I first wrote about the Constellation model of Collaborative Social Change back in 2011.

The Constellation Model was initially developed by Mark and Tonya Surman as part of the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and the Environment in order to help remove toxins from children’s products. Mark is now the director of Mozilla. I met Tonya at an event in Adelaide as part of their Centre for Social Innovation where she explained the Constellation Model.

But before I explain what it is, I want to explain why I’m proposing TZM take it on as a new, refined structure.

As I’ve pointed out before, TZM is maybe 1-2% the size it was at the height in March 2009.

If the Zeitgeist Movement was an animal it would be considered an endangered species.

Cliff

So there’s a few things to check first:

Do we want to save TZM?

I personally do. I think it’s one of the few Post-Scarcity advocating groups that’s got global potential. We want to both tell people about the amazing potential future we could have, but also go through the process of working out what that looks like in a modern way. There’s been a variety of other movements spawned from TZM and from people having watched Zeitgeist Moving Forward / Addendum or the large amounts of other material that’s been produced. A recent example is Koto Coop which aims to create a Post-Scarcity like community and will be buying property in just a few days.

Are there issues with the movement?

Yes of course. Everything from too much emphasis by some members on conspiracy theories instead of action, through to a lack of new content and of course, new members. But those are mostly annoyances, or lack of activity. Too much spinning of wheels and not enough actual movement.

Can we save the movement?

I think we can but we need to make some changes as it’s obvious what we are doing isn’t working.
The TZM 2.0 changes show I’m not the only one, the movement is interested in developing and evolving. Remember when the movement first started YouTube didn’t exist, only Google video.
DVDs were all the rage the iPhone was still new, I don’t think it even had basic copy / paste abilities.
Things have changed a lot since then. It’s time the movement does too.

I think we need to :

1. Move to the Intelligence quadrant – Do things good for humanity and for the members
2. Start using money as a necessary tool. One we eventually want to do without, but one we need right now
3. Setup the movement more in line with the Constellation Model
4. Create more content and projects
5. Become better at onboarding new members

I think the last two points will come about somewhat more easily if we do the first 3 points.

Note: I use the term members to refer to people who are doing work for The Zeitgeist Movement. Others prefer the term activist as we aren’t paying dues and there’s no official list of members. Unfortunately I’ve seen too much negative media spin and right wing propaganda that’s tarnished the term activist. But internally rewrite it in your mind if that helps.

Moving from Helpless to Intelligent

With the movement as small as it is we are having troubles even keeping the basic digital assets running. Paying for domains, the running of the TZM community and cloud, these sorts of things are currently a burden. But I’ve been a chapter organiser for over 12 years and running events has almost always cost more money than it made. It’s certainly been a net drain on finances, time and now that I’m a father it’s something that can be keeping me from spending time with my little boy.

This leads us to one of the primary issues. The movement is in the helpless quadrant. Members are expected to do things that are good for others, but it generally comes at a significant cost to themselves. That’s why there’s been such an epic amount of burn out.
Zday events are a great example. The majority of TZM members I know who have run a global Zday event have ended up spending months working tirelessly, ended up adding thousands of dollars of their own money and usually then burn out and leave the movement, or at least drop out for a few years. Older members tried to face off with the old gatekeepers.

Thankfully with TZM 2.0 we’ve removed the old centralised authority. The power is a lot more spread out and in the hands of more competent people.

That said, to really thrive we need to move to the Intelligent quadrant. By doing things that are both good for others and for ourselves.

One of the primary issues at the moment is the movements relationship with money.
My interpretation is that TZMs aim is to help humanity transition to a Post-Scarcity society (what I call an Abundance Centered Society) and get to the point we no longer have a need for money.

We know there’s a variety of issues with our current monetary paradigm. But unfortunately we can’t work without money and also enact a global transition. We are going to need to embrace using money. I’d love to see us use the system in a Judo like way where we can redirect the monetary system into ways that’ll help bring about a transition.

There’s plenty of great projects that are currently stalled because they’ll cost too much in terms of resources. Be it time, 3rd party services, professional help, or sheer manpower. The Zeitgeist Survey project (aka TZM Intelligence Team), a variety of video series and some projects still in early development are all great examples. As I said, right now we can barely afford to keep the domain names.

