“A small flag for every mission and a big flag for all” - Why GlobalMelt?

Within Mozilla community we’ve been talking for the last months about engaging users, growing the circle of participation and creating a movement for the (Open) Web. I know that similar discussions are going on in other open/free/libre culture and software movements as well. It is a common need – keep users, engage them, empower them, and educate the newcoming ones. I think it’s actually something that Free Software movement has been missing for a long time – writing for the user and include them in the community circle.

During our first session at GlobalMelt, a question from one of the participants got my attention: “Why Open and Free culture is still considered a subculture?”.

Which are the barriers that still keep us from being a worldwide movement, from being louder about the principles, values and critical importance of community driven initiatives? When starting to think about GlobalMelt, a few months ago, I nurtured in my mind the things I’ve been challenging myself when working with various free/open technology communities:

Be (more) like the Web.

The Web was built in open, was build to be hacked, decentralized and allow people to build things, free the imagination. How could we replicate the DNA of the web and use its “hackability” propriety when building communities and event formats? But how about increasing the level of complexity on the way? Communities often start with complex things and involuntarily place barriers between them and the audience. The same happens with events. The web and the overall Internet culture teaches us those things.

From the “Internet memes” we could learn how easy is to replicate (and modify) the message, the information we want to send, but also how different it is perceived among various publics (and as more hackable is the message, the easier is arriving to a larger and diverse audience). We need only to know how to pack that message in order to be replicated.

Common knowledge base! The more you share, the more you receive.

Sharing knowledge and put ideas together has always helped to spur innovation. Wikipedia itself is one of the proofs of what the crowd can build.

We are living in the collaborative age, where the valuable and things are created by mixing ideas together. Can we mix our ideas, knowledge, crowd brainstorm in order to create new event frameworks, put together “tips&tricks” and “how-tos”?

Thought leadership and leadership as a behaviour.

Growing the circle of leaders is always a challenge. It is a continuous issue that sometimes generates conflicts in our communities, makes people quit and newbies stay away. At GlobalMelt, participants at Brain Drain – why we leave communities, offered something worth to reflex on: “leadership behavior that can be adopted and not permanently occupied. Leadership behavior not coupled to person but to actions. Conversely, empowered to participate, to exit”.

Growing the circle of participation. Towards decentralized communities through events.

We need more people! There is a huge need to grow the base of contributors, of people who participate and build, even in a simple way. Anyone should have something to say. That is one aspect that also many open technology communities are focused on right now. For the last few years we’ve seen a decrease in the number of contributors and participants in different projects (eg. Wikipedia editors, Mozilla and other free software projects).

We have noticed how some communities are becoming more and more centralized, how most of the events were mainly focused on tech contributors and, indirectly, how unusual suspects have been progressively excluded. But can a revival of collaborative, small, face to face events act as a catalyst and make communities become more decentralized and action-oriented?

We went to GlobalMelt, with a common goal – learning more about peer-driven movements and what we could do and share in terms of best practices in in-person events organizing.  And that started since the first day with a series of questions. Through discussions and collaborative sessions, we tried to find answers, come up with creative solutions and simple ways for making our events more participative, funny, interesting, hackable and so, keep the community healthy.

For me, it was an amazing experience to sit-down in a room with ~ 30 folks who share the same interest and love for technology, art, community and events and also, made me realize that we need to meet and do events often, keep the energy going on.

So, what’s next for GlobalMelt?

I see this kind of workshop as an amazing party where anyone participates with ideas and takes the outcomes. It is like the web, nobody owns it, we only have to make it grow and make sure it could be replicated, improved and then explore more complex issues.

Approaching events was indeed the best for this first workshop! But in the future, I see as topics: incentives and badges online, creative engagement campaigns, tips on how to spread a message etc. . I was even thinking  that workshops such as GlobalMelt could be a good opportunity to incentivise event organizers and community builders.

But, it is better to keep walking with small steps.

First of all, we need to keep growing the existent documentation. It is a valuable information/tips&tricks/how to for events that can be improved and then used by anyone.

Experiment some of those tips at your own events and share with everyone how it went.

Replicate the GlobalMelt locally and document it. It would be really interesting seeing xMelt in the next couple of months (where x is a city, region etc.).  There are some preparations for a Catalan/BarcelonaMelt .

Revive the subculture! When thinking to do an event, take in consideration audiences that you normally don’t think at. There may be plenty of groups considering themselves a subculture. Can we, the open and free subculture, change the future?

In the end, I want to send some kudos to Michelle Thorne, who help making possible this event and wrote an awesome follow-up, Allen Gunn (for helping us facilitate the entire event! I always, always learn something new from him!Thanks Gunner!), Alek and Joanna (for the logo and t-shirts), Solana (for hosting the party), SJ , Mark Surman and Mozilla Foundation, Studio70. And, last but least, to all participants!