Ten years of observation: g0v's hi and loose

ten years in the blink of an eye.

Several old g0ver participated in the yet-to-be-named stage of ideation and the subsequent intensive development of the community. Although there have been few contributions in the past two or three years, the ten-year cycle has triggered some questions to the initiators. We all have some thoughts and ideas. After finishing, ipa clkao Kirby wrote this article together.

Text / Qu Xiaowei (ipa), Gao Jialiang (clkao), Wu Taihui (Kirby)｜ Co-sponsors of the g0v community (Original in hackmad ) Authorization / CC-BY 3.0

g0v's keyword "open"

g0v is a community, not a group, with no fixed scope, no fixed members, no membership method, no spokesperson, and no single leader. Operation from the end of 2012. It seems that the initial free imagination of the Internet and dissatisfaction with centralization have called on many people. The beginning of the zero-hour government, the bi-monthly hackathon, and the bi-annual annual meeting, perhaps it is everyone's belief in the pursuit of openness and freedom, coupled with the support of a solid community operation method, that has been able to cycle to this point.

Ten years have passed, the political ecology has shifted, the external crisis has changed, the attention economy has been refined, the buzzwords have shifted, and the position and age of people have also changed.

The initial setting of the community set in the manifesto at the time of its creation is the naive expectation of the early participants for extreme openness, equality, and unorganized action:

We come from the Quartet, we operate multi-center, create a culture of self-contribution, we practice civic participation, create changes, we are open to our achievements, we use open source, we are very happy, and we want to change the status quo, we are you

The first version of the manifesto was written after the second hackathon in early 2013, and was revised in 2019. The two waves of manifestos were both captured and reproduced by many people in words to the atmosphere of the community at that time. This is the true face of Taiwanese youth participating in social issues in an open source manner. The manifesto did not mention the operational application aspects such as hackathons, technology, and projects, and the key concepts revolved around "openness" and "participation."

Over the past ten years, "openness" has also been a great driving force for the rolling participation of the g0v community.

The power of Zhonglele is indeed greater than expected.

It looks loose, but it can be efficient.

In order to avoid the single point of failure of "one person hangs all hangs", the initial participants of g0v have also fought in a multi-line manner until now. When it was launched, it hoped to maintain an open Zhonglele, but with a fixed hackathon and continued application of technology to enter politics and society, it may not only be for joy, but to maintain immortality in spirit and action.

To practice this movement with a simple beginning, most of the initial participants of g0v from the open source community formed a rough consensus. Debating how community autonomy is practiced).

During this period, various actions in the form of projects have been derived, forming connections in various fields and even the public sector, creating flexibility, and promoting changes, which are the results of competing with the centralized system. This may seem slow and romantic, but in fact the open model has also changed the structure at the economic level.

The early participants are familiar with the operation mode of the Open Source community. In recent years, Open Source has gathered from enthusiasts to share, and has become a software company expansion and ecosystem strategy recognized in the capital market. From 2020 to the present two and a half years, there have been more than $24 billion in investment ^[1] . The commercial exposure also shows that the open model is not a family wine and its potential.

If the power of opening is extended to politics and public affairs, what changes will be brought about? Ten years may only be a breaking point.

A little observation of g0v community culture, about HOW

Recently we talked about how to describe the g0v community if we add ten years of time changes?

We start from the imagination of water: if there is a scoped organization like a fish tank, it will plan how many fish and how much feed is needed to achieve OKR KPI and other qualitative and quantitative goals; then open source communities such as g0v are more like open waters, maintaining Ecology is a key goal, maintaining openness. In good conditions, fish will appear, grass will appear, and water will flow. Water is an open sympathetic culture, while fish, grass, and water are all kinds of projects, actions, and social energies that cause social influence. Time, a factor in an open field, is more likely to cause accumulation.

The participants who haunt the g0v community have gradually developed a working method, which has become more and more proficient in the past ten years. The operating mechanism of this mass digital collaboration is roughly as follows:

1. Proficiency in working together with the basic tools of technology: online chat rooms, real-time co-writing, and code sharing create an environment where things can be done together.
2. Constantly iterative community autonomy culture: The community scale with hundreds of active participants and even 10,000 people in chat rooms has established a Code of Conduct for activities, open authorization suggestions for achievements, Principles of media interviews, social media governance rules, etc.
3. Cross-domain participation: This is an old trick, but it's the hardest part. Cross-domain has the opportunity to jump out of the established framework and gradually find consensus through actions.

Under such an operation mechanism, the group moves from the declaration level to the implementation level, and the collective wisdom of the community also explores the most feasible form of public happiness: establishing normal (but not too frequent) connections. How long can you run.

The specific practice is the bi-monthly physical hackathon (52nd so far), and the online chat room (slack) with more than 10,000 people. The community culture has also experienced various shocks and changes in the past ten years.

Results that are easier to see from the outside: About WHAT

Under such a normal connection, the compound interest of collaboration may gradually arise.