Using money can be very effective

The usual NGO funding models are donations and grants.
Most NGOs then setup some full time staff and some have the job of simply applying for all the grants they can.
The newer option is systems like Patreon whereby people donate a monthly amount or per content release.
There’s other options like spending 30% – 40% of money on marketing to make the movement bigger and better.

Seriously watch the TED talk by Dan Pallotta about how the way we think about charity is dead wrong.

Revolving Funding model
I’ve also been a board member of CORENA Fund which funds renewable energy projects in a revolving funding model. Giving out interest free loans and using the repayments to cover more loans. Unfortunately this option won’t work well for the current type of admin expenses we are dealing with and the types of projects we want to take on which can’t give a return. But later on when trying to fund large post-scarcity projects, like automated farming solutions or delivery systems which could be rented out, this could be very powerful.

Transparency is key

We should already be having transparency with meetings and decisions. We’ve been recording meeting notes from years of the International meetings.

But when operating with money, we need another level of transparency. We need to be able to see the flow of money in and out of the movement. Who’s donating, what the money is being spent on, what services, who’s getting paid for work. All of that. Whilst a low energy usage crypto ledger like Tezos or NEAR would be great for this, that’s not currently a option. But publicly releasing most accounting information should be a good start.

There’s another issue. The distributed nature of the movement. We have people in all timezones and with various levels of activity. How do you coordinate dealing with money and transparency and all the regulatory requirements whilst also making it easy for members to jump in and out and work on projects they are interested in as needed?
I tried an initial version of a new model with my node based document and a few other ideas developed from that. But now I’m suggesting that the answer is:

The Constellation Model of Collaborative Social Change

In this section I’m mostly adjusting the important parts of the Constellation Model document to be TZM specific and help explain the concept.

In the diagram Partners are what we would consider members who work in a group (a project team or set of members working on an issue). Multiple groups or even whole other organisations (e.g Free World Charter) can be part of a constellation or a single constellation can be a single group. Lead partners are people who represent that constellation in the Stewardship group, which is where the shared vision and long term strategy plans are usually formed. It’s also usually where money flows into and is then distributed to the constellations as needed. The constellations can form, evolve and change quite rapidly and are thus considered more of the chaos side of things compared to the more ordered stewardship group.

Keep reading for a more detailed explanation.

As the diagram shows, the model’s biggest strength is that it is built around the natural energy flows of a group. With the action-focused work residing in the constellations, these clusters become active when a group of TZM members decides to work on a particular project or deal with an issue. When there is low energy or declining opportunity, a constellation can become inactive or disappear altogether without negatively impacting the overall movement.

This emphasis on action teams accommodates the tensions around priorities that naturally exist when several groups come together. If one group wants to prioritise research and another wants to work on public education, they can. They simply start a constellation and other interested members cluster around them. Constellations flow from opportunism, not from a rigid strategic plan. This makes it possible to balance the interests and needs of each group within the broader goal of highly productive collaboration.

The model also helps to preserve the movements’ organisational autonomy. Groups only engage in issues that align with their interests. These benefits flow from three major elements within the constellation model: 

Lightweight Governance – A constellation-based movement is created in response to a need or opportunity, a magnetic attractor. In the case of TZM he magnetic attractor is transitioning to a Post-Scarcity (NL/RBE) society. Multiple organisations or even TZM chapters might be trying to work on these issues individually, but are often competing with each other for scarce resources. Their uncoordinated actions can result in confusion and limited impact.

I’d like to point out here that the Common Heritage org tried to bring many of us together but unfortunately the founder got sick before she could really unite everyone well. I had hoped that Common Heritage would end up acting like the Stewardship group for Post-Scarcity Societies.

Stewardship group

Once a group forms around a magnetic attractor, it needs to quickly form a stewardship group whose purpose is to serve the group’s broader collective vision. In small partnerships, this group can comprise representatives from each partner organisation. In larger partnerships and networks, it may comprise trusted members of the broader group who voluntarily step forward. These people are stewards of the community interest and the work that is being undertaken is in relation to the magnetic attractor. They are not representative of their organisation’s interests. But each organisation can pursue its interests through individual constellations.

The stewardship sets strategic direction, monitors the partnership’s overall health and aligns constellations with the partnership’s purpose. It first asks: how and why should the group work together? The answers are then fed into a set of plans. The group then typically turns its energy to the practical matter of supporting constellations: looking for opportunities; assessing the current assets; and listening to ideas.

