[Ci4cg-announce] Collective communication as a big first step towards collective intelligence

[Roger Eaton]

Long time reader, first time writer here on ci4cg. If you are curious about
Voices of Humanity and/or want to help out please support our thunderclap
here <https://www.thunderclap.it/en/projects/44509-who-are-we>.

*Across the Silos*

*Introduction*

Voices of Humanity is an online forum which aims to build a massive sense
of human unity at all geographic levels from the local to the global. Both
gender equality and respect for diversity are built in to the VoH process,
so if the process takes off, as it may well do, it will be a great boost to
the women’s and social justice movements as well as peace, disarmament and
all the many global efforts that depend on a heartfelt sense of human unity
for success.

VoH participants provide their gender (female, male or simply human),
generation (young, middle-aged, seniors or simply human) and location.
Messages posted in the forum can be rated and the results of the ratings
are easily accessible. These results are broken out into the six “voices of
humanity”: Voice of Women, Voice of Men, Voice of Youth, Voice of
Experience, Voice of Wisdom and Voice of Humanity as One. Moreover,
location can be changed from city to metro to state to nation to planet
Earth. At each geographic level, the six voices of humanity are immediately
available.

But why should we spend our time doing that instead of working on the
issues? Well of course we need to work on the issues. But it is clear that
as long as there is so much distrust between the nations and the religions,
we are unlikely to achieve much and are in danger of the collapse of
civilization under the pressure of climate change, environmental
degradation, war, and population increase. So if we can create a widespread
sense of human unity, we will be in a much better position to cooperate on
our pressing problems, local, national and global.

*The Difficulty - Civil Society is Broken into Silos*

There is growing understanding at the higher levels of civil society that
the world needs much stronger integration across the issue silos. As things
are, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) each focus on one or a small
cluster of related issues without much regard for wider coordination. And
that is not even considering the chasms that exist between the NGO world
generally and government and business. Not that there is no communication,
but that the level of coordination is far from adequate to the challenges
that face humanity.

A few recent quotes about integrating across the silos in the work of the
United Nations give an idea how the phrase is used.

   - The discussions called instead for using the cross-cutting nature of
   the women, peace and security agenda in New York and in the field to
   integrate the organization’s work and achieving synergies across the silos
   of the UN system. link
   <http://peaceoperationsreview.org/thematic-essays/key-messages-from-civil-society-on-the-uns-role-in-peace-and-security/>

   - Mr. HARRIS said that if everyone was doing the same thing, there would
   be no need for policy integration.  What distinguished the United Nations
   was that it gathered under one roof specialists from around the world.  Its
   expertise was derived from a certain degree of specialization.  Losing that
   would mean losing its ability to advise and support Member States.  "We
   have to learn how to communicate across the silos — but not destroy the
   silos per se," he said. link
   <http://www.un.org/press/en/2016/ecosoc6757.doc.htm>

   - ... a “new sustainable infrastructure paradigm”: Environmentally sound
   and resilient... Integrated: Connects across the silos now isolating
   different systems to deliver better, more efficient services. ...
   Affordable ... Rich in co-benefits ... Beneficial to the local economy…
   link <https://www.biocycle.net/2015/01/14/biocycle-world-135/>

“Collective impact” is a related notion. A Stanford Social Innovation
Review article <http://ssir.org/articles/entry/collective_impact> by that
name in 2011 has been influential. The article heading gives the big
picture: “Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector
coordination, yet the social sector remains focused on the isolated
intervention of individual organizations.” The article helpfully lists five
conditions for collective success: 1) common agenda, 2) shared measurement
systems, 3) mutually reinforcing activities, 4) continuous communication,
5) backbone support organizations.

Voices of Humanity is designed to be the vehicle of choice to provide
continuous communication at every geographic level and across all silos.

*Community Tags*

Community tags are a critical new VoH feature to be implemented in August,
2016. Message and community tags enable participants to categorize both the
items they post and themselves. Thus #UNA will distinguish forum items of
interest to the United Nations Association, and #UNA will also distinguish
the community of UNA affiliated participants. These tags will enable the
participants to find the highly rated items across the silos as well as
across the genders, generations and by location from local to global. All
this is in the context of human unity, because whatever specialties people
are interested in, they will also be interested to see the latest highly
rated items overall, i.e., the Voice of Humanity-as-One at the global level.

Here are a few of the communities that we expect will find expression in
the flexible Voices of Humanity framework: #UNA, #ClimateChange,
#GenderEquality, #DisadvantagedMinorities, #HumanRights,
#IndigenousPeoples, #InterfaithCooperation, #NuclearDisarmament, #Peace,
#Refugees, #UNGoals, #Veterans, #NonviolentAction. Importantly, silos
within silos can be broken out while maintaining the larger integrative
community. So for instance, each of the women’s issues that fall under the
#GenderEquality umbrella can have its own tags: #ViolenceAgainstWomen,
#EconomicJusticeForWomen, #Women’sEducation, #ReproductiveRights and so
forth.

An AcrossTheSilos Community will be encouraged to act as pollinators,
bringing important and relevant items from one silo to the notice of
members of another silo. While issue communities are narrowly focused at
the leadership level, the members of those communities often have diverse
interests and realize the importance of coordination across the silos.
These cross-pollinators will act to recruit new members of the
AcrossTheSilos community, expanding the larger Voices of Humanity
membership.

The above article was published on Voices of Humanity
<http://voh.intermix.org/items/2342/view>.

Roger Eaton
+1 415 933 0153
Voices of Humanity <http://voh.intermix.org>
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