Community Business Initiatives: A path to many routes

"Here's the deal, and I would really love you to all prove me wrong - and I mean that with complete sincerity. I think what generally tends to happen is after you go from basic management to responsive you never really kind of get back to that organic phase right, it kinda starts to harden and turn into a commodity, get productized ... it gets rigid, it turns into a machine.

It would be really great if you could show everyone why that doesn't happen - why you can create a circular process that allows you to have organic growth and innovation and basic management and responsiveness in a cycle. That's what's so great about this open community like yours - it's how can we do this - how can you change the paradigm? In a top-down hierarchical global company I might be working with the CEO's probably not interested in doing that, they're not going to challenge me to do that but you guys are probably interested in doing that.

You probably don't want to become heavily productized and commodotized, you probably want to stay organic. You're going to have to do that intentionally, it's not going to happen accidentally despite your best intentions.

You have to pay very close attention to what you're doing, if you don't what you're going to find is you're going to stumble into these governing frameworks that don't make sense for you because you'll be reacting - this event happened so let's do this, that event happened so let's do that, right. You don't want to do that, be really intentional about it and - I hate to use the word - but brave. If you love this community be brave enough to stand up for it - if it was easy everyone would be doing it, but it's not easy. We stumble on these models because we don't like to control people. We think by not being really being pro-active about governance that we're being nice, that we're being collaborative which might be really true and good early on but later on it doesn't mean that, it means you're being evasive, you don't really want to control people, you're uncomfortable with that. How could you do that? Re-assert your core and determine how you govern now, and protect your field".

Lisa Welchman DrupalCon Prague Keynote 2013

This session is about protecting the field, being able to spread the Drupal project in the long term whilst also being able to hold fast onto and nurture that which is good. By doing this we create a framework for the future millions of Drupal users and project participants.

I propose we plant the seed and set up community business initiatives embracing emerging business models in order to support the Drupal Association with its remit of supporting the Drupal project as a whole. By incubating supporting projects which enable carry through of Drupal's values and leadership we continue to build our platform for the future growth of the community.

We could be utilising the amazing support we get from the Drupal Association in a much more active and effective way, enabling the Drupal Association to focus on that which is necessary and needs financial support in order to be sustainable.

For example, a GPLv3 SAAS project “drupal.contractors” could provide the ability for contractors to promote their skills and find appropriate projects to work on. In any downtime they could maintain and grow the site, even use to train interns and apprentices. It could
  • help with sample contracts
  • provide clients a safety net of other resources if needed
  • pro-actively promote member skills and availability
  • empower the community to have the voice of change not just a vote on change
  • exploit economies of scale
  • provide online knowledge sharing across industries and countries on a new, manageable platform which could then once worked on perhaps be rolled back into the *.drupal.org infrastructure
  • sprints on the platform at camps and other events so community learns business and other skills to support them
  • connect like minds and support cooperative business which may emerge
  • solve some of the issues there are around drupal talent shortage
Two emerging movements which could work well implemented together for Drupal’s specific use-case are Platform Cooperativism and the FairShares Model:
Platform Cooperativism (http://p2pfoundation.net/Platform_Cooperativism)
Drupal is a platform which we cooperate to build, use and maintain. We participate in commons-based peer production and continually seek ways to fund the plumbing without giving too much power to any one entity. Platform Cooperativism seeks to address issues such as Uberization of these platforms which are comprised of collaborative work by shared responsibility. 
FairShares Model (http://www.fairshares.coop/wiki/index.php?title=FairShares_Model
FairShares is a model where everyone involved in the production and consumption has the opportunity of ownership. It also encompasses easier opportunities for social enterprise investment.
Implementation
The Mondragon Corporation is one of the largest cooperatives in the world and has its own credit union and insurance companies - just one example of how initiatives like this can work, there are countless others around the world including many energy co-ops. Virtual Enterprise Networks and Bioteams are also a good reference for collaborative business models.

 

The Drupal community is large and has power, yet we do not currently effectively harness this power as a whole thus give it away in bits and pieces - let’s instead forge many routes to market and provide opportunity and support for all!

 

This session will be a short overview of the above plus a longer discussion with hopefully other people bringing their ideas to the table.

 

Here's my [Apple] Keynote exported to YouTube, full session coming soon: https://youtu.be/z1kQkAv9p6g

Register NOW

Session Track

Core Conversations

Experience Level

Beginner

Drupal Version