The stewards, often called the ‘coordinating committee’, should be focused on creating three key documents:

1. The guiding principles – This is the shared vision that the constellations agree with. e.g “Transitioning to a Post-Scarcity Society is the most important thing humanity can do for the long term wellbeing of humans, animals and the ecosystem.”. The document should also lay out the assumptions and as it says, the guiding principles.

2. The governance terms of reference – This focuses on how the groups will work together; the rule is ‘as little process as possible’. It should provide guidelines for decision-making, money flows, secretariat services, conflict resolution and adding new groups. The aim is to keep this agreement was lightweight and short so that most authority and decision making is left with the constellations (project groups / chapters) themselves.

3. A strategic plan. This is about articulating the movements overarching goals. These can include raising awareness of the Post-Scarcity idea, creating content, developing transition plans and models, understanding the current Zeitgeist and working on changing the current intellectual, moral, spiritual and economic sign of the times. Or as recently described by Magni “The spirit of the future“. The focus here is on long-term goals. Individual action plans are left up to whatever constellations (project groups) that emerge within this strategic framework.

Action-focused Work Teams

Within the broader strategic vision of the movement, constellations take the form of clusters of activity in which a subset of the members voluntarily participate. They can be formal projects, opportunistic initiatives, working groups or local / regional chapters. They must however act consistently with the overall vision.

Two elements are needed to create a constellation:

1. A need or opportunity
2. Energetic leadership by one or more member

These constellations (groups) can galvanise quickly around an issue or project and once resolved can disband. Others might be supporting long running projects. Existing TZM constellations include some of the remaining chapters (there aren’t many), most of the people oriented around social media platforms including some of the Facebook groups and page as well as the Facebook moderation team, the Discord community and Discord moderation team, Telegram. The tzm.community and most recently Kees is an example of someone creating the forum and is starting a fledgling constellation as an energetic leader. There’s also a new content creation focused project currently in the works.

Like the stars in the sky, constellations are ‘loosely coupled’ together to create a rough and chaotic whole (this is partly where they get their name). Members come together based on their own interests and assets, which usually ensures that the ‘right’ members are at the table.
This element of self-interest also makes it more likely that there are high levels of contribution and participation. There is something to be gained in making the constellations you care about work.

As constellation based groups exist only through lightweight agreements between members, they are not themselves a legally incorporated entity. Although the Stewardship group and some chapters living in some (mostly European) countries likely need to deal with any legally incorporated entities.

This model intentionally benefits initiative takers. Money and responsibility are spread around. However, leadership goes to those who step up with an idea and move it ahead.

If appropriate, constellations seek funding or other resources to support their work. For example the Canadian Partnership that first developed the constellation model worked with many groups on joint fundraising of over CDN$2.5 million over seven years, with funds flowing through at least half a dozen different groups.

The advantages of this are obvious: resources are spread around in a manner that is relatively fair, but that also builds on the skills and capabilities of all the members. More importantly, because of reduced competition, groups are able to raise considerably more money for transitioning to a Post-Scarcity Society together than they could individually.

Third-party Coordination – The Secretariat

All collaborative projects need some sort of coordination team to manage overall efforts and troubleshoot problems. When non-profits set up collaborative projects, they typically address this need by selecting a member to be the secretariat, often someone who has the most capacity. This is seldom an ideal solution. Placing the coordination function within one of the members permanently alters the power dynamic of the group. One member takes power. The others defer responsibility and lose energy.

With the constellation model, the coordination function resides outside of the core members.

Ideally, it is housed in an intermediary organisation with experience in guiding the planning process, facilitating meetings, supporting new constellations, fundraising for joint projects, mediating conflict, helping information to flow and building the overall capacity of the group to work towards its desired outcome. E.g The Centre for Social Innovation.

At the core of the secretariat is at least one highly skilled, senior person committed to helping the group move along well together. Effectively, this position is the ‘executive director’ of the partnership and supports the content experts who are drawn from the movement. This person must strike a balance between driving the group process forward while nurturing leaders from the movement.

