Chapter 11
Project Development


Chapter 11a
Moving Forward


After conducting fairly extensive 'test marketing', we have already received enough ardently positive feedback to know that there is a great deal of enthusiasm to see this idea developed. How can this enthusiasm be organized into effective action? How can we move this idea forward? How can we take what is no more than an idea, and build it into a functioning organization? The short answer is “we don’t know”, but we do know that all who are interested in helping to develop this idea must make ourselves aware of the complex difficulties lying between an idea that engenders our enthusiasm, and a real functioning organization.

Creating tools of communication and administration, for collaboration and decision making, is an obvious first step. We hope that this blog can serve as a start-up tool, and that people will contribute their ideas through the blog's interactive capacity. We've segmented our ideas and proposals into relatively short sections so that people's comments can be targeted to specific ideas.

Other tools, (list-serves, web-based forums, etc), can be created as needed. We are asking that people must assume responsibility for full democratic ownership of this idea if they want to participate, and in our digital age, ample communications options are available to everyone. We urge each person who encounters this idea with enthusiastic interest to take up full ownership and run with it. What ideas do you have to contribute? What can you do to move this project forward?

We can see different possibilities for moving forward. We could, for example, simply begin recruiting members, and try to build the organization piecemeal, over time, with anyone who joins being fully enfranchised to make the decisions that will determine the organization’s form and development. We don’t care much for this idea, because we don't think that it offers much real chance for success, although that doesn’t mean we should rule it out if others see a viable path to success in this direction. What's your plan?

One obvious factor weighing against this course is that the entire idea depends on the development and use of sophisticated software. Without it, the organization could not function in the way we envision. But even laying that factor aside, (even assuming that the software somehow became available), our experience has taught us that there are too many pitfalls lying in the path of this course of action, of simply recruiting members who we will expect will spontaneously organize themselves into a functioning organization. We have seen other groups try this with little success. They often attract large numbers of members in a short period of time, but fail, in the long run, to successfully organize these people into a cohesive and functional organization. There are too many ways for this method to fail before it ever really gets off the ground.

We prefer a different idea, which calls for fully developing the organization’s infrastructure before we begin to recruit a general membership. According to this plan, we will initially seek to recruit only a core group of committed people to develop the Project, although we must realize that the efforts of large numbers of people will be required to make this work, and there is no reason to be overly selective. Anyone we encounter who presents energy and enthusiasm should be welcomed to the Project. We just think that we should adequately develop the Project, and its infrastructure, before we throw it fully open to the general public for membership.

We think it will be better, and will provide the organization with a better chance for success, if we build its operational infrastructure, and then devise a highly detailed plan for rolling it out to the public. Such a plan must include recruiting and training key personnel around the nation that will be required for orderly growth and development as the organization is populated and becomes operational. Only when the infrastructure is ready for use, and a nucleus of key personnel are in place, would we begin to recruit a general membership to populate and use the fully developed structure.

This latter course is obviously much more difficult to initiate than simply broadcasting an announcement of a new organization that is recruiting members, but we think it stands a much better chance to succeed.


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