Bringing the vision to life: Hylo’s new website embodies our purpose, values, and agreements
Hylo is a gift to the world from the hearts of Tibet, Aaron, Clare, Krisha, Tom, and many other co-creators who have put energy into this vision. Over the last year+, we as the core team of maintainers have worked hard to distill our purpose, values, and agreements for Hylo. Today, we are excited to share those with our community and to announce the birth of our new website!
The purpose of Hylo is to activate the full potential of purpose-driven groups to create a thriving future for all life.
A “purpose-driven” group is special because it is centered around a shared goal that goes beyond individual aspirations to focus on a broader impact. The primary goal of a purpose-driven group is to create positive change, whether that’s in a community, within specific fields such as regenerative agriculture, participatory design, and governance, or on a larger scale, aiming to regenerate the biosphere and nurture a thriving world. Purpose-driven groups prioritize collaboration over competition, and because of that are often at the forefront of finding new solutions to complex problems, like the metacrisis.
The rise of purpose-driven, collaborative groups aligns with the widespread cultural shift from top-down organizing to peer-to-peer coordination, and we see this shift as a key part of the Just Transition. This is why we have chosen to focus on elevating purpose-driven groups.
Our support for purpose-driven groups is about much more than technology; over the four years we have been stewarding Hylo, we have often been asked for guidance on community stewardship, which is a very human and organic process. No matter how well we build Hylo (and building software, too, is a messy and organic process — don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!), the most important part of community organizing is always the human hearts at the center tending to relationships and stoking the fire. No technology will ever replace human stewardship of a group, because a group is a living organism that needs care, presence, and love to thrive.
New Website!
Long overdue, we wanted to update the Hylo homepage to reflect our journey since accepting stewardship of the platform in 2020. The new site is a 100% overhaul featuring stellar design by Aaron Brodeur, Hylo’s Design Lead, with frontend development, concept, and writing by Aaron and myself, and thoughtful contributions from our whole team.
We are pleased and proud to present a website for Hylo that expresses the joy, creativity, and empowerment that is available for groups that choose Hylo. We are stoked to celebrate our partners and acknowledge specific individuals who have shaped and supported Hylo over the years. It feels good to share our vision, beliefs, and approaches that animate our work on Hylo.
My wish is that this site is an asset that supports group stewards and members in bringing their folks onto Hylo and successfully creating a group home here. We hope you enjoy it!
Hylo Values
In addition to the website, today we are sharing a new set of Hylo values. These values, and the agreements we’ve created based on them, represent a huge step forward for us in our journey towards embodying and creating prosocial technology.
To better tend the community that is the collective of Hylo members and stakeholders, we are excited to dialogue about these values that animate this work and the agreements we are introducing into this space.
Stewardship
We approach our world, our communities, our ecosystems, and our tools (such as Hylo) as shared resources that all people are invited to manage with care and responsibility. We steward the places, resources, lands and waters we belong to, for the generations yet to come.
Co-Creation
The products of our work are higher quality and more beautiful when we create them in partnership with each other. Co-creation is the means through which we find ways to give our unique gifts, be part of something greater than ourselves, and meet our need to be part of a group: seen & accepted. We all have a role to play in creating a world that works for all.
Wellbeing
We are nurturing a world where individuals, communities, ecosystems, and economies are healthy, joyful, and flourishing. To support the wellbeing of our members, Hylo is a place where we grow healthy groups for a healthy world.
Liberation
We are consciously building Hylo to support the work to repair harms, end inequity and injustice, and dismantle systems of oppression to create a world that works for all. We are committed to the liberation of all beings. “No one of us can be free until everybody is free.” — Maya Angelou
Adaptation
We commit to conscious evolution and growth in response to learning more about the needs of our communities on Hylo, what works, and what doesn’t. With every interaction, we listen, learn, and adapt to better serve our members.
Agency
We honor the sovereignty of individuals and groups over their data, their privacy, and how they choose to engage with technology. We are building appropriate technology that gives people agency to achieve their goals without getting in the way through extracting data or harvesting attention.