The partnership director supports the members in this work and ensures that all initiatives managed by different groups work as a cohesive whole.
The partnership director also balances power amongst the members. The ‘in-motion’ nature of money and constellation management helps with this, making it less likely that power will pool in one group.
If one or two groups tend to get all of the resources, the collaboration will become unbalanced. The partnership director, working with the stewardship group, has to regularly ensure that all interested members get the chance to lead a constellation. In some cases, this requires actively building the capacity and encouraging the involvement of less active members.

The partnership director also plays a critical role in managing changes and growth. Part of this is orienting new members within the partnership. “This model is constantly having to bring new partners, and even new members from existing groups, up to speed. The old model of distrust is so embedded in the voluntary sector that it is difficult to truly believe in the freedom of collaboration until you have personally experienced it.” Unless the partnership director spends time with new people as they come in, there is a risk that they will act in the zero-sum manner than many nonprofits and activists bring to collaborative work.

Overview

The constellation model is based around lightweight governance, action-focused teams and third-party coordination.

You can read the full document here

Anecdotal evidence of this working:

After starting the South Australia Zeitgeist Movement chapter, after a few years we decided to branch out and connect with and help other groups, so I’ve been a part of a few different grass roots orgs, one CLEANSA was small but played a vital role in getting other orgs working together to turn South Australia into a renewables energy hub and it has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. Beyond Zero Emissions a think tank organisation did the engineering and technical work to say that a coal power plant in Port Augusta (a town providing power to the capital city of Adelaide) could be replaced with Solar Thermal as part of a 10 year plan to transition Australia to 100% renewables. CLEANSA, the Climate Emergency Action Network of South Australia was a small group of maybe 10 members but we organised for BZE to give a presentation to people at Port Augusta about how they can transition from a coal plant based town to one championing renewables. We helped getting the mayor and community on board. Thankfully then the well funded AYCC (Australian Youth Climate Coalition) saw the work and took it to a whole new level, organising the Walk for Solar (the video is about 80% my video footage it was a life changing 2 weeks). Over the next few years a variety of NGOs worked together for years to get the community and political will to get renewable energy being built in a massive scale. Now we have everything from floating Solar PV installations and Wind farms to the Tesla big battery and more recently a Virtual battery system made up of thousands of households.

I’ve been a part of failed attempts too, like Occupy Adelaide. That was a dysfunctional mess that was full of trolls, bad actors and just people who’s mental health issues made them too unstable. I’ve also been a part of tens of startups and plenty of companies. Given my experience: I highly recommend that TZM take on the Constellation model.

That said, the movement is so small that we can’t possibly pay for a 3rd party secretariat, we’ll need to at least start with existing members or maybe a similarly aligned group like someone from Game B.

For discussion about this I suggest using the TZM Discord server or TZM Forum.

Posted by Michael Kubler – 6th July 2021

Updates:

Teemu a former TZM member created a great document explaining why funding for the movement is so important. He did a much better job explaining the need than I did and compares it to the way funding is used for pure science. I think the Constellation model is a similar but more refined and detailed structure than his proposal, but the reasoning is sound. You can view his document here or on One Drive.

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=2FA51B593C7AA7FF!42543&ithint=file%2cdocx&authkey=!ABmNI7nX2qvWQXE

For those wondering about how ineffective a fully flat / leaderless structure is have a read about the toxic culture at Valve software.

https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-organizing-utopia-6d32d329ecdb

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TZM newsletter August 2018

Here’s a small summary of what’s been happening in The Zeitgeist Movement and related groups.

Argentina chapter to host the 2019 global Zday event

After the success of the 10th Annual Zeitgeist Movement event in Frankfurt, Germany it was decided to have the next global Zday in Latin America. The passionate Paulina took up the torch and after some searching the Argentina chapter has put up their hand to run the next global Zday with help from other chapters such as Chile.
For those that are interested you can contact Paulina by emailing konstancja.tzm@gmail.com
We are also working on a Zday document for helping those who want to run a Zday event get some ideas of what has happened with previous ones.

TeamSpeak server being replaced with Mumble and Discord.

The existing TeamSpeak server is being switched off. For those wanting to do large scale 100+ voice chats like before the Zeitgeist.Earth team are donating their Mumble server to the cause. There is however an existing TZM community on Discord which has a lot of chat and occasional International meetings.

Address: mumble.zeitgeist.earth
Password: heavenlyblue
How to setup mumble: https://wiki.zeitgeist.earth/doku.php?id=tutorial:mumble&s[]=mumble

For those interested in more general text chat then checkout The Zeitgeist Movement Discord server.

