The Loomio Blog

Rich and Nati from Loomio are coming from New Zealand to join US-based team member MJ for a workshop tour across the States. We’re keen to meet with organisers who are interested in working non-hierarchically: whether they’re in cooperatives, startups, communities, collectives, NGOs or corporations.

The energy of so many people careening toward Washington D.C. was palpable on January 21st.

Chris McClimans is part of a web design co-op based in Austin, Texas that uses Loomio to have shorter meetings and make better decisions. We interviewed him at the Open Source // Open Society Conference.

For Julie DiBari, inclusive decision-making is personal as well as professional. “In 21 years in the foster care system, I was never once asked what I thought works,” she says. Now, as a consultant, Julie supports diverse stakeholders to contribute to decisions that affect them, and to collaborate on solving complex problems.

We caught up with Climate Karanga Marlborough member Leon Jay at the Open Source//Open Society Conference in Wellington. They are helping reduce climate change in Marlborough by rapidly prototyping ideas using online collaboration.

Loomio Co-op Member and Director MJ Kaplan has been all over the US in recent months, at conferences exploring impact, collaboration, the economy, the future of work, and more.

Join us for the New Zealand Premiere of an inspiring new film featuring Loomio alongside other cooperative organisations.

It’s been quite a month… Here in New Zealand we've been shaken by a 7.5 earthquake, while the world has been shaken politically.

In a self-managed company, everyone is a decision-maker. You need an effective process that enables group input while empowering individuals to act – and effective tools for running it.

Platform cooperativism is the radical idea that the internet would do more good if its major properties were democratically owned and governed.

Guardian journalist Max Opray got in touch with us last week, while researching his article Could Online Democracy Lead To Governance By Trumps and Trolls? Online interactions are notorious for being hijacked by trolls, so he wanted to hear how we handle trolls at Loomio.

# We got a shout out at the White House! Loomio has been picked as part of a suite of tools promoted by Together We Work, a campaign to empower young workers to take collective action.

Rory Ridley-Duff is a reader in cooperatives and social enterprise at Sheffield Business School, director of Social Enterprise Europe, and founder of the FairShares Association. They use Loomio to model their governance structure online, for effective, equitable stakeholding.

We open source not only our software code, but our organisation too. Our impact mission is about democratic engagement, inclusive participation, and equitable collaboration, so that's how we work as a company internally.

MJ from Loomio caught up with DJ Johnson, professor of game development at the New England Institute of Technology, about how they're bringing out the best in their faculty through more online collaboration, and fewer meetings.

Brendan Tronconi of Trusty Amigos, a Dog Walking and Pet Care co-op in New York with 9 members, shares his experience starting a worker-owned business, collaborating with people who speak different languages, and working together effectively online and offline.

SolidFund is a grassroots commonwealth fund for worker co-op members. John Atherton talks about their aspirations and operations, and how using Loomio is helping them build the worker cooperative econoomy in the UK.

The latest news from Loomio… Join us at conferences in New Zealand and Indonesia, celebrating our upgraded navigation in the app, and a range of useful how-to's.

We’re super excited about contributing to the upcoming OS//OS open source, open society conference.

Organisations that adopt Holacracy often find it’s a big upgrade to their decision-making processes. But implementing Governance meetings is only the beginning of your self-management evolution.

New Zealand recently tightened up health and safety laws. Now businesses must have practices that give their workers opportunities to participate, on an ongoing basis, in improving health and safety.

## Our New Website is Live! We brought together everything we’ve learned about communicating the value of Loomio in a simple compelling way, and combined it with visually engaging illustrations. We’ve highlighted amazing stories of people using Loomio around the world, and made help content and other resources way easier to find.

The Welsh Government’s mission is to “help improve the lives of people in Wales and make our nation a better place in which to live and work”. One of the ways the National Assembly for Wales looks at how effectively the Welsh Government is doing its job is through committees.

Nati from Loomio had the chance to interview Stacco Troncoso, strategic director of the P2P Foundation and co-founder of Guerrilla Translation, a commons-oriented translation collective who is currently crowdfunding an innovative initiative called Think Global / Print Local.

Paul Stone, Programme Leader for Open Government Data at Land Information NZ, tells the story of how a consultation to develop a framework for consistent licensing of New Zealand Government open source software has been carried out successfully in an open and transparent manner.

The last few years have been quite a journey for Loomio. This is a story about navigating the world of startup financing to find ethical investment that works for a truly mission-driven tech company with big ambitions.

So, your group is actively using Loomio for discussions and decisions. Great! Now you’re ready to optimise your collaboration experience. There are some simple things you can do to make important information clear and accessible. Here are some useful tips and tricks we’ve learned from different Loomio groups.