Assembly Sprint

What is an Assembly Sprint?

Assembly Sprints are for organizing the most important discussions and decisions for this season into one place for us to have our say and move the network forwards. Your voice matters, and we invite you to bring your gifts to bear on our collective potential, unfolding the value of our collective, its resources (even its agreements, protocols, tools and shared understandings) and its current and future relationships.

The Assembly will typically involve a number of Loomio discussions and some community gatherings (sychronous meetings over video calls and in person when possible). Imagine months of Enspiralling concentrated into two weeks to help a bunch of conversations and proposals move forward.

Assembly Sprints will concentrate discussions and decisions—those that may have wide ramifications for many Enspiral stakeholders—over a period of two weeks, scheduled well in advance, for the purposes of inclusion, accessibility, transparency, and better synergising collective attention & efforts.

[This guide is a work in progress (WIP), see the most recent Assembly thread for more specifics]

Parameters and Process (Semi-outdated)

While the below is not exactly the most current thinking on the process, the parameters are basically accurate.

Process

First, [2-3 months in advance], we would invite public submissions of concrete and/or specific proposals or topics where we imagine we’ll need to make a decision in the next year (e.g., “Roles”/ “Network design for types of stakeholder” will likely be proposed as an October topic, even though the intention is no significant decision would be initiated until at least the following Assembly Sprint).

Then, [5-9 weeks in advance], the Assembly Working Group would use advice process to elect the decision-areas that are on the agenda—to be moved towards action during the time-boxed, asynchronous Assembly Sprint. [At least a month in advance], the Assembly Working Group will notify the network of what’s on the agenda for the particular dates, and will make an invitation for people to commit/ sign up to participate in the two week endeavour.

Parameters

Contributors and Members will be able to participate.

Contributors get blocking power if they commit to the two-week sprint
Members have blocking power in any decisions in the Assembly Sprint whether or not they “opt-in”

These were agreed to at a number of stages, starting in this thread.

More on Why/ Background

Decision-making 'assembly' sprints—if run regularly, a few times a year—could increase accessibility, supporting more people to be able to participate in shaping the network as their intrinsic motivation calls them to. By picking a two-week period several months in advance, and choosing which decision-areas are on the agenda, we can grow everyone's capacity to voice their values and share their wisdom on the issues that matter most to them.

Hopefully, this will result in conditions of more coherence, transparency, and accountability in the process of decision-making that affects our Agreements, and will give each of us an opportunity to indicate the commitment that feels right for a given set of significant (or substantial) decisions in a given season. @joshuavial outlined this approach in his document, 4 Worlds (link → relevant header), which you may have seen posted after the Members' meeting before last.