The TZM website has had the zday global events merged in

The Zday global site is being merged with the main www.thezeitgeistmovement.com website. It’s likely most of you haven’t seen the site in a while and it’s since been replaced with a more sleek version, so have a look.

TZM is looking for content

We are looking for articles and posts for the website, Facebook, Twitter and other feeds. If you have any quality TZM materials or something Zeitgeist Movement related you can email tzmbot@thzeitgeistmovement.com with your article and preface the email subject with [TZM content]

Template for chapter sites

In more techy news there’s a request for anyone who’s interested in web design and development to help out with a Jekyll based TZM chapter theme. The project, run by Juuso is designed to make it easier for TZM chapters to create a simple website. The idea is to make it easy to update the theme and have people use Github pages and similar version control systems to easily add content whilst sharing designs.

It’s still under active development with an initial example page available. The Github repo is https://github.com/TZMCommunity/rbe-edu
For those that don’t know Jekyll is a system for converting plain text into HTML websites. Because the output is straight HTML5 and it doesn’t need a database it can very easily be hosted with minimal requirements.
Contact the Finland coordinator juuso@vilmunen.net for more information.

Latest videos

The latest videos released on the TZM official YouTube channel are:

Peter Joseph & Friends “The Viable System”

Based on Peter Joseph’s Zday 2018 presentation on Cybernetics and The Viable System, this was filmed in Toronto in May.
https://youtu.be/AFZjZa5ZAyY

Anna Brodskaya : Happiness in a Time of Uncertainty, Zday 2018

Anna Brodskaya gives some advice on how to negate anger and experience happiness, for anyone – from those on the frontline of political activism to those simply in the pursuit of a considered life.

https://youtu.be/W_BnQgUh4p8

ZEITGEIST (DOT) EARTH

The Zeitgeist.earth project is introducing a number of digital tools and services for communities involving technology, hacking and open source culture, as well as art and storytelling.

Zeitgeist Moving Forward opens with perhaps one of the most appropriate quotes to be highlighted in our generation: “In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.” — Ernst Fischer
In this spirit, while perhaps not obvious to everyone, it could be noted that memetic associations with the Japanese artform anime, currently underpin many of the Internet’s subcultures and younger generations. The Zeitgeist .earth project is taking that spirit and has been hard at work creating an image board and wiki, are hosting the high capacity Mumble server mentioned as a TeamSpeak replacement. They are also running project management tools like taiga.io and gitea a self hosted equivalent to github to help developers create the digital tools needs to transition to an RBE.

The team has been hard at work and the professional graphic designers have been redesigning the Zeitgeist logo and are working on the image board design with both light and dark themes. However the project is still under heavy development.
More information check out https://zeitgeist.earth/newletter_01.html
You can also join the .earth Telegram group: https://t.me/zeitgeistearth or visit https://zeitgeist.earth once the team is ready to reveal more content.

Zeitgeist Survey Project

Want a project to sink your teeth into and you aren’t good at web development but are interested in psychology?
The Zeitgeist survey project needs some help. The idea is to create a survey which can work out what the global Zeitgeist is. What is the general population’s intellectual, cultural and moral spirit of the time, across the world? By repeating the survey every year we can see what direction it is headed in as a feedback mechanism.
Firstly we need help creating the survey itself. Working out the questions and how they’ll be used. Once the survey is created we’ll need the help of all ZM chapters to get the 16,000+ randomly distributed survey responses needed to have an adequate result. Hopefully we can then do a world wide poll every year and see which the places are most ripe for transition.
The briefing document is here and you can email survey@zeitgeist-info.com if you’d like to contribute.

Free World One

Free World One is the new, hybrid for-profit initiative that was launched by Colin Turner at Z-Day 2018. FW1 is a company designed to leverage the existing market system to promote RBE ambitions through monetizing various activities in education, awareness and prototyping. Profits raised by the company’s ethical and sustainable projects will then be used to support other projects.

Colin, who founded The Free World Charter in 2011, is doing a great job at getting support and the company is now well into its first round of funding with over 270 investors. They are about to embark on an exciting educational project called LifeGames which promotes skills and traits like compassion, cooperation and critical thinking through fun classroom activities for kids. Books and apps of the LifeGames project are expected to go on sale to schools next Spring.

