DisCO Glossary

Introduction

It’s shocking that our mainstream societies have been so removed from the concepts of cooperation, collectivity and caring for each other that as soon as we begin to talk about these ideas in any depth, we enter into the often alienating and exclusive realm of jargon. We live in a world in which terms such as “value sovereignty” and “care work” are used and understood by relatively few people, even though they describe concepts that are very basic and human.

This is why education is such an important part of the DisCO Project. We realize that everyone is entering the DisCO with different levels and manifestations of experience and knowledge. However, if we all want to share in the same discussion, it helps to speak the same language. To this end, we’ve put together this glossary to help navigate the sometimes intimidating language used to describe our specific approach to feminist, commons-oriented cooperativism.

Don’t let this new vocabulary scare you – it just describes concepts that you already feel deep inside, concepts that maybe you haven’t found the words for yet. We have coined some of these terms ourselves, but many will be recognized outside of DisCO as well. Take this language and use it well – it will open up new worlds for you.

Asynchronous communication

Communication that does not happen in real time, such as email, forums or Loomio. This type of communication tends to be more formal and organized around a specific topic. It has a subject, context and invitation to join the discussion. Conversations happen over the course of days or weeks and can be archived as part of the collective’s long-term memory. In the DisCO Coop, most internal asynchronous communication happens over Loomio.

Blockchain

A blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, and oftentimes public, digital ledger consisting of records called blocks that is used to record transactions across many computers so that any involved block cannot be altered retroactively, without the alteration of all subsequent blocks. Read Chapter 1 of the DisCO Elements for a layperson's intro, explainer videos etc.

Carework

Carework is any kind of work that supports the health of the collective without generating income per se. We distinguish between two mutually supporting types of carework. First, there is carework for the health of the collective as a system and entity. This means any kind of administrative or behind-the-scenes productive work that keeps the collective running and functional. Second, there is the carework of supporting the humans in the collective. This very important aspect of carework recognizes that every DisCO is made up of individuals who each need emotional support, understanding, special consideration and a sense of belonging and purpose. Both of these approaches to caring for the collective are so important that they are built into the DisCO model. Read Chapter 6 of the DisCO Elements for more.

CAT (Community Algorithmic Trust)

DisCO’s favorite internet cat! The CAT is an on-chain algorithmic entity that enables the collective’s consent to a set of voluntary, self-organized rules. DisCO’s algorithms support the collective in overseeing, simplifying and carrying out the human-level agreements and rules. Once these algorithms are entrusted to the on-chain entity, it is described as a Community Algorithmic Trust which oversees the health of the collective, i.e. that agreements are being met. ReadChapter 5 of the DisCO Elements for more meaow-tastic revelations.

Commitment Statement

The DisCO Commitment Statement is a document of goals and expectations signed by all Committed Members every three months as part of the collective's quarterly evaluations. Failing to uphold the commitment statement results in graduated sanctions. The document can also serve as a quarterly self-evaluation template members can review to evaluate whether or not they have fulfilled their commitment to the collective.

Commons

Commons are often defined as any shared resource that is tended to or maintained by the community and is used subject to agreements or rules established by the community. Public libraries or CSA (community supported agriculture) are examples of commons. For a short intro, read What are P2P and the Commons, and how do they relate?. As such, commons are living systems informed by the cultural and human and environmental realities of their participants, as well as the environments where commoning takes place.

For a deeper dive, we recommend avid Bollier and Silke Helfrich's Free, Fair and a Alive: the Insurgent Power of the Commonsas the go-to reference on truly advance commons-thinking.

Community Rhythms

Community Rhythms are agreed-upon, regularly occurring events (tasks, check-ins, meetings, etc.) that encourage and facilitate the smooth functioning of a collective. Examples include a brief Daily Check-in on a messaging platform by all coop members, distinct Weekly Team Meetings on To-dos and Vibe, Quarterly Retrospectives (aka "SpaceCAMPS") or assemblies to address larger issues, etc.

Cooperative

A cooperative is any self-governed organization or business in which members focus on mutual assistance while working towards a common goal in everyone’s best interest. Read What is a Cooperative? on the International Cooperative Alliance's (ICA) website for a short introduction.

