INVITATION TO JOIN the Website Development and Maintenance Circle

[Francois Knuchel]

The Working Circle of Sociocracy UK has been working hard on developing Sociocracy UK.  This includes incorporating Sociocracy UK as a formal body with sociocratic articles of association, forming a Top Circle (or Board) with external specialist representation as well as representation from all corners of the UK, and establishing various circles to implement the aims of Sociocracy UK.  So far we have identified 5 main specialist circles to develop: 

1. Website Development and Maintenance,
2. Promotional Activities (organising meetups, demos, simulations etc),
3. Membership Care, Services and Benefits
4. Legal, Admin and Book-keeping Support, and
5. PR, Advocacy and Promotion, including first response to prospects.

 

On 20 August we created the first of these circles, the most urgent one, namely the Website Development and Maintenance Circle, and I was elected to lead this circle.  This circle needs to work on a number of things:

• Development of a PR information web-site (for the purposes of fundraising, recruiting board members, and general online promotion of sociocracy)
• Maintenance of the membership website, the Ning website, encouraging more contributions (blogs, forums etc) from members
• Development and implementation of online presence and marketing strategy through web-site and other online resources, esp. social media.
• Development of online resources for people to learn more about sociocracy, compilation and classification of video, photo and text resources
• Longer term replacement of Ning interactive membership web-site with something better, more flexible on a different platform.

 

This is not exhaustive, but represents a gist of the kinds of things that are required.  Indeed the first task is to form this Website Development and Maintenance Circle  - at the moment the circle consists of one, myself, plus a few people who have already expressed an interest in participating or helping.  Hence I would like to invite everyone who may be interested in joining or supporting this circle in one way or another to do so.

 

The Circle itself will work on developing a strategy for the above and work on implementing the plan, either directly or through delegation.  Currently there are few resources for this, hence the importance and urgency in getting the first item, a PR information web-site, up and running (which may then for instance assist others in fund-raising etc.).  This means that any contribution you may make in terms of time (e.g. circle meeting time, specific web-development time, blogging time etc.) would be purely on a voluntary basis, without any form of remuneration, other than the chance to learn and apply sociocracy in practice.  This will naturally restrict what we can and cannot do, and how quickly we can operate. 

 

We will run our circle sociocratically.  This includes having teleconference (probably skype) meetings, probably once a month or two-months, using the sociocratic approach, so for those contributing with less experience of sociocracy, this would be an opportunity to actually experience and learn sociocracy in action.  In other words in exchange for your time and skills in developing our website resources you will have the opportunity to learn sociocracy applied in practice. 

 

If you would like to be part of the Website Development and Maintenance Circle  and contribute to it, then I’d like to invite you warmly to do so – please just let me know you are interested.  I am looking for people with website/IT technical expertise, as well as people with ideas, graphic skills, multi-media abilities, research skills, social media expertise and simply people who want to be creative or write and create an online dialogue with other members (blogs, forums, other forms of online interaction).  Even if you are only interested in just helping a little on the side without involvement in the circle planning (e.g. we could form a blogging group), then I’m interested in hearing from you too.

 

This will be quite a cross-disciplinary endeavour, so please consider joining whatever your background.  We will organise ourselves and work sociocratically, so it is an opportunity to apply sociocracy in practice.

 

If you are vaguely interested or simply want to know more, please send me an email telling me a very little about yourself, and in particular what areas you are interested in or would be able to contribute.  I shall shortly create an online forum of some sort where we (those interested) can communicate with each other, ask more questions etc.  Alternatively you may want to contact me on 020 8133 5211.  I look forward to hearing from you. You are warmly invited and very welcome.

 

Francois Knuchel

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