Free World One’s mission statement is:

“We believe that free access to basic living requirements is now a fundamental human right of all twenty-first century citizens. We see the existing method of controlling resources through money, markets and labour as outdated and unfair to the majority of people. We recognise that by combining the power of community with available technology, we can meet everyone’s needs easily and create happier communities.

“Free World One creates, supports and funds a wide variety of projects that promote our ethos of creating a free and sustainable planet for all.”
If you’re interested in helping kickstart transition through this hybrid approach and have some money to invest, then check out:
https://freeworldone.com/
https://www.facebook.com/freeworldone

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Want to contribute to the newsletter? Email newsletter@zeitgeist-info.com with any news or updates. If there’s enough requests we can create a more automated solution and notice board.

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Zeitgeist Movement chapters need to balance activity in at least 3 main areas, which include Activism, Learning and Relations. These activities can take the form of various types of projects and meetings, and ways in which to allocate time and resources.

Activism – Zeitgeist Movement chapters generally have two forms of activism, helping with the mindset change and physical activism/labour. The mindset activism is usually in the form of handing out DVDs, running film screenings, and town hall meetings. It is also one of the more important processes for gathering new members and affecting the culture and community around the chapter(s). The main mindset change happens when people understand the different values, definition of success and change in the defaults that we want to achieve. Many of the newer ZM members get annoyed at the lack of physical activism. As a movement we are only just starting to reach the point at which creating tangible change is an option. Some great examples would be converting existing people’s lawn area into gardens, creating eco-village style setups which run on renewable energy and are progressively automated to the point they are creating an abundance of produce. An important requirement for the price of zero transition.

Learning – Furthering our understanding of the ZM but also the world around us. From the latest in science, to the history of economics, to current news. It also covers research and analysis, particularly with regard to how to do things more efficiently and effectively or in other ways.  Learning is divided into two main sections: personal learning and chapter learning. Personal learning is particularly focused on reaching an understanding of how the world works, the issues with the current system, and the solutions (the RBE). This is usually done through watching movies, being a part of a mailing list, reading articles, creating newsletters, and attending or giving presentations.

Relations – This is about internal chapter relationships and relations with other organisations. A very important motivator for continuous membership is the social aspect of being surrounded by other people who care about and understand them. This sense of community is fostered by holding social meetups, like BBQs, or casually meeting up at a bar. The relations between chapters and with other organisations are also very important. The potential for the Zeitgeist Movement to foster a transition to a Resource Based Economy is facilitated by creating strong ties with other RBE advocating groups and organisations such as Beyond Zero Emissions (in Australia).

A basic outline of the sub-points is below

Activism -> Mindset -> Physical

Learning  -> Individual -> Chapter -> Global

Relations -> Chapter members

            |-> Other RBE advocating groups

               |-> Groups advocating similar ends

 

As an example, the table below lists of some projects being undertaken or planned in Australian ZM chapters. Some projects are listed twice as they have pronounced secondary effects, which are coloured in grey.

Activism	Learning	Relations
Giving out ZM DVDs Projector Project Beyond Zero Emissions promotion ZDay Zeitgeist Media Festival Greening Parties (turning lawns into gardens)	Newsletter Zeitgeist-Info website Introduction meetings Zeitgeist Movies YouTube videos TED talks	State Conference (with other orgs) National Conference (for chapter organisers) Chapter Mailing lists Facebook pages Atrium (chapters) Transition Towns Permaculture Zeitgeist Media Festival Beyond Zero Emissions promotion
Review and Admin

On top of the three different buckets that need to be balanced is the almost constant review and admin work.

The regular review process could for example involve reading your posts, emails, and behaviour for the last week and allow you to both fix up mistakes and give you feedback regarding how to do thing better next time. A group review process should also be on the agenda of the next ZM meetup after an event (e.g Zday, ZMedia Festival).

The admin work involves general organisation work and maintenance. From maintaining mailing lists and websites to doing checks and balances, etc…

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As Zeitgeist Movement chapters around the world are increasing in size there are a number of them growing beyond the size that a single co-ordinator can handle. On top of this, the Venus Project is feeling like it has lost control. As this happens there becomes questions about information flow, decision making, and how to prevent the bickering and in-fighting which will prevent humanity from taking the correct path and is far more likely that civilisation will spiral out of control, instead of finding itself at the veritable oasis that is the Resource Based Economy.

