Democracy ingredients to make jelly
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007On August 7th I wrote how voting’s just one ingredient in democracy. Here’s some other ingredients.
One of my favorite work environments is Jelly. Jelly is casual coworking — I love it because it’s working in the same room as friends, and having great brainstorming sessions and unusual conversations. As Amit says on the website,
“We invite people to work from our home for the day. We provide chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of. You bring a laptop (or whatever you need to get work done) and a friendly disposition.”
Now, taking the ingredients for democracy literally, how do you cook up a democratic Jelly? The ingredients in jelly: fruit with pectin (apples or some grapes), acid (lemons), and sugar. In my last post I talked about sugar — the equivalent in democracy is voting. Voting takes place at the Jellies I’ve been to in a few ways:
- we had a casual vote about whether to have Jellies on Thursdays or Fridays (we chose Fridays),
- everyone votes with their feet each time about whether they will come to that Jelly,
- everyone votes with their mouth about whether they’ll participate in a conversation.
Each of these ways is casual, and a very mild and individualistic form of voting. It’s not a very sweet Jelly, and that’s the way most of us who come back like it.
The fruit that keeps me coming back is making things happen. This is participatory democracy — the apples or grapes are participation by working on my own projects, brainstorming by experimenting and trying on ideas with other people, and doing things with other people (going on hiking trips or going to parties).
The opposite of participation or ”participatory democracy” is deliberation or “deliberative democracy.” That’s what you see on TV when senators make speeches and don’t actually do anything about them. Last time I said that contribution is to democracy like bread is to food. Well, contributing ideas and not doing anything about them is the bread. Putting ideas into action is the fruit. All talk and no action gets you fat on carbs.
We get a lot done at Jelly and don’t talk too much about it. We talk a little about it so we have some bread to put our jelly on, but not much.
Lastly, we have lemons in the form of open-book management. Everyone has access to write and read a wiki which has pretty much everything you need to know to attend, make decisions about attending, or start your own Jelly. Wikis are a little bit sour because you’re extra involved in managing your activities and sharing in advance, but the choice of voting with your feet makes the lemons sweeter because it’s easier to decide whether you attend and who to talk with once you do participate.
So in our democracy cookbook, that’s how you make jelly: lots of apples or grapes mixed with lemon juice and sugar, with some bread to eat it with.
What about Wikipedia? Well, Wikipedia has a very self-appointed management. Jimmy Wales started it — basically he’s the king. And people volunteered to help out, and write and manage the content on new pages. They are facilitators, but in reality, what they say goes. Just try writing something on a page that the facilitator disagrees with. You’ll lose the conversation.
Self-appointed management is often necessary when a democracy is starting up. Just like when you start cooking, some oil or butter in the pan is a good starter ingredient. But after awhile, the oil should sizzle out. You don’t want too much oil, and you don’t want it to stay obvious for too long. When there’s too much for too long, like at Wikipedia, you have feudalism.
Jelly has some self-appointed management, but very little, and the hosts of a Jelly affect very little of what happens. They might ask if anyone wants snacks, or they might videotape what people are working on, but there’s very little to manage. It’s like having a little bit of butter to alternate between big bites of jelly. Without some starter management, it’d be hard for anyone to lead Jelly as it gets started.
Wikipedia is like having big slabs of butter on your bread (a lot of self-appointed management on your big slabs of deliberation and written-down talk). Disagreements or discussions are made public (lemons). The ability to have an influential vote (sugar) is thrown in there extra-heavy sweet for people who are self-appointed managers of pages. It’s uneven cooking because people who aren’t self-appointed managers of pages don’t get much sugar or influence in their choices.
How much oil or ingredients in general should you have? Democracy, like cooking, is affected by two big factors: time and heat. Time in cooking is time in a democracy. Heat in cooking is the number of people in a democracy.
If you’re gonna have a lot of people involved in your democracy and turn up the heat, you want to start with larger portions and more water (teams). As new Jellies are starting in new cities with more people, each Jelly has its own team. As time goes on, you want your oil (self-appointed management) to be used up and the ingredients which take less time to be cooked to be added in.
A variation of Jelly is cooBric. We’ve got more oil than Jelly but I think that’ll dissipate as we turn up the heat for awhile and bring in more ingredients. There’s less bread and more fruit. CooperBricolage has a permanent coworking space at Cafe Fuego, 9 St. Marks Place in New York City, and we’re open weekdays from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. We’ve been open for five weeks but are having a Grand Opening today from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Come by and say hello. Cafe Fuego has some great food, too.
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