Lýd - Blueprint for liquid organizations

lýð- /ˈliːð-/ from Icelandic, "people" (or related with). lýður: public, popular; lýðræði: democracy.

Lýd is not a brand new software. Lýd is an open idea, a modifiable blueprint. It describes what is needed to build a working liquid organization (liqorg). Even under weak cohesion circumstances.

If you use Lýd as guideline, please, explain to me which tools and practices you adopt and develop.

Lýd doesn't exist in a intellectual void. It stands on the shoulders of giants as Rick Falkvinge's Swarmwise, James S. Fishkin's deliberative democracy, Alvin Toffler's adhocracy, Stephen R. Shalom's parpolity, etc.

Your current organization is probably using something similar. Test what you are not using and report back. Contribute with your own experience.

Check out an introduction to liquid organizations. In this blog I will post further development and detailed information about Lýd.

Core values

These are what must guide the development of any liqorg.

• Horizontality: liqorgs are self-organized networks of peers, grassroots organizations with shared leadership and responsability. No hierarchy.
• Transparency: everything is transparent by default for members. Financial statements, minutes, etc are transparent for everyone. When personal data (like conversations) is present, it must be anonymized. Members has access to everywhere (if no legal issues arise).
• Privacy: members can make sure their identities are handled as they want, even to be anonymous always or only in public.
• Accessibility: customized interaction and experience to allow everybody to participate by their own means.
• Cooperation: "share and remix" culture encouraged. Sharing best practices and projects between organizations is the way to engage better cooperation.

Core concepts

Lýd has three core concepts as foundation. They are simple ideas distilled and combined from existing solutions.

• Nexus: groups based on shared characteristics. A workgroup, territorial unit, knowledge subject, etc.
• Flow: anything which exists inside an organization in any time span. E.g. projects, conversations, tasks, etc.
• Delegation: from liquid democracy, leadership based in trust and non-blocking decision making.

How it works?

By leveraging nexus and flow as basic framework of your organization, as social network (not as in Facebook) and best practices. Liqorgs unfold from nexus/flow definition and their interaction, as you are going to see.

Lýd is not limited to Internet but technology is going to help you to bootstrap your liqorg.

I didn't get what you meant there...

No problem. Check out Core concepts. Guidelines are explained there.

Or check the following tl;dr.

tl;dr: what is a liqorg?

A liquid organization is a decentralized and organic structure, composed by functional groups (nexus) based on members' shared characteristics and needs.

Everybody inside a liqorg can access any nexus' flows (conversation, projects, tasks, polls, etc). A liqorg can go full public (even conversations, with masked names) or on demand (to publish a conversation which turned into rumors on media).

Nexus are created automatically by members features (city, language, you say it) and manually on demand (workgroups, committees). Nexus can have hierarchy. Nexus are accessible by mail (as mailing lists) or web (as forums).

Nexus' purpose is action. Quick consensus is needed to avoid procrastination, so voting is needed to achieve it. In nexus there can be lýders (leaders, just a pun), holding N delegations each one.

How do lýders come to existence? Simple. At any time, nexus' members can delegate on somebody else (for whatever reason) to lead the way. There can be several lýders in a nexus, as they represent other members. We assume in workgroups that lýder with most delegations is the de facto coordinator.

Delegating members don't lose their vote or voice. Decisions inside a nexus are reported to members, so they can block or vote against any lýder's decision. Any decision not reported is not valid. Decision deadlines must be set up and used properly or members can revoke any bad decision.

Flows can be shared between nexus (no more crossposting and split conversations) by OP decision or nexus hierarchy (configurable).

Flows can be forked or merged at any point. This is used to handle off-topic or duplicate conversations. Flow's relations are available to members.

Bonus track: does Lýd compete with Swarmwise?

No, it doesn't! They are complementary although they focus on different aspects. Lýd is more an "operating system" for internal communication and decision making. Swarmwise deals with social dynamics. I totally recommend to read Swarmwise to learn more about it.