own wiki organisation for free.

Organic Design itself is a virtual organisation, comprising members who share the vision of Organic Design, who use the Wiki Organisation prototype to collaborate on a range of projects, including the development of the system itself. The Organic Design wiki is also a collaborative effort, it serves as a development hub and repository for research and other documentation. About Organic Design elaborates further on the organisation, which has been operating in this evolving form for the past five years. Organic Ontology gives further detail on the structure of the current organic design departments and the scope of the work.

Organic Design maintains a mutual benefit relationship with the Platform One project. Platform One will be a new kind of sustainable learning community in rural New Zealand, designed to develop and model new sustainable technologies and showcase existing innovative environmental, software and social technologies. The Platform One charitable trust, as the legal and financial management foundation, has a constitution incorporating the core of the Organic Design manifesto and will use the Platform technology as a foundation for all software systems and the IT infrastrucutre. In doing so, the trust will drive the development of the Platform technology and the Platform network, while ensuring that all operational methods and procedures will be available as a "living template", allowing the entire organisation to be "cloned" and implemented in parallel on a wider scale. This lends considerable leverage to the work done at Platform One, allowing effective solutions to be deployed rapidly and aiding the development efforts undertaken by exposing the work to global peer-review. In collaboration with Organic Design, the stakeholders of Platform One will be able to eventually foster an entire eco-system of learning communities.

Milestone 2: Prototype Organisation System Complete

By the time we reach this milestone, our system will be available for use by members of the public, who will be able to set up a free, private trial version of the demo system. The first step toward this is to move the development work around Wiki Organisation to the public OD wiki, out from our private beta testing wiki. Packaging is at a level where someone can download the wiki technology with a basic set of records and subscribe to updates from the demo system. Development can continue in the form of releasing packages to extend the functionality of the org system. People can choose to set up their own "blank" system, one with user guides, with demo content, or OD default content ("live" projects to improve the system itself).

The goal is to define the minimal set of features and content required for this stage and to separate out development work that can be handled as part of the package release cycle. In addition to being able to maintain a synchronised system, the users are also able to share selected data with other trusted entities or the general public using the system. This allows users to create and publish projects within the trusted network. Some design and UI improvements will round off the initial system.

Milestone 3: Prototype Fully Packaged and Deployment-ready

By the end of this phase, we will have the packaging of the system refined to the level where it is self-contained and can run offline. What we mean with that specifically, is that anyone could cheaply obtain an installation CD or memory stick with the current version of the desired Platform software package and install it on any computer they desired, to "boot up" into a free operating system complete with any software required, as well as a range of copyright-free content such as the Wikipedia. Upon opening a web browser, the user could then access a fully functional Wiki Organisation containing the Platform interface. Some people may also wish to do this using a "live" system that could be removed again without making changes to the host computer.

The Platform software package could then be set up on a number of other computers to be used by the members of the platform to do work, locally or further afield. Users of the Platform software package will then be able to choose from a number of methods to exchange software updates, emails, organisational records, files and other data, rather than gambling the continuity of their work on the assumption of uninterrupted availability of broadband Internet connections. This is not to say that the Platform software package would not take full advantage of fast Internet, the availability of which would allow for dynamic video and 3d interaction between members. This approach also brings with it the ability to distribute data securely across a trust network and securely log into one's own personal "roaming profile", containing all up-to-date personal files and settings. In this way, people using the Platform software package will have access to cloud computing services with the peace of mind they offer, without having to sacrifice their privacy.

We intend to use the technology at this stage to expand our network of aligned organisations using a shared system, by offering customisation and consultancy services around Platform implementation. This activity will presumably result in a boost to the development efforts around the Platform software packages and an ensuing decentralisation of development work, taking the pressure off Organic Design and giving rise to other flavours of Platform, with other names, in other languages, which would necessitate the development of a language- and technology-independent specification of the Platform, so that in spite of increasing diversity within the network, effective collaboration will remain easy.

