To understand where ProjectVRM fits in the world, and how it works, I like the Competing Values Framework by Kim S. Cameron, Robert E. Quinn, Jeff DeGraff and Anjan Thakor:
While there are many VRM developers operating in the lower half of that graphic, what ProjectVRM does is in the upper half of that diagram. We have a collaborative clan of flexible and creative individuals in an adhocracy, working together on long-term transformational change.
Pretty much everything that gets criticized about our efforts falls in the lower half. That’s because we have no hierarchy and don’t work to control what anybody does. And progress on the whole has been slow. (Though there are exceptions, such as Uber, Lyft and Thumbtack.)
That graphic is just one of many helpful ones in David Ronfeldt‘s Organizational forms compared, which he’s been updating since first publishing it in May 2009. One reason it is helpful is that the hierarchical short-term stuff is obvious and easily understood, while collaborative long term stuff is much harder to grok. It’s like the difference between weather and geology. Which makes me think that graphic should be flipped vertically: slow stuff on the bottom, fast stuff at the top. That’s what the Long Now foundation does with this graphic, which I’ve always loved:
The change we want most is down in the culture, governance and infrastructure layers, even though our focus is on commerce. This also explains why we run into trouble when we play with fashion. The last thing we want is for VRM to be cool. (This is also a lesson I learned and re-learned over two decades of watching Linux, free software and open source for Linux Journal.)
The following graphics are all from David Ronfeldt’s scholastic gatherings. Each in its own way helps explain how our community works — and how it doesn’t. First, from one of Bob Jessop‘s many papers on governance and metagovernance (this one from 2003):
That’s our column on the right.
Then there is this, from Federico Iannacci and Eve Mitleton–Kelly’sBeyond markets and firms: the emergence of Open Source networks (First Monday, May, 2005):
That’s us in the middle. We’re a stable and decentralized heterarchy that coordinates by mutual adjustment.
Then there is this from Karen Stephenson‘s Neither Hierarchy nor Network: An Argument for Heterarchy (in Ross Dawson’s Trends in the Living Networks, April, 2009):
Again that’s us on the right.
Something I like about those last two is the respect they give toheterarchy, which has been a focus for many years of Adriana Lukas, another VRM stalwart who has been with the project since before the beginning. Here’s her TED talk on the subject.
Finally, there is this graphic, from Clay Spinuzzi‘s Toward a Typology of Activities (2013):
In Spinuzzi’s Losing by Expanding: Corralling the Runaway Object, an object is identified as “a material or problem that is cyclically transformed by collective activity.” With our tacit, inductive and flexible approach, this also characterizes the way our community works.
One can see all this at work on the ProjectVRM mailing list, an active collection of 615 subscribers. We also meet in person twice a year at IIW, starting one day in advance of the event, with “VRM Day.” This adds up to a total of at least eight days per year of in-person collaboration time.
Most of the rest of the VRM community meets locally, or through the organizing work of organizations such as Respect Network (U.S. based, but spanning the world) and Fifth Quadrant (Sydney based, and focused on Australia and New Zealand).
If things go the way I expect, Mozilla will also emerge as a center of VRM interest and development as well. (For example, I expect VRM to be a topic in October at MozFestival in the U.K.)