Which value resonates the most with you? What would you add to this list?
To learn more about our team’s commitments for each of these values, and how we hope Hylo members will join us in embodying them, please visit the website. We’ll discuss and refine the values in our open source community Building Hylo in the months to come — join us!
Hylo Agreements
Clear agreements are essential to prosocial coordination. They set important expectations so group members know where to put their energy and how to contribute to the shared goals and culture. Agreements also create a framework for what to do when things go sideways. It’s ever so much easier to navigate a conflict as a group when there are already agreements in place!
We’ve done a lot of legwork to create new Hylo Platform Agreements and a Code of Conduct that reflect our values and thoroughly express the behaviors that are encouraged on Hylo, as well as those that are not welcome. As part of rolling out the new website, Hylo members will soon be asked to consent to these agreements so we are all on the same page as a community sharing this platform. We feel proud to define a specific culture for this technology commons and we hope that it feels good for our members to join us in sharing this culture. As always, we are open to input! Here are the new Hylo Platform Agreements:
I pledge to behave on Hylo in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, and healthy community, and to support other members in feeling respected and appreciated. [wellbeing] [liberation]
I will respect differing viewpoints and experiences, and work to find common ground and shared values with other Hylo members. [co-creation] [adaptation] [liberation]
I commit to learning from every interaction. I will listen to feedback, adapt, and embrace responsibility for mistakes as opportunities for growth. [adaptation] [liberation]
I pledge to share my voice, ideas, and skills in service to my group(s) on Hylo, recognizing that working together leads to better outcomes. [co-creation] [stewardship]
If I see an opportunity to improve something on the Hylo platform or within my group, I will take action to make it better. [stewardship] [agency]
I commit to upholding the Code of Conduct & Cultural Norms, and Terms of Use, and I agree to participate in accountability processes when necessary. [stewardship] [wellbeing]
New Features for Group Stewardship: Purpose, Roles & Responsibilities, and Agreements
We’re sharing our new values and agreements for Hylo alongside the launch of new stewardship tools that allow groups on Hylo to do the same! This wave of features represent a significant portion of our Stewardship Toolkit which we’re developing in partnership with OpenTEAM.
Purpose
Having a clear shared purpose is essential to group coherence and a feeling of belonging, according to research by ProSocial World. As a platform for purpose-driven groups, it is essential for Hylo to foreground each group’s purpose to support movement towards their goals.
Group stewards can enter their clear and concise purpose statement in the Group Settings, and it will appear on the group’s About page and when new members first enter the group.
Roles and Responsibilities
This feature expands the Moderator settings by allowing groups to define their own leadership roles, which can represent responsibilities on Hylo or beyond Hylo.
Creating roles and assigning responsibilities empowers members of the group to perform specific tasks like welcoming new members or moderating discussions. Getting clear about which roles your group needs to accomplish its goals, and distributing those roles to members, allows everyone in the group to understand who is doing what and make progress together.
In addition to Custom Roles, each group comes with three default Common Roles (Manager, Moderator, and Host) that embed core system responsibilities for performing admin functions on Hylo.
Wherever folks with a role interact in the group on Hylo, their badge will appear to indicate that role to other members.
Group Agreements
Finally, group stewards now have the ability to create agreements for group members. Agreements are an important way to establish a group’s culture and norms. These might include:
- commitments you’ve made to each other
- decision-making protocols
- expectations for participation
- examples of behavior you want to encourage
- rules for unacceptable behavior along with consequences for those actions
Good agreements set the vibe for the community and help members understand how to contribute. And like a Code of Conduct, agreements can support an accountability process if a member is behaving in an unhelpful way.
Everyone who is invited or requests to join the group will be shown the agreements and asked to consent to them before they can participate.
What’s Next
Purpose and Agreements are live on production now, and Roles & Responsibilities will launch very soon. We are currently in the process of designing the next features in the Stewardship Toolkit: Proposals, and Community Moderation. To join the discussion, share input, and explore how to use these features to support your group, please join us in Building Hylo!
