Designing a community around ethics
Last Thursday we held our first community design workshop at Hyper Island in Manchester, England.
We had a fantastic group of people in the room; representing a broad spectrum of skills and cultures across digital, education and academia. People even dialed in from Mumbai, India and even Sydney, Australia (it was 4:30am there!)
The kernel of our strategy at Ethics Kit is encouraging and empowering communication and collaboration across disciplines related to the design and development of technology. In other words; Let’s get a diverse bunch of people with a common interest in tech ethics and get them to start talking.
Let’s get a diverse bunch of people with a common interest in tech ethics and get them to start talking
The format for the workshop loosely followed Wenger-Trayner’s theory of Communities of Practice, with inspiration from the brilliant Emily Webber’s book: Building Successful Communities of Practice.
The workshop
I started with a bit of background about what Ethics Kit was, while framing the intended scope of it within the sphere of the overall problem.
Ethics Kit exists to empower teams and individuals to overcome the challenges of establishing an ethical practice in their work, so they can focus on building the right thing in the right way
Our desired outcome from the workshop was to discuss and agree on the following:
- What would our community principles be? How should we behave and how would we like to be treated?
- What are our goals as a community? What do we want to get out of it and how could it benefit us?
Community principles
We started by asking the question, “what would be the worst thing that could happen in the community?”
This led to a broad range of negative scenarios, such as:
- The community lacking a clear vision or focus, with conversations failing to translate into action
- Inability for members to resolve conflicts or differences of opinion amicably and respectfully
- Being non-inclusive in differences in background, experience or expertise
- The community itself not being representative of society
- Spreading malpractice with negative consequences
Then we flipped it, posing the question; “how might we prevent these scenarios from occurring?” Our initial ideas included:
- Creation of a “liquid” culture that could adapt as the community grows; fostering reflection, tolerance and understanding, healthy debate and mindfulness
- Be transparent in our actions and share our content and process
- Creation of a “living Ethics Kit” with tools constantly being developed, fed back on and improved, or re-appropriated for new purposes
- Creation of a clear vision statement and manifesto, alongside a clear set of policies and community guidelines to be reviewed periodically
Community goals
With the goals, we asked the group “What do you want to get out of being a member of this community?”
Generally, it feels like the goals come out into the following categories:
- Support when making difficult product decisions about what to do and how to do it
- Access to tools and methods that would allow teams to adapt ethics in a way that makes sense to them and at their own pace
- Localized information such as policy or law in different countries and differences in cultures
- Regular in-person meetups and events
- Positively influence and change how we develop products and services
Personal Reflections
Overall the outcome of the workshop was very positive. Despite reshuffling the order a little to accommodate for time, we got some really great ideas out of it.
I would consider myself a novice at facilitation (but it’s a skill I want to develop). I’ve also never organised an event like this before. So with that in mind, here’s a bunch of schoolboy errors that I will improve on for next time:
- Give people enough time to get out of work and to the venue (don’t start at 17:00!)
- If people are dialing in ensure that the audio is working both ways before you begin and that you have enough battery in your device to follow the conversation around the room without interruption
- If people are working in groups, stand in a circle. Everyone can see everyone else, particularly remote participants
- If you’re asking people to join around dinner time, provide some snacks and drinks for them to refuel
Super obvious with hindsight!
Those in attendance (who I’ve got consent from to mention so far…)
- Ajit Pillai from Xtopia
- Aparna Ashok from Xtopia
- Annette Joseph from Diverse and Equal
- Jack Fletcher from Co-op Digital
- Radina Doneva from Common Good
- Tash Willcocks from Hyper Island
- Urska Ticar from Paper.studio
What’s next?
It was humbling that people gave up their time in the evening to attend (at quite short notice too). Also a huge thank you to everyone who attended and to Hyper Island for the use of their space and their equipment.
We’re going to synthesize what we uncovered and translate that into community policies.
We’re also going to move the conversation online, while organizing more local face to face meets. We hope that others might do something similar and right now it feels like the online / offline balance feels like a nice way to establish deeper relationships while supporting others who want to do the same thing globally.
If this sounds interesting to you and you want to start your own crew within Ethics Kit, we’d love to have you! Register at ethicskit.org and say hi! 👋
We’re looking forward to meeting you!