What is needed now is a defined governance structure which allows everyone to have a say, but with weighting given to those who have a greater understanding. The two main models are the Constellation model, and the decentralised Starfish model.

The Constellation Model of Collaborative Social Change

“The Constellation model is a governance framework for multi-organisational collaboration. It is a way of organising a group of interested parties to meet a need without having to create a new organisation to ‘hold’ the issue.

It is a tool to help us recognise and become conscious designers in a complex ecosystem of organisational collaboration. This constellation model emerged out of a need to support a tight partnership of 11 organisations – the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment. It has been emerging and serving since 2001 and is in constant flux as we iteratively adapt the structure to serve our vision and to expand our reach and more effectively engage our ecosystem.” — http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/node/169

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In mid 2010 I attended a Social Innovator Dialogues talk by Tonya Surman about the Constellation model of collaborative social change.

The concept is a hybrid centralised/decentralised approach to helping and handling bundles of self-organising teams based around a common ‘magnetic attractor’.

In this case that magnetic attractor would be a better future for all humanity and the vision statement is the Resource Based Economy.

Using this model the Venus Project, Zeitgeist Movement, Resource Based Economy Foundation, Free world charter, Tromsite, Humanity test.org and other such groups would form different constellations. With representatives from each being a part of the ‘Stewardship Group‘. [Refer to the the framework diagram below]

Each group could focus on what they do best. For example The Venus Project can work on the technical/engineering answers. The Zeitgeist Movement is good at spreading the word and helping change peoples mindset, the RBEF has a more resource gathering focus, and Tromsite is a great educational resource.

I like to think of the framework as an expandable net around the group. If the casing is made of steel then whilst it is hard to break, it can’t expand and adjust very easily. In this example the steel box would be a large corporation with all its policies, procedures and legalities.

On the other spectrum, completely unmanaged groups have nothing to tie them together so they fly off in various directions very easily and can’t push humanity towards the magnetic attractor (the RBE). It is hard to keep such groups focused. Think of it like this, Boiling water will turn into steam, but without being directed and focused it won’t be able to turn the turbines that create electricity.

The Constellation model allows the right level of rigidity and flexibility for the current stage of RBE transition. It allows all the groups to work synergistically. To work together collaboratively and co-operatively, just as everyone is advocating the rest of humanity do.

For those that need more convincing that everyone can’t go it alone, realise that it is hard to gather the resources required. 100 groups individually trying to raise enough time, money, members and physical resources to implement a transition will mean that none of them will properly succeed, but 100 groups working together certainly can. We need a certain threshold of resources before we can really start. Something far easier if there is 1 main group which is gathering the resources for 100 chapters/sub-groups. An example is that a government or corporation can donate time, money and resources to a registered non-profit, but can’t easily contribute to 20 groups of ad-hoc members who meet every couple of weeks. On the flip side, the 20 ad-hoc groups can get a lot of work done, especially when they are action focused teams.

For more information, and an explanation of what the wacky diagram means, check out the PDF.

I personally think ZM is already using something very close to this setup with its chapter structure, so it is not a very big leap. We are really just expanding who we regard as friends.

The other ‘non-pyramid’ based governance model’s I’ve come across are the Starfish (vs the Spider) model explained below, and also the Geodesic dome principal that World Mind posted a lot about.

Moving forward we should aim to use the most effective governance model for the situation. The Constellation model could be perfect for the moment, but later on we will likely transition to a more Starfish, decentralised basis, and maybe after the transition we can use the Geodesic Structure. Note also that different constellations will likely have different structures internally. Some projects may themselves use a constellation model.

Please, do read the PDF and discuss.

Links :

• http://www.lcsi.smu.edu.sg/downloads/MarkSurmanFinalAug-2.pdf — Main PDF, great explanation or you can download it here.
• http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/node/169 — Old 2006 explanation (a draft explanation).

The Starfish : Decentralised Governance

Summary

One thing that business, institutions, governments and key individuals will have to realise is that spiders and starfish may look alike, but starfish have a miraculous quality to them. Cut off the leg of a spider, and you have a seven-legged creature on your hands; cut off its head and you have a dead spider. But cut off the arm of a starfish and it will grow a new arm. Not only that, but the severed arm can grow into an entirely new body. Starfish can achieve this feat because, unlike spiders, they are decentralized; every major organ is replicated across each arm.

