Open branding
For liveblogged transcripts of this talk, see the MIT Center for Civic Media blog.
Participants
Erhardt Graeff, moderator, opens with a short presentation on the Awesome Foundation and a brief summary of the some of the conversations about branding from Awesome Summit: Assemble.
Bryce Dwyer
Bryce helped found Sunday Soup Chicago, which charges particpants for a bowl of soup and pools the proceeds into a grant that is awarded to whichever project the group gives the most votes to. The model has been replicated in a number of cities under various names and the original actually died out in 2009 before being restarted in 2012 (inspired by successful derivatives).
Benjamin "Mako" Hill
Mako is a fellow at the MIT Center for Civic Media studying the social structure of free software communities. He spends a lot of time thinking about decentralized brands in the free software movement.
Becky Hurwitz
Becky is the community outreach coordinator for the Center for Civic Media and has done work on the Occupy movement, as well as broader study on social movements and decentralized organizations.
Panel Q&A
- Reaching shared/values principles, how did each of your groups do that?
In the Sunday Soup community, there aren't any formally agreed upon values - they are all driven by necessity. Values become articulated around needs, so when everyone sees the problem the same way they get similar values. It's become more of a problem in the Occupy movement, where disagreements about values have undermined the community. It's not always easy to get everyone to agree, and you can't make values that are inclusive of all points of view.
Organizational structure
- What role do leaders play in this process? What do leaders look like? What is the importance of shared cultural background?
- I think there is value to having some sort of foundational organizational structure - what do you think about that? Social capital is great, but so is financial capital.
Organizational leadership is complicated, and there's always the danger of having an organization turn into an extension of a really charistmatic leader. Being decentralized also doesn't mean that traditionally charismatic leaders won't arise and start to bend the culture, but if the organization decides as a group to fight that, it can help. The team needs to take initiative for stepping outside of that comfort zone if they want to have an actually innovative structure, although a lot of organizational structure is an open question.
Branding
- What is the value of the brand, and how important is that to recruiting new people to the movement?
- How does belonging to open brands affect people and change the experience from doing the thing without putting the brand on it?
Open branding allows people to have more ownership, and branding in general gives people something to identify with, and to better understand how to get involved. Putting a brand on an activity amplifies beyond the impact of the activity without the brand, because it creates a sense of identity and gives people something to be proud of (ex: the Nobel Prize is more than just money).
Project specifics
- Have we reached Peak Occupy? What's next? Is the narrative going to continue? Is the lack of coherent leadership bringing down the movement?
We don't necessarily know what the future of Occupy is going to be, but there are groups of people who have splintered off and are continuing to work on the problem.
- Mako, do you have examples of free software/OSS projects that petered out and were reborn?
Inkscape has died three times, with a name change each time. Some of the problems were around leadership, sometimes political and social disagreements. There were lots of people who thought that a good vector drawing program was a good idea, but disagreement on parts of that and variation in the vibrancy of the community led to some temporary deaths of the project.
- In the AF, we have a gap between Kitten Voltron and this amorphous blob of rogue funders... there is a balance between stepping in to help provide guidance and support without being an official structure, how can organizations better navigate that transition?
It's better to do less and not burn yourself out, because it's a huge problem. Taking your time and scoping back is worth it.
