Maintaining Alignment and Rigor As Metagov Grows
An overview of the Research and Community "pillars" of Metagov, and some forthcoming changes and new programming in support of both.
Hello Metagov Community!
In case we haven’t met, my name is Val and I am currently the Community Lead at Metagov. In this post, I will be giving you an overview of the Research and Community pillars of Metagov. My goal is to promote greater understanding of how these two distinct but interrelated aspects of our organization work as well as introduce some forthcoming changes and new programming which, we hope, will serve as infrastructure supportive of both pillars.
Metagov was started in 2019 as a working group of academic researchers aiming to “describe, support, and expand the right to self-governance in the digital world.” Today, we have over 1500 members in our Slack, ~1000 subscribers to our newsletter and our Luma events, and anywhere from 10-50 people showing up to our various digital events and joining us at conferences around the world.
The Metagov community is growing! And because of that, a group of Metagov community stewards—including Metagov internal staff (i.e. our Executive Director, operations team, project managers), the research directors, and members of our board—have been having discussions about how to maintain alignment around our mission and vision (see the About Page on our website) as we continue to attract incredible researchers and practitioners from all around the world.
How can we make Metagov a more mutually supportive place for both the research directors (and projects they work on) and the greater Metagov community (and projects they work on)?
About Metagov’s Research and Community Pillars
On our monthly orientation calls, we describe Metagov as having three “pillars”: research, community, and operations. In this blog I will describe research and community the pillars.
The research pillar is centered around the (mostly) academic-affiliated research directors who are working on projects within their specific discipline. See our People page to get to know our research directors and the Projects page to learn about our projects. Projects have components which are open to the public for contribution and feedback, and every so often specific opportunities for participation arise–i.e. code review, play testing, requests for proposals, requests for feedback, etc.–which bridge the research and community pillars. One of our current goals is to clarify and help make these research opportunities more visible and accessible for new community members.
At the same time, the community is filled with researchers and practitioners all around the world who have their own projects, and / or who are looking to learn from our research outputs. So, simultaneously, we are also trying to figure out how Metagov’s research and projects could be made more useful for the greater community.
The results of these discussions have led us to design some forthcoming changes to our online community environments–namely, the Slack workspace and our events calendar–as well as kick off a new series of Community Calls, which will involve peer-learning and zine-making around a Metagov 101 Syllabus. We are hoping that these changes can help everyone navigate Metagov more easily and take advantage of all that this community has to offer.
Overview of the Metagov Slack Workspace
The Metagov Slack workspace is a very vibrant yet sometimes overwhelming place. We hope this guide—along with some forthcoming changes—can help make it more manageable for everyone. We have categorized the active Slack channels into four categories: Core Channels, Project Channels, Thematic Channels, and Community-Related Channels.
A few channels are going to be renamed, many channel descriptions will be specified and refined, and some channels will be archived. We will be making the following changes over the next week. We hope to give everyone greater clarity about what channel is best suited for what type of message.
Core Channels
Take a moment to make sure you are in all of the below channels as some of these channels could have been made “Default” after you had already joined the workspace, and therefore you could be missing out on core messages and information. Presented in order of importance:
#general will become #community
Description: This is the channel where Metagov community stewards will share information about community programming including orientation calls, community calls, and the community navigator program. This channel is also where the community can continue discussions on topics related to the community calls. Use this channel to share interesting and relevant articles and questions for discussion but *Please do not post links with no context in this channel. Be sure to elaborate on why the article or question is relevant to the group. The goal for this channel is to help us open dialogue, build connections, forge relationships across sectors, disciplines, and backgrounds within the broader Metagov community.
Justification: #general is too general. We want to be clear that sharing our research, work, and ideas with each other and learning together is why we are here as part of this community.
The current #community will be archived (because #general has become #community)
#metagov-announcements will become #research-updates
Description: This is where the Metagov staff team, research directors, and contributors to official Metagov projects will share updates on research projects and ways for people to get involved in them. Discussions around these topics are allowed, so feel free to reply to the posts; however, this will be a channel mostly for discussions around official Metagov research projects.
Justification: We realize that it’s hard for the Metagov community to see into the “official” Metagov projects - to know what they are, who is involved, what is being done, what their goals are, how someone might contribute, etc. The Metagov website is the official archive of projects. However, to make the Metagov research projects more transparent and accessible to community members, we are going to start posting project updates (monthly-ish) in the #research-updates channel.
