The Loomio Blog

This is the first article in our Cultural Technology series, where we share practices for working in a networked organisation. This is very much a work in progress but we hope it’s valuable to share what we’re learning.

We’re building this organisation on the principle that anyone affected by a decision should be involved in making it.

Loomio has received a small grant from Catalyst to help Litemap and Assembl develop their collective intelligence tools. These tools enable users to map the structure of a discussion and visualise the connections between people, thought and action.

Ever failed at getting your team engaged with new technology? We have. Like many other people, we started off naively thinking that just exposing the team to new technology was enough – that once they saw it, they'd get excited to use it. Since then, we've worked with hundreds of groups and learned a lot about how to effectively introduce new online tools.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs, R.O.C. (MoEA) announced that the National Energy Conference is to be held Jan 26, 27. To follow the trends of collecting voices on the internet in nowadays, MoEA plans pre-conference discussions on the internet between Jan 14 – 20.

Well folks it has been an incredible few months and today is a very special day: we’re inviting everyone (starting with those who supported our crowdfunding campaign) to come in and check out a ‘pre-release’ version of Loomio 1.0.

We went out to the Loomio Community asking for feedback on the new designs for mobile/phone and desktop/tablet. In addition to some excellent suggestions for improvements on the designs, you told us you loved them! We can’t wait to release the new user interface at the end of November.

Yesterday, 100,000 people mobilized in the streets of Budapest, in response to a proposed tax on Internet access.

Another month has flown by, with some more huge progress in Loomio land:

It’s the first day of Spring in Aotearoa New Zealand, and it certainly feels like it. We’re now halfway between the end of the crowdfunding campaign and the pre-release date for Loomio 1.0. It’s been hard work, but immensely rewarding. We’re really motivated by all your support. All up, we’re cranking along and things are on track for November!

We’ve released some exciting new ways to see what’s most important to you on Loomio!

The Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) in New York is an annual gathering of people from around the world working towards a free and open internet. In June this year, we were lucky enough to be invited to present Loomio at PDF, in a session on “The Future of the Public Internet”. Ben Knight talks about his experience speaking at this amazing event.

Greetings friends, wow another month has flown past so it is time for another update from Loomio HQ.

## Released in the last few weeks ### Import Contacts

It’s Matariki here in Aotearoa New Zealand and we’re really feeling the winter solstice vibe at Loomio HQ – feels like it’s getting brighter every day!

You spoke, we listened – “editing comments” has been the most upvoted card since we opened up the public Roadmap.

Right from the start, Loomio has been a community-driven project. From day one, we’ve had real people using Loomio to make real decisions, and real world feedback from users has directed development all along.

Yesterday we released a whole new system for managing the privacy of your groups. Now when you start a new Loomio group, you’ll get the following options:

## Word of the Year: Gratitude It’s still a bit unreal – over 1600 people contributed over $125,000 to make the Loomio crowdfunding campaign a massive success. Because the “give now” button remains live, amazingly even now donations keep coming in. It was a huge validation of what we’ve believed all along: the world wants Loomio!

After an incredible couple of days, the target is within reach! It’s truly overwhelming to see so many generous people getting behind this project, reminding us that we’re not crazy to pour our lives into it for the last 18 months 🙂

After an amazing week, the $100K target is now well within reach! We’re blown away by our team of more than 850 people supporting us to make this project happen!

Driven to improve the lives of New Zealanders who experience mental illness, Jacqui founded and serves as joint chief executive of the Wise Group, one of the largest non-government providers of community-based mental health and wellness services in New Zealand. The organisation employs over one thousand staff and is regarded as one of the most sophisticated and innovative NGO service providers. Jacqui sat down with us to discuss the importance of staff engagement and why she decided to use Loomio.