Govrn White Paper Announcement!
Today, we are releasing the collaborative and open-source process we’ll be using for our Governance White Paper!! We know that it might be odd to announce when you “start” writing the white paper and not when it finishes, but that’s because we’re writing ours differently.
Tl;dr — We believe that the best ideas can come from anywhere and thrive when in the open.
We believe that the best ideas don’t just come from Govrn’s team but from the Govrn Community. So we’ve decided to open source the writing of the white paper. This means not just writing in public, but also allowing anyone to contribute and shape the vision.
- To follow along with the project, sign up here.
Govrn is building collaborative politics, so we think Govrn should be collaborative too.
We use a different process to write our white paper, a “write in public” and collaborative process. Why? Because we know that we don’t have all the solutions, and we’d be surprised if all the best ideas came just from us. We believe in order to build a platform for Open Source Governance and Politics, we need to design the platform in that same way. We want this to be an open process where anyone and everyone is encouraged to contribute and see what’s going on. If we believe politics needs to be more transparent, then so do we.
We will collaboratively edit and publish a section every two weeks.
We have built out a rough outline of the sections of the White Paper. Note that we fully expect that the order will change, but the section titles should give you a good understanding of the topics we intend to cover. Our goal is to operate on a two-week cycle, going section by section until we’ve finished. The planned order of activities will look as follows:
Day 1:
- Writing Topic Announcement
- Twitter discussion
- Themes and statements to be submitted with Pol.is
Day 3–7:
- The white paper section is open for comments and edits!
Day 8:
- All edits made by Noon PST will be considered for the first paper update.
Day 10:
- Community call at 11 AM PST to discuss learnings and community input.
- The updated version of the section will be published on substack!
Note: This is a ten-day schedule out of fourteens in a two week period — which means MAKE SURE TO ENJOY YOUR WEEKENDS!!
We recognize that trying to run this in a decentralized open-source environment increases the complexity, but we believe it’s the best way to do it. At the end of the day, this is an experiment and if it feels like the experiment isn’t working, we’ll try something else.
G̶o̶v̶r̶n̶’̶s̶ The Community’s Vision
If it’s not clear by now, Govrn has never been about the vision of the specific Govrn team. It’s about our vision, as in the community’s vision. We’ve tried a democracy that was designed by a small private group sitting in a backroom, only publishing to the public once it was finished. It’s time that we realize it’s not just about what you build, but how you choose to build it.
And for us, we choose to build it with you. We know that the only way we succeed at Govrn is when the community succeeds. This is what it means to be Positive Sum to our core.
Relevant Links / Getting Involved
To stay up to date on the process and see the paper as it grows, subscribe here on Substack and follow @GovrnHQ on Twitter! To learn more about Govrn, check out our website.
Updates and Announcements
To contribute:
- ✍️ Request to join the Govrn White Paper Writing Community — fill out this form to receive google doc editing access (this would be for access beyond just commenting)
- 🌎 Check out the Govrn White Paper Hub
- 📝 Link to each editable Google doc — comment only (coming soon)
- 🗳 Pol.is — anonymous tool for analyzing and adding new themes to a discussion (coming soon)
