Going beyond committees - an answer to @pennsif and @starkerz

Again, the SOS-forum was full of energy. Thanks to @pennsif, his engaged guests @blocktrades, @crypto.talk, @helo, @knowledges, @shredz7, @someguy123, @starkerz, @themarkymark, @therealwolf, @upheaver, @ura-soul and @yabapmatt plus an emotionally involved audience.

At some point @starkerz form @oracle-d brought up the idea, building commitees for several tasks, such as marketing or technology development should be a pathway to follow. And all of a sudden COMMITTEE became a buzz-word and for a short time it almost seemed to be the solution for everything Steem needs at the moment: bundling the power of the community, solving problems...

With a little bit time having passed by - maybe even some more Christmas carols - @pennsif came up with this phrasing for the challenge lying in creating committees:

In the decentralised, anarcho-capitalist, code is law world of steem the prospect of forming universally acceptable, centralised, decision making committees will be a challenge of the first order.

Further on he says: "The first question to answer is whether we need some formal decision making structure such as committees to move forward?"

My personal opinion on this: yes, we need some kind of self-governed structure. But no, I wouldn't recommend formal decision making strctures like committees. They are indeed much too formalized for a community: formalized in the setup, formalized in the connection to the organization they are embedded in, often even formalized in their internal way of working. Talking about committee leads to discussing voting procedures, procedures of defining the tasks of committees and a lot more tocome.

Why? Because they are decision-oriented and not action-focussed. Because they are political and not entrepreneurial structures.

Much less formalized stuctures could be the better way to go. To create a strong forward movement within Steem's community it's necessary to bundle forces and energy in some way, but this doesn't need any structures of delegation. If at the end there are two groups working on marketing - so what?! Wouldn't that be really great! Two sources of ideas and action - and no single point of marketing failure.

So here is a suggestion based on own experience in network governance and ideas from holocratic management. It mainly relies on informal procedures and social control with as little centralisation as possible.

SOS forums are an excellent place to identify urgent questions. Let's start with these and build circles of engagement, each around a bunch of questions. Everybody feeling so, may engage in these circles. If there are too many people in one circle, the circle may split up in a self-organised way, without further regulation of how to do so.

What is needed, is at least two persons in charge of coordination within each circle.

Let's use the SOS-forums as well to find these circle coordinators by acclamation. In such a public space with a lot of social control and really engaged people around, only people with the necessary knowhow and competence will have a chance to become a circle-coordinator.

As soon as there are several circles a minimum of coordination will be necessary with three tasks:

Identify shared topics of two or more circles and sort these operational questions out.
Identify strategic questions and set up a SOS-forum to discuss these in an open manner.
Identify governance questions and let a governance circle come up with ideas for a SOS-forum to deal with these.

Doing it this way, working structures would be very transarent and open. No complex delegation procedures would be needed. And the result would be quite the same - joining forces in a coordinated way.

I'm looking forward to discuss these governance questions further and would be happy to be part of a governance circle.

To combine dicussion threads, I put in everybody here, who already answered to @pennsif s post: @lordbutterfly @shanibeer @steevc @bluefinstudios @newageinv @imacryptorick @borislavzlatanov @skramatters