Cooperativism

An approach towards working together that aims for the democratization of ownership and governance. Read Wikipedia's article on the History of the Cooperative Movement. For a more thorough exploration we recommend reading Nathan Schneider's Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy

Culture and Structure

"Culture" refers to a Commons' tacit governance and inter-relational practices, care work and vibe. "Structure" is the formalization of such practices with the assistance of legal and technological tools. The DisCO CAT itself is divided into Culture DisCO Floor and Structure DisCO Deck. The following is extracted from DisCO Manifesto:

"Distributed cooperative practices should never be solely dependent on technology, protocols or governance models. These are only tools to facilitate and strengthen our collaborative culture. There is a fundamental tension in all commons governance between culture, or that which defines the group’s shared motivations and visions for the future, and structure, or that which formalizes the group culture into recognizable legal and institutional forms, and enables certain capabilities. Culture and structure are interdependent in a commons, but they also can pull in different directions. Creating resilient, self-organized communities requires an artful balance."

Cum-Munus: Gift and Responsibility

The etymology of the term commons co-evolved from the Latin "Munus". The following is from chapter 3 of Free, Fair and Alive:

Commons – Commoning – Commoner. A brief excursion into the etymology of these terms: each word connects the Latin words cum and munus. Cum (English “with”) denotes the joining of elements. Munus — which is also found in the word “municipality” — means service, duty, obligation, and sometimes gift. All terms that conjoin cum and munus, such as communion, community, communism, and, of course, communication, point to a co-obligation — a linkage between use rights, benefits, and duty.

In Latin, "munus" means both "gift" and "responsibility". Therefore, the process of commoning implies both of these aspects: receiving and honoring nature and relationships with gratitude (the gift), while tending to its needs (the responsibility).

As such, "responsibility" in a DisCO isn't a top-down enforced obligation, often for the benefit if the ruling classes, but a consented-on shared commitment towards the fulfillment of DisCO's Seven Principles and any given DisCO's mission.

Dating Phase

A DisCO dating phase is a predetermined period of time that new members agree to spending working with the collective before becoming official members. Dating phases may be divided into stages, each with its own training milestones designed to ease the new member into the collective’s operations and give them the knowledge and mentoring they will need to thrive and feel comfortable. Different stages of the dating phase may also increasingly grant the dating member different rights and responsibilities. This is also an opportunity for the collective and the prospective new member to make sure that the “vibe” is right and that they are a good fit for each other.

DisCO Applications Program

The DisCO Applications Program is the umbrella term for forks of the original cooperative and Social Solidarity Economy (SSE) oriented version of the DisCO Governance Model.

The DisCO Applications Program includes DisCO Governance Model templates for:

• DisCO4Coops: This is the original DisCO Governance model developed through Guerrilla Media Collective Worker Owned Coops, Social and Solidarity Economy enterprises and mission-oriented SMEs
• DiSCO.NPs for Non Profits in general and Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits in particular.
• DisCO.Phi for Philanthropic Organizations
• DisCO.living for cooperatives and Community Land Trusts
• DisCO.Makes for Maker Spaces and Community Centers
• DisCO.Unbundle for Non-cooperatives and corporations to transition to the DisCO Model

DisCO Ball

The DisCO BALL is THE DisCO’s general knowledge base, powered by semantic wiki software. Showcasing the best pattern practices for DisCO development and management, DisCO BALL provides semantic categories linking to further resources and examples (from the various individual, self-hosted wikis of each DisCO LAB). Video tutorials and resources on how to contribute and enrich the DisCO Ball knowledge base will be provided to facilitate community content production. DisCO Ball also serves as default user manual for the various platforms developed as part of the DisCO PROJECT (DECK, EXP, BLOCKS, etc) with embedded animated tutorials for maximum accessibility.

DisCO Blocks

Within our Culture and Structure distinction, the DisCO Blocks are both distinct modular practices which you can add to your own DisCO (Culture), as well as drag and drop software interface to allow you to build DisCOs modularly, one block at a time (Structure).

