I do agree with Brendan that your case sounds like you’ve distributed the organizer role, not removed it. This is the strategy both Melting Gold and Overthrow The Organizer Day are pointing at.
In the extreme, “nobody is an organizer” and “everybody is an organizer” are just different descriptions of the same state of affairs.
But the scenarios described in “Melting Gold” and “Overthrow the Organizer Day” differ from the “constant rotation” approach by their lateness and exceptionality respectively. In “Melting Gold”, the organizer toils in solitude for quite some time before trying to find a replacement, but by then it’s too late because they’ve constructed a role shaped exactly like themself, and training someone else to fill that exact same role takes 20 hours of work. In “Overthrow the Organizer Day” it’s less urgent, but things go back to “normal” (i.e. the one organizer doing everything) once the “Day” is over, and the others are only there as backups for later.
It sounds like you’ve advanced much further beyond that in the last six months (which is great). At the point where a group has 14 “organizers” I would find the term rather meaningless, since becoming the 15th doesn’t have quite the ontological gravity as becoming the 2nd. But maybe that’s just personal preference. Here’s a concrete test: If someone is new to the group (i.e. they’ve been to only one or two meetups), is there a frictionless path for them to organize the very next meetup? Or by the time they realize this was an option, will they already have carved out a niche in the group as a “passive consumer”?
Here’s a concrete test: If someone is new to the group (i.e. they’ve been to only one or two meetups), is there a frictionless path for them to organize the very next meetup? Or by the time they realize this was an option, will they already have carved out a niche in the group as a “passive consumer”?
I don’t think the path to organizing the very next meetup is frictionless, no. My guess at the fast path would be something like:
They attend one of the meetups in a public space, and get invited to the next. (The invitation was already open, this doesn’t change much.)
They attend a second meetup, and afterwards get the Attendee role in the discord and possibly invited to a couple of the very slightly filtered events e.g. the ones at people’s apartments.
Towards the end of the month, a bunch of us are chatting about ideas for next month’s meetups and what days are open. If they volunteer to run something, cool, they announce it and they’re on the schedule for next month. Lets say early next month.
They run the meetup, and afterwards get the Organizer role in the discord where there’s more active talk about coordinating for big events or balancing the mix of meetups.
There’s a slower version where someone hangs around attending a bit longer (say, two or three months) before getting proffered organizer opportunities. That can look like me messaging them and saying ‘hey, I thought the idea for a discussion topic you mentioned sounded good- want to run something about that on the 14th?’ or can look like another organizer saying ‘hey you mentioned you’re further south than the rest of us- if you know any good venues, want to run the Wednesday board game meetup down near your part of town?’ or a few other variations. The general strategy is to gently poke people to be more active.
At the point where a group has 14 “organizers” I would find the term rather meaningless, since becoming the 15th doesn’t have quite the ontological gravity as becoming the 2nd.
I take the open source view of things; I want lots of contributors all with the repository on their local machine, so that if something happens to the other maintainers, any of those contributors could in theory fork it and keep the thing going. Or to use another community style as an example, the church I grew up in generally thought that each member of the congregation should, if necessary, be able to rebuild the faith with just themselves and a bible. If I can, I want to make Boston Rationality a community where every single person who has attended for more than a year has run an event in the last year. Fifteen organizers is only a good start!
In the extreme, “nobody is an organizer” and “everybody is an organizer” are just different descriptions of the same state of affairs.
But the scenarios described in “Melting Gold” and “Overthrow the Organizer Day” differ from the “constant rotation” approach by their lateness and exceptionality respectively. In “Melting Gold”, the organizer toils in solitude for quite some time before trying to find a replacement, but by then it’s too late because they’ve constructed a role shaped exactly like themself, and training someone else to fill that exact same role takes 20 hours of work. In “Overthrow the Organizer Day” it’s less urgent, but things go back to “normal” (i.e. the one organizer doing everything) once the “Day” is over, and the others are only there as backups for later.
It sounds like you’ve advanced much further beyond that in the last six months (which is great). At the point where a group has 14 “organizers” I would find the term rather meaningless, since becoming the 15th doesn’t have quite the ontological gravity as becoming the 2nd. But maybe that’s just personal preference. Here’s a concrete test: If someone is new to the group (i.e. they’ve been to only one or two meetups), is there a frictionless path for them to organize the very next meetup? Or by the time they realize this was an option, will they already have carved out a niche in the group as a “passive consumer”?
I don’t think the path to organizing the very next meetup is frictionless, no. My guess at the fast path would be something like:
They attend one of the meetups in a public space, and get invited to the next. (The invitation was already open, this doesn’t change much.)
They attend a second meetup, and afterwards get the Attendee role in the discord and possibly invited to a couple of the very slightly filtered events e.g. the ones at people’s apartments.
Towards the end of the month, a bunch of us are chatting about ideas for next month’s meetups and what days are open. If they volunteer to run something, cool, they announce it and they’re on the schedule for next month. Lets say early next month.
They run the meetup, and afterwards get the Organizer role in the discord where there’s more active talk about coordinating for big events or balancing the mix of meetups.
There’s a slower version where someone hangs around attending a bit longer (say, two or three months) before getting proffered organizer opportunities. That can look like me messaging them and saying ‘hey, I thought the idea for a discussion topic you mentioned sounded good- want to run something about that on the 14th?’ or can look like another organizer saying ‘hey you mentioned you’re further south than the rest of us- if you know any good venues, want to run the Wednesday board game meetup down near your part of town?’ or a few other variations. The general strategy is to gently poke people to be more active.
I take the open source view of things; I want lots of contributors all with the repository on their local machine, so that if something happens to the other maintainers, any of those contributors could in theory fork it and keep the thing going. Or to use another community style as an example, the church I grew up in generally thought that each member of the congregation should, if necessary, be able to rebuild the faith with just themselves and a bible. If I can, I want to make Boston Rationality a community where every single person who has attended for more than a year has run an event in the last year. Fifteen organizers is only a good start!