Loomio

This page needs revision to be brought up to date with our 2018 Relaunch

About Loomio

As a project born out of the Occupy Movement and led by friendly New Zealand hackers, it's no secret that we're great fans of Loomio. It's also a good thing that they both know and dig GT, so it's happy collaboration for all involved. They also happen to be a worker-owned coop and part of Enspiral, a fascinating entrepreneurial collective and one of our great inspirations.

Here's Alanna Krause from Loomio talking about Occupy Wellington and the birth of the project:

"A group of key organizers of the encampment in front of City Hall in our city in 2011 heard that we were 'good with technology' and came to see us. They described their challenges trying to make consensus decisions with a large group of people —loud voices were dominating the discussion, and people who didn't have a lot of time to commit were being marginalized. They were missing out on the power of including a truly diverse range of perspectives.

Could we develop a tool to solve the problem of collaborative decision-making online?

We were shocked, and excited: a bunch of protesters had the same problems with decision-making that we, as a business, had! As soon as we realized we were facing the same challenges, we knew that if we could develop a solution that would work equally well for them as for us, we'd really have something.

We told them we couldn't do it for them, but we could do it with them. So, we gave them a desk in our office and got to work."

Read on for more Loomio resources and help

An overview of Loomio and how it works

The following has been copied from Loomio's What is Loomio page:

Loomio is a simple, user-friendly online tool for collaborative decision-making. Loomio lets you host discussions online, invite the right people to participate, come to timely decisions and transform deliberation into real-world action.

People use it for all kinds of things, from approving funding applications to cooperative governance to stakeholder engagement. The case studies section shows a variety of ways groups have used Loomio.

• Video tutorial

How it works in four steps

1. Gather

A Loomio group is an online place for people to have discussions and make decisions together.

2. Discuss

Anyone in the group can start a discussion. Everyone in the group is able to participate.

3. Propose

Proposals are the defining feature of Loomio. Use a proposal to move a discussion towards conclusion. If you’re wondering how to move a conversation forward, the answer is almost always to start a proposal!

4. Decide & Act

While a proposal is open, everyone in the group can state their position: Agree if you’re happy with the proposal. Abstain if you’re ok for the group to decide without you. Disagree if you believe there might be a better alternative. Block if you’ve got serious objections. When you select your position, you can also enter a short statement to explain why. This creates a succinct summary of what everyone thinks. When the proposal closes, you can post an outcome so everyone knows what the resultwas and the next steps. Over time you’ll build a history of decisions you can refer to.

Loomio usage in GMC

Overview

Loomio is the tool we use to discuss what we do and how we do it. It also allows us to make decisions about tasks, projects and ventures and the direction of the whole project. Instead of trying to organize and make decisions over email threads that are impossible to find after the fact, we carry most of day-to-day communications in Loomio.

Reading the lines above it will be clear that Loomio's architecture is a perfect match for the decision making section of our governance model. We use Loomio almost daily to discuss all aspects of running our Distributed Coop — you can think of it as our daily newspaper, with news and updates. Some discussions and proposals are more incumbent to certain working groups while others affect everyone (such as those in the community area). Some of our best ideas come out of Loomio discussions and it allows everyone to be aware of and take part on what's shaping the collective.

What it is, what it's not

Loomio IS for:

• Having long discussions.
• Making announcements everyone needs to see and acknowledge.
• Voting on decisions.
• Figuring out how we work and how we go forward.

Loomio ISN'T for:

• One on one conversation, off-topic stuff and quick check-ins (use Slack)

• Workflow and project management. (Use Trello)
• Specific tasks. (Use Trello)
• Attaching documents that have to do with specific tasks. (Use Trello)
• Attaching readily available documents for larger tasks (use G-Drive)
• Setting deadlines in tasks. (Use Trello)
• Writing collaborative documents. (Use G-Drive)
• A searchable repository for information. (Use the Wiki)

How we use Loomio

• Suggested bookmark for BTBW: Our Loomio Homepage

In a nutshell: You visit the homepage to see what discussions and votes are going on and weigh in on them. Visit Loomio, take a look at what's going on and you'll soon get the hang of it — it's very simple.

We use Loomio in close conjunction with Trello. Often times (but not always) a Loomio discussion is accompanied by a Trello card and vice versa. In GMC nomenclature we call this an "L/T" (Loomio/Trello).

