Challenges and Triumphs in Community Self-Governance

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This session, led by Metagov researcher Val Elefante, began with an overview of Metagov’s frameworks and tools including implicit feudalism, modular politics, CommunityRule, and a demo of CollectiveVoice. It was then followed by a rapid-fire collective brainstorm of challenges that communities face when it comes to online governance. Responses included: scale (from small to larger communities, from “not serious” to “serious” decisions), too many proposals, loss of institutional memory due to platform switching, not easy to experiment, and not many available models.

The group then brainstormed ways of solving some of these governance problems using modular governance frameworks including: a randomly-selected jury system for voting on proposals, organization phone number library and summary of relevant information for easy decision-making, improved deliberation formats, and using tech to facilitate in-person governance.


Val Elefante presenting at DWeb Camp
Qualitative Governance
How can community governance frameworks incorporate holistic, cooperative, and emergent processes? How can community governance embrace differing needs and wants, encourage agency, and promote whole group purpose and wellness?

Facilitated by cooperative governance researcher Riley Wong, this Qualitative Governance session sought to co-create possibilities to these questions and more by naming and observing qualities of effective governance; describing the emotional experience of how effective governance feels; identifying and speculating practices that create these experiences; and ideating ways to integrate and experiment with these practices within our own communities.