Milestone 4: Technology-Independent Specification and Development

The focus of this stage of development is to develop a specification of Platform technology that is technology and language-independent, an open standard that can be implemented in any technology or language while maintaining interoperability between the numerous implementations. The result of this effort will be the full decentralisation and internationalisation of the Platform development work. It also means that the Platform can be implemented in the most up-to-date technologies, to allow for effective integration between functions like email, project management and social networking, while making communication more dynamic, adding voice and video collaboration where the bandwidth is available. XMPP currently appears like a good standard to use for creating such a specification, the potential of which has been demonstrated by Google with their "Wave" application. We envisage a subscription model, where different aspects of the Platform, including the interface, are "curated" by different groups and the users can specify which groups' settings, updates or content they would like to see reflected in their own Platform.

This stage of development, with Platform no longer being constrained by limitations of specific technologies such as MediaWiki, will be ideal for creating a user interface standard for Platform that is based on the most current technologies and is focussed on making the platform as user-friendly as possible. The challenge will be to create a consistent experience across the whole range of software packages used, while still allowing for flexibility in customisation and making effective use of resources such as broadband Internet or hardware graphics acceleration while not assuming the availability of such resources. The challenge of creating a unified "look and feel" also encompasses creating a consistent experience across a broad range of currently separate applications, such as browsing the web, working on emails, managing projects or updating accounts in the book-keeping application. We need a simple, consistent and solid interface that ties together all aspects of creating and growing an organisation, which can reveal complexity where desired.

At the end of this stage we will have an evolving set of turn-key organisations that can be used by members of the network to set up new organisations in response to the demand within the network. This is an important aspect the specification mentioned above will need to cater to. We envisage a "wizard" interface that consultants can use to create a new Platform, which is able to tap into any existing resources to create a full inventory and then compare such an inventory with current demands within the platform network to suggest products or services to offer. Having technology abstraction means that all the consultants and their clients need to discuss are everyday concepts such as what kind of skills employees have, what kind computers and software are available to the organisation, what kind of financial and production capital is available. By providing forms to fill in this information, the Platform software then converts these everyday concepts into machine-readable format and publishes them within the Platform network. The software can then suggest the most efficient legal structures and most rewarding value propositions based on the data within the network. The foundation technology to do this has existed for some time and it is often referred to as "the Semantic Web".

Milestone 5: Currency and Trade

With the foundation of the previous milestones in place, at the end of this stage of development we envisage a range of new services to be supported and enhanced by the Platform network that were previously too complex to orchestrate or which require a certain economy of scale. These services include the provision of currency, insurance schemes and investment capital, allowing Platforms to be set up in a wider range of industries, including farming projects, high-tech fabrication plants for computer hardware, hospitals, universities, banks or even civil engineering projects such as roads and railway systems.

We see a growing demand for groups to effectively formulate policies and goals and to raise the resources required from their members to implement them, with full accountability provided by the underlying technology. This technology should also ensure access by all stakeholders[1] and empower them to review, question or provide feedback on any aspect of the work undertaken. We hope that the Platform network can help meet this demand. It is even plausible at this stage that some of the new non-territorial nations could be represented within the Platform network. Those nations could offer their "customers" citizenship, protection, standards development and welfare services in return for moderate "membership fees", while maintaining full transparency of accounts.

We envision this trend resulting in significant empowerment of individuals and families worldwide who are now free to choose between number of economic and legal systems, leading nation-states and other sovereignties to compete for potential citizens by offering more efficient and transparent services, pristine natural environments or more opportunities for social, intellectual and spiritual advancement. All of the above, we hope.

Related projects

Some organisations and projects involved in similar work:

  • The Business Class.Net - Setting up workspaces with accommodation to ensure consistent standards for people working around the world
  • Dreamfish - Creating a worldwide network to collaborate on projects
  • Couchsurfing - Creating a world-wide peer-to-peer trust community
  • Gaiasoft - Facilitating the development of shared templates

Related concepts

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Loosely: anyone affected by the project, department or organisation
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