But starfish don’t just exist in the animal kingdom. Starfish organizations are taking society and the business world by storm, and are changing the rules of strategy and competition. Like starfish in the sea, starfish organizations are organized on very different principles than we are used to seeing in traditional organizations. Spider organizations are centralized and have clear organs and structure. You know who is in charge. You see them coming.

Starfish organizations, on the other hand, are based on completely different principles. They tend to organize around a shared ideology or a simple platform for communication- around ideologies like al Qaeda or Alcoholics Anonymous. They arise rapidly around the simplest ideas or platforms. Ideas or platforms that can be easily duplicated. Once they arrive they can be massively disruptive and are here to stay, for good or bad. And the Internet can help them flourish.

So in today’s world starfish are starting to gain the upper hand.

How did tiny Napster cripple the global music industry? Why is free, community based Wikipedia crushing Encyclopaedia Britannica almost overnight? Why is tiny Craigslist crippling the global newspaper industry? Why is Al Qaeda flourishing and even growing stronger? In today’s world to answer this it is essential to understand the potential strength of a starfish organization.

The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, explores the phenomenal and unstoppable new power of the starfish organizations and will change the way you look at the world.

Links/Resources :

• http://www.house2harvest.org/docs/THE%20STARFISH%20AND%20THE%20SPIDER%20web%20summary.pdf — A summary of the book (from a slightly religious perspective)
• http://simplechurch.eu/images/uploads/The_Starfish_and_the_Spider.pdf — Another summary of the book, but by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom
• http://www.starfishandspider.com/index.php?title=About_the_Book — The books website’s explanation of the book.
• http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=the+starfish+and+the+spider+pdf&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq= — A Google search which will likely have a number of links to torrent sites and the like if you want to download the original.

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By Mark Rogers, South Australia, Australia

Brief Overview

A Resource Based Economies (RBE) main goal is to use the resources of the planet, in sustainable ways, to raise the standard of living for all humanity, to help restore the biosphere to one that sustains not just the human population, but the remaining flora and fauna for generations to come.

Let’s look at some core challenges facing humanity today :

• ‘Shortages’ and Equitable Distribution of Food.
• Shortages and Equitable Distribution of Fresh Water.
• Shortages and Equitable Distribution of Energy (Electrical/Oil).
• Oil Production now constant, with rising demand, driving prices up and stalling national and world economies.
• Rising Unemployment due to Automation reducing people spending ability and ultimately their ability to survive.
• The Decline of the Global Monetary System: As Debt Mechanisms and Consumer Cycles destabilise, sometimes in dramatic ways with unforeseen results.
• Development and Failure to Roll Out of Third Generation Renewable Technologies to minimise our reliance on oil/coal for energy.
• Equitable Distribution of Safe and Healthy environments of second and third world states.
• Corporate ‘Ownership’ of Genetic ‘patents’ & GM Foods that benefit only the corporation.
• The Increasing Extermination Rate of global flora and fauna.
• Green House Gases accelerating Global Warming.
• The increasing amount of waste produced as a by-product of the Monetary System.
• The destruction of the Biosphere, which humanity needs to survive.
• Increased Population and population growth exasperating all of the above.
• Increased wars and confrontations to forcefully take what is needed to survive.
• The lack of political willpower, backed with long term vision and resources, to tackle all of the above.

One way or another we are all approaching a time of dramatic change. If we are to have any chance of surviving we need to examine what is failing us today and investigate what solutions we may have, even though if at first glance appear to be radical ideas. With this in mind I propose that a realistic look, research and evaluation of the RBE is highly advised as a way of tackling all  of the above, not just for survival, but elevation of the whole human race and the world we inhabit.

Info can be found here : http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com
and at: http://www.thevenusproject.com

Ok, so now you have watched tens of hours of video, a couple hundred pages of text and hopefully come to a few Zeitgeist movement meetings in your local area. That puts us at a similar level of understanding.

At this stage often one of the first questions is “what can I do to help?“

Well the most important thing we can do at this stage is raise awareness of a RBE, The Zeitgeist Movement, and The Venus Project. So simply talking to friends, family, acquaintances definitely helps. Even showing them Zeitgeist Moving Forward etc. should be even more informative to those interested.
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