Finding your way around our Loomio group

Discussion and decision making within Loomio takes place in threads. These threads are organized according to the four main areas (Carework, Love work, Livelihood work and Projects) and their corresponding subgroups. You can see these displayed in the Tools Mindmap and Spreadsheet or in this Wiki entry. Within the main areas, you will also find the sub areas — which in turn correspond to the Working Circles. You can find the main areas and subgroups in the right hand column of our Loomio Homepage:

Work areas (L) and the subgroups (R)

Hosting threads

The person who opens a new thread is generally considered as the "host". The host does the following things:

• Makes an opening post discussing what we'll be discussing, the reason for it and giving all the information that's needed. This is done by providing:
  • Links to everything related to the thread (including any Trello cards or Wiki entries)
  • An Overview of the thread
  • Any Updates on the thread can be reflected by editing the opening post ongoing.
• Situates the thread in the correct area and uses tags to place it in the right subgroup (see above)
• Makes a list of leading questions for participants to answer. This helps guide the discussion and stimulate ideas
• Ensures the discussion keeps flowing and that any tasks or to-dos are reflected on the corresponding Trello card.
• When a few ideas and patterns (as well as tensions) have emerged, compiles a summary of the general tone of the conversation so far.
• When the time is right for a proposal, calls the proposal and sets the deadline . There are a number of proposal types to choose from. Read about them here to choose the one that best fits the discussion.
• Ensures that everyone who needs to vote has votes, this includes reminding people.
• Summarises the result of the vote and proposes actions going forward (which may be reflected on a Trello checklist)
• Makes sure that everybody has been heard, feels safe and fully able to express their opinions and feelings.

What is important to remember is that we are very specific with our threads. This means that for any given task, a thread will use the exact same title across Clockify, Loomio, Trello and the Wiki. For example, when we need to have a conversation (or renew) our Commitment Statements, we have it on the existing Loomio thread, rather than creating a new one. Use the search function or ask your GT Buddy about thread creation to guide you.

For the particulars on how to follow these tasks or the ones listed below, don't worry. You can either follow the links provided, see the tutorials below and, best of all, have your GT Buddy walk you through it in a screencast. Listed like this it seems a lot, but trust us, it becomes very easy once you've done it a few times.

For hosting, you can also find out more on The Facilitator's Guide to Loomio.

Loomio subgroups

Loomio discussions are held in various subgroups which, first of all, correspond to our 3 main categories:

• Community (or COMM)
• Sustainability (or SUS)
• Web-presence (or WEB)

So, all subgroups titled "COMM/XXXX" have to with Community, and so on. Please visit the wiki's Main Page to see all main categories and subcategories at a glance.

You can sign up to groups, depending on the working teams you are involved in. Basically, if it affects you and you are in that team, you should be on that board.

Additionally, there are a series of subgroups which are open to all members. We encourage everyone, independent of work teams, to contribute to these "communal" subgroups. These are:

• COMM/Community
• COMM/Governance
• COMM/Test Environment
• COMM/Tools
• COMM/Training

We've set up our Loomio home page so all members are automatically included in the "communal" subgroups listed above. You can then join groups based on your preferences and skills.

Complete list of Loomio subgroups

To consult the full list of Loomio subgroups we use, please visit the following link:

• Complete list of Loomio subgroups

List of external tutorials and resources

Resources

General background on Loomio

We really enjoyed this article on Loomio, both from an ideological and a practical point of view. Please take the time to read it as it should make clear why we've chosen it as our discussion and decision-making tool.

Here's Douglas Rushkoff's take on it

Notifications

For notifications. Go to your user menu at the top right. Choose “Email settings” from the drop down menu. You can set it up to get all discussions in all groups, or you can just choose: **“Send me 'Yesterday on Loomio' - my unread content from the past 24 hours”**. That will send you an email in the morning with a recap of everything, nicely displayed and with links to the discussions should you want to chime in.

We also have some discussions about Loomio notifications... on Loomio! Check it out!

Markdown editing

This is the exact same editing syntax used for Trello and Loomio, so it's a case of "buy one, get one for free"! Do it!

1. Loomio markdown Tutorial; More "narrative" Markdown tutorial by Rich Bartlett
2. Easy Markdown Tutorial
3. Learn The Basics Of Markdown in 10 Minutes With This Video Tutorial
4. Full Markdown syntax

Tutorials

Just reading the article we've recommended in "General Background on Loomio" (see above) is a tutorial in itself. Using Loomio is very easy, but their help page has a lot of resources and is well worth the read.

• Loomio Help page

Videos

• Making decisions with Loomio!