In continuation of yesterdays post Public decisions, a small further thought: One party, two parties, more parties? Political systems emerge around parties of common interests. We are used to a multiparty system with more or less stable parties organized around a certain value-system. Parties give structure and continuity independently of the leading figures, but they tend as well to decouple the voter from the executed power. More parties seem to mean more democracy, but on the bottom line it depends more on the structures behind the curtain, because even with the flaws of the bipartisan system and the concentration of the power to one winner in a seemingly unfair manner, the system has means of correction and the underlying votes of the people count.

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The theory of democracy is the separation of powers: Executive, Legislative and Juridical. Coarse definition, room for variation in the detail. A worldwide established mechanism to organize a democratic system are elections, which legitimate some people to work in one of the separated fields for a certain time with a certain scope.

How the elections are organized and under which circumstances the appointment follows varies by entity, but a common ground is that the parties which are participating are following the systematic rules and accepting the outcome of the elections. In our European context we don’t understand how the popular vote can be bend that far that a candidate with more votes can be losing the election, but taking into consideration the skewness of elections in other countries, the representative democracy is showing some weaknesses everywhere. Who is eligible to vote, who is voting, who is votable? At the end the whole legal framework can be adapted to meet the needs of the people.

Important is only that everyone can participate in some form in the decision making process.

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Environments are changing continuously, sometimes steadily, sometimes disruptively, with smaller leaps and bigger leaps. My personal environment is transitioning in a new normal mode: Change all around with great opportunities to study and tinker around. Some people are forced to change with all the consequences to mental strain, I still enjoy it. But through all the input that is coming along, I see the shortlivedness of such thoughts and with beginning to write I want to overcome the fading away of this inputs.

So first things first: Podcasts are currently my main source of inspiration and two episodes of Chase Jarvis podcast gave the kicker to begin: 252-The art of done and 255-Seth Godin. Seth Godins Akimbo-Podcast is furthermore a weekly fixed point to better understand the mechanics of our society.

Given above introduction this post is a first step to sort out the thoughts turning around in my head.

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New location, some little problems but an overall interesting and inspiring program. Very positive aspect: A single conference language.

Assuming that details or video clips are available, I won’t sum up anything but just give some very specific impressions noteworthy in my opinion. The shift in focus from just FOSS to more socio-economic aspects is very refreshing and i laid my focus on these talks as well:

Danese Coopers keynote about the evolution of the OSS-movement toward the solution of the philosophical questions. Bottom line: Act with enlightened self interest. The 4 tips for a fulfilled life: 1) become a mentor, 2) serve non-profit boards, 3) search for fun and good things, 4) hack your company.

Mirko Böhms talk about governance between community and business draws a picture of the current status of FOSS in relation to other models of development and shows the lessons to be learned by the contact of FOSS to business. Bottom line: Governance need emerges with a growing community and the community development takes place in a collaborative space of ~80% volume of a product. The residual 20% lie in a competitive space where the company can take advantage. The numbers are clearly indicative and are obviously oriented on the pareto principle, which reminds me on the five fingers, the optimal team size of five members and the leadership span which emerges out of this number symbology. Not by chance some optimally efficient sweet spots are recursively self emerging….

Daniele Gobetti shows the impressive lesson of what happens when the stack is gliding out of control. Github as a single point of failure blocked the development with heavy implications due to the DMCA out of a rouge attack. The git repository and the code was at no point endangered, but the community collaboration and main communication channel was taken down. The decentral internet infrastructure is endangered effectively by single large concentration points which offer convenient services and centralize the system more than desirable.

A lot of other intersting talks with special insights were given, but the above messages are my key takeaways.

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