Richard Bartlett is a co-founder of the collective decision making platform Loomio, a member of the Enspiral network, and a partner in The Hum, a consultancy that provides guidance for decentralized groups and organizations around the world. Rich also has written extensively on Medium and elsewhere about new ways of working together.

This conversation happened in the spring of 2018. It was a fun and wide-ranging interview, going from the roots of Loomio in New Zealand’s Occupy movement, to the importance of synchronous vs. asynchronous collective interaction, the relationship between personal growth and organizational structures, and inspiring examples of economic solidarity, decentralized governance, and radical democracy in the world at large.

Since this podcast was recorded, Rich has contributed a chapter to the Enspiral book Better Work Together, launched a new initiative under the #microsolidarity hashtag, and published his own work-in-progress book, Patterns for Decentralized Organizing. Find out more in the resources below.

Resources:

• Enspiral Handbook: https://handbook.enspiral.com/
• The Hum’s Patterns of Decentralized Organizing booklet: https://www.thehum.org/resources
• Loomio Co-op Handbook: https://loomio.coop/
• Fearless Cities: http://fearlesscities.com
• On Taiwan’s participatory democracy: https://civichall.org/civicist/vtaiwan-democracy-frontier/