#calendar-and-events - no change
Description: This is where anyone can post about upcoming virtual and/or IRL events in the Metagov ecosystem! (If there is a button to “Register”, it is an event and belongs in this channel!) Please indicate if you will be attending as there might be others attending as well. If a critical mass of Metagovernors are going to be together and you’d like to use the Metagov Slack for coordinating amongst the group, please either use an existing specific event channel (i.e. #irl-ethdenver-2025) or create a new channel for the event and add others in attendance. See below or in #start-here for a list of the region-specific channels (and if you want to start a new region-specific channel, post in #opportunities-and-collaborations to see who else is in your area).
#irl-events - will return to being #irl-dweb
Description: This will be a channel for coordination around the Dweb Camp events.
#opportunities-and-collaborations - no change
Description: This is a channel for cross-posting opportunities from other organizations you are part of (i.e. job opportunities, fellowships, grants, research participation, etc). If you have a project you’re working on, and there are opportunities for others to get involved, you can share about it here as well!
#boost - will be archived in favor of #opportunities-and-collaborations
#metagov-seminar - no change
Description: This channel is where we coordinate our weekly Metagov seminars. The Metagov Seminar is a weekly research seminar inviting individuals working in online governance to present their work to the Metagov community. Seminars are planned through proposals here in the #metagov-seminar channel. Read this guide to learn about Proposing & Hosting a Metagov Seminar.
#intros - no change
Description: This channel is the primary meet-and-greet lobby of the Metagov Slack. New community members can post their introductions, and existing members can (and should!) reply to welcome new people and make connections. Existing community members *Please feel encouraged to reply to someone’s introduction with a warm welcome, if you’re based in the same place, and/or if you share any interests!
#random - no change
Description: This channel is for fun, random stuff! *This is the only channel where posting a link with no context is fine - but also, please provide some more context and info!
#start-here - no change
Channel description: All of this information will be made available in #start-here channel.
Project Channels
These channels are not “default” channels, so to find them, search for them using the Slack search bar. While all of the following research project channels are open to the public, please be mindful that research teams are using these channels to coordinate, so do not post anything unrelated to the specific research project.
You can always find these channels in the overview tab of #research-updates channel (previously #metagov-announcements).
#deliberative-tools-and-interop - This is the main channel for the Interoperable Deliberative Tools Project, which has grown tremendously over the past few months with many smaller sub-projects branching off from it. The project, which is slowly growing into what we’re calling a broader “research area,” is focused on building an open-source deliberative tool ecosystem that supports pro-democratic values and is resistant to corporate capture. See https://metagov.org/projects/interop, and these additional channels for projects and working groups within:
#data-puddle - this team is focused on building an ontology that many open source tools can translate their data to, to allow for easy interoperability.
#ai-facilitation - this group is working to make collective intelligence, self-rule, and human cooperation at scale both possible and commonplace by creating a shared standard for human and machine facilitation.
#participation-ethics - this group is working to move away from consenting to data mining and towards data autonomy for internet participants.
#dri-in-polis - a targeted collaboration focused on adding the Deliberative Reason Index metric to Polis.
#polislike - for people interested in polis and polis-inspired tools, exploring intersections of related facilitation processes, user interfaces and algorithms
#theory-practice - This channel is dedicated to building the bridge between political theorists and tool builders run by Joseph Gubbels. See more: https://metagov.org/projects/theory-practice.
#koi-pond - A collaboration between Block.Science, RMIT, Metagov, and many others are oriented around how to build knowledge infrastructure that supports community sovereignty and control over their resources while maintaining global interoperability. https://metagov.org/projects/koi-pond
#koi-tank - Where you can interact with the Metagov Database via chat. A great big experiment!
#metagov-journal - A project focused on finding a location where Metagov can start publishing all the stunning interdisciplinary work that is done in the community to advance the theory and practice of self-governance in the digital age, drawing on diverse perspectives, disciplines, and methodologies.
#public-ai - the Public AI project has a separate Slack workspace that is connected to the Metagov Slack through the #public-ai channel. Apply to join the project here: https://metagov.org/projects/public-ai.
#dao-star - this channel is for the group serving as the standards body of the DAO ecosystem and this channel (like the #public-ai channel) is also bridge to the separate DAOStar workspace. Apply to join the project at https://metagov.org/projects/daostar).