The general twist is that when something happens in Taiwan, the nervous system of the g0v community will move. Various issues, connections of people, different professions, and the intertwining and collision of code, because of the openness, there is the possibility of repeated use and regeneration.

From the budget visualization and the open Congress as the starting point of supervising the government in the early stage, to the anti-service trade projects and actions caused by the Chinese factor, the integration of information on major disasters, and even civil autonomy issues cover newer issues such as epidemic support and fact-checking , local language, environmental protection materials, and find new entry actions in agriculture, land, cultural assets, education, etc., all of which have a certain dedicated team and outstanding contributors.

High Agency / Hi Ka Activist

We have seen over the past ten years that most of the participants of g0v have the spirit of "do it first and then do it later", which is similar to the concept of High Agency's personality trait (we will translate it as "hi coffee actor"). The characteristic of "Hi Ka Activists" is that they will try their best to achieve their goals, and there is nothing they can't achieve ^[2] . In the g0v community, any information, code, and content that can be shared and circulated, these phased results will continue to be used and expanded by other hi cafes, and the contribution and evolution of the open source model will form the "individual hi ca action" It also allows the initial goal to be cut smaller and easier to achieve together because there are other people working together.

For example, when political donations were neither digital nor open, the g0v community had been more active, initiating everyone to go to the Overwatch Council to apply for hard copy files and share them digitally. Then, the whole thing was turned into a crowd-sourcing "manual digitization" game involving 10,000 people, to obtain complete information on the relationship between the consortium and politics, so that more people could do further analysis on the connection between politics and money. Instead of waiting 5 years for the Overwatch Council to provide a public access system, the Hika activists will stand up and take action to directly participate in and facilitate such changes.

The openness and polycentricity of the g0v community provides an environment for hi ka actors to construct various new tools, such as the aforementioned digital game of political donations, allowing more people (unconsciously) to have the opportunity to become hi ka action , creating a positive cycle of collective hi coffee.

The story of hacker subculture in Taiwan

However, Wei Wei's open and collaborative approach, which violates common habits, can go so long, which may be a Taiwanese characteristic.

Friends from abroad are often surprised by the flourishing of Taiwan's civic hacker culture, and their small elite activities can be turned into large-scale civic participation in Taiwan.

Perhaps because of the openness in Taiwan, the many participants who were attracted to the g0v hackathon are so diverse, with high intensity of topics, and active. The practice of openness has grown organically into a subculture in Taiwanese groups, and occasionally penetrated into the mainstream culture.

And Taiwan is really an eventful island, and we don’t let the diverse hi-kas act too idle: things keep coming and people’s brains are always connected, and creativity and action will be born. Our observation over the past decade is that the contribution loop expands organically in response to various stimuli; as the stimuli increase, the collective power of the “hika actors” leverages greater influence and grows individual stimuli. Action stories.

This is a place with many stories. It can also be said to be a wet area where the hacker subculture and the mainstream culture interact with each other.

However, due to the dispersion, the media exposure is always limited and can only focus on a relatively small number of bright spots. Once you go deeper, you will find that this is the epitome of Taiwan's energy. The momentum of the community will also be high and low, requiring various brewing.

Hi or not, let's relax?

The g0v community is not a utopia either, where there are people, there are things. But ten years is a time to think about some new questions. After all, this is a group that pursues democracy and emphasizes do-acracy.

Some of the questions we are thinking about, and some of the themes that happened to be touched on the tenth anniversary, are also throwing bricks here, you can loose them:

• The atmosphere of g0v is like a mirror image of the society. In the face of new external challenges, can we continue the "things happen in Taiwan, and things happen in g0v"? Can the non-organized collaborative community effectively respond to these different types of urgent challenges?
• Hackathons have become buzzwords in the past few years, loose with different physiques, what is loose? Consolidate what? What's wrong with the open hackathon of the g0v version?
• In the past ten years, the method of open collaboration has been mainly implemented by the line of citizen science and technology (so the project tends to use technology to solve public problems). Can these methods of doing things be applied in other fields to play a good publicity? Is a collaborative culture possible in the arts, education, governance, or other fields?
• Will the openness and decentralization of the community be more democratic in new ways due to technological changes? Can Web3 tools play a new role in democratic practice? Web2 enables digital acceleration, can technology find warp speed?
• Hackathons are very loose. Is loose power also a form of Taiwanese social power?

It took ten years to spell a long essay, so let’s sort out our memories and thoughts together. We also look forward to g0v observation articles and questions from different perspectives, which will gradually connect the face of this multi-center development community.

Our sharing is here for now, and then:

So, What are you hacking today? 😉

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Note:
1. Report from OSSC 2022: https://www.coss.community/cossc/global-vc-funding-into-coss-24b-raised-from-jan-2020-to-august-2022-3pc6 ↩︎
2. https://twitter.com/george__mack/status/1068238563660173313 ↩︎