#calm-tech-institute - this is a standards body for aligning attention with technology led by RD Amber Case.
#policykit-design - this is a channel for the team working on the PolicyKit project, an engine for building governance in online communities
#governable-spacemakers-updates - this is the channel for the ongoing governable spacemakers fellowship, which you can learn more about in this Substack post.
The Grant Innovation Lab project does not have a dedicated Slack channel but instead coordinates on Telegram. GIL conducts research to help advance granting and impact measurement in web 3 and is run by RD Eugene Levanthal.
Explore all the projects on the website for a better view of what’s happening in the Metagov ecosystem.
If you want to get involved in a specific research project, we recommend doing thorough background research on your own first in order to get up-to-date on the project history and current work. Read through the Slack channel history and any published articles/materials, and watch any past presentations (search the Metagov seminar archive). Then, you may get involved through thoughtful responses to ongoing threaded discussions in the specific Slack channels. An example of a contribution is sharing direct experiences or case studies about where you’re seeing the research happen in the real world (“reporting in”), asking thoughtful follow-on questions, and/or asking the team if specific offerings such as certain introductions, feedback, or other contributions might be helpful.
Thematic Channels
#ostromnauts - This is a channel dedicated to research on commons and the practices of common-ing, inspired by economist Elinor Ostrom.
#attentionecon - A research project exploring the intersection of attention economies and governance experience design.
#bioregion-isnt-quite-the-right-name - A budding channel of folks interested in harmonizing human lifeways with ecological intelligence at a bioregional scale.
Community-Related Channels
These channels are for intra-Metagov community-building initiatives.
#peer-review - This is a channel for discussions about what peer review looks like for Metagov, and share WIP (works-in-progress) for informal peer review
#jungle-gym - This is a fun experimental channel where Metagov community members can complete community-building tasks using the Chores bot app brought to us by Community Member Daniel Kronovet!
#metagov-game-nights - This is a fun experimental channel for proposals for coordinating game nights within the community.
Location-based channels
#local-sf-bay
#meetup-nyc
#local-la-socal
#london-uk
#local-toronto
#local-dc
#asia-pacific
Migration from Google Calendar to Luma
Another change you might have already noticed is our migration from Google Calendar to Luma. We like Luma because it enables our community members to register for single events and add them individually to their calendars. Therefore, over the coming weeks, we will complete the migration, and Luma will become the single source of truth for all events at Metagov. Community members who want to subscribe to Metagov’s entire calendar can do so on our Metagov Luma calendar profile. We already have 1,164 subscribers to our Luma events, which demonstrates the utility of Luma as a calendar tool for the Metagov community.
New Series of Community Calls: Metagov 101
One of the key pieces of the Metagov Community infrastructure is our Community Calls. Community Calls are informal, discussion-based, peer-learning, or tool-play-test calls that can be proposed, hosted, and facilitated by any member of the Metagov community. See our recently published Guide for Proposing & Hosting a Metagov Community Call.
The format may vary according to whether the call is a group discussion or a tool play-test; however, a standard format might entail a ~10-minute introduction to the topic by the host, followed by the group discussion (based on 3-5 questions prepared by the host) or play-test experience.
Note: Community Calls are distinct from the Metagov Seminar, which is our weekly research presentation that is for sharing completed projects with lessons learned.
With the goal of using peer-learning as a way of onboarding community members and creating a stronger community dynamic, the Metagov Community stewards are preparing to launch a new series of Community Calls called Metagov 101. See the Luma page for a sneak peak of the syllabus.
Metagov 101 will be based on a syllabus currently being developed by the Metagov community stewards which draws from the work of Metagov’s research directors as well as RD Michael Zargham’s syllabus titled, “This Is Not a Test.”
Soon, we will be inviting members of the larger community to come together to read and discuss the syllabus while also contributing to the creation of a collective Metagov 101 Zine. The zine will include high-level summaries of some of the key ideas presented in the research alongside fun and consumable visualizations (inc. comics, diagrams, etc.) which can help the broader public to understand these sometimes complex topics more easily.
If you’re interested in joining these calls, be sure to register on Luma and stay tuned for the final event kickoff date.
Thank you all for being part of this community! If you have any feedback, comments, or questions, feel free to reply to this post, message in the #community channel on Slack, or reach out to me directly on Slack (@Val Elefante). I look forward to continuing to grow and maintain our eclectic community of digital governance nerds <3