Standout examples of DisCO Blocks as culture include Community Rhythms, Mutual Support, Commitment Statements, Dating, Mentoring and the Working Circles. Check these entries out for more. Click here to see the specifications for the DisCO Blocks software platform.

DisCO Buddy

DisCO Buddies take dating members through all aspects of working on the collective, the tools, our governance model, etc. They ensure that new members get all they need to meet a series of criteria on the way to becoming full, committed DisCONAUTS. After the Dating Phase is over you will no longer have an exclusively DisCO Buddy assigned, instead you will become a new Dating Member's Buddy. Read more in the Mentoring entry.

DisCO CAT

The DisCO CAT stands for "Community Algorithmic Trust". It is also DisCO's mascot and the enigmatic author of the DisCO Beat Newsletter and the voice behind DisCO's social media channel.

In its algorithmic existence, DisCO CAT refers to all the cultural and structural components of the DisCO Project. All components are modular, concurrent and in Perpetual Beta. The following is extracted from The DisCO Elements chapter 5 The DisCO CAT and DisCO-Tech:

Introduced in the DisCO Manifesto, the DisCO CAT (Community Algorithmic Trust) is a series of modular software platforms designed so people can teach themselves, play around and, ultimately, build viable DisCOs.

DisCO.coop

DisCO.coop is the "brand" name, hashtag and what we use in social media to distinguish us from platforms and mirror balls (although we love those too). It's also our main website domain. We also use DisCO.coop to refer to the DisCO Mothership, although DisCO.coop encompasses more than the Mothership.

DisCO Daters

"DisCO Daters" is the generic name given to persons receiving mentoring while undergoing the DisCO Dating Phase. The Dating Phase is a DisCO's specific mutual learning program to integrate new members. DisCO Daters go through an transparent, thorough pre-selection process.

Once the Dating Phase is underway, DisCO Daters are considered virtual DisCONauts with practically the same rights and privileges in day to day operations as full members, but with less responsibilities and certain limitations until the Dating Phase is completed and full coop worker-owner membership is established.

DisCOnomics is also the robust and reflective activity of performing and cultivating alternative, caring and care-full federated DisCO Economic Networks. Ie: it is thinking, doing, reflecting and then doing some more.

In contrast to other economic disciplines, it is not solely defined post-hoc by economic historians or economists, but consciously co-created in real-time through economic experiments and experiences. In this case the creation and federation of DisCO's worldwide. This follows the adage "Nothing About Us Without Us" ie: DisCONomics must be mainly created by people working in DisCOs, not outside or disenfranchised experts or professionals.

It is worth highlighting the differences between "Economics" (the study of the economy, or economies, hegemonic being neoclassical economics) and "Economies" (taking our inspiration from JK. Gibson-Graham's Community Economies the creation and real-world articulation of alternative economies).

The medium and long-term visions for DisCONomics are explored in Chapter Seven of the DisCO Elements: DisCO Futures: Building Tracks.

Federation

From DisCO Principle 7: "Primed for Federation":

While networks may or may not share common goals, federations are imbued with a shared direction. Scaling replicates the dynamics of colonialism - extending a worldview from a center and razing everything in its path. DisCOs are replicated/altered through a federation protocol capable of achieving critical mass. Each primary node focuses on small group trust, intimacy and mutual support.

Intra-DisCO Federations are called DisCO Pluriverses. All DisCOs existing in the world (and outer space?) form THE DisCO.

Feminist Economics

This is an approach to economics that factors in all of the unseen labor (traditionally associated with women) that is needed in order to support what one typically thinks of economic activity (traditionally associated with men). Feminist economics focuses on caring for the well-being of the individuals that make up an economic system, valuing and reconizing that carework as equally important as “productive”, income-generating economic activity.

The Women's Budget group has excellent introductory resources on Feminist Economics.

Free Libre and Open-Source Software (FLOSS)

Open-source refers to software for which the code is available freely and can be redistributed or modified. Our preferred term for it is FLOSS, which stands for Free-Libre and Open Source Software (See here for more info on the term).

Livelihood Work

Livelihood is income-generating work done by the collective.

Lovework

Lovework is voluntary or "pro-bono" work that a DisCO takes on in order to create commons and offer the coop's talent to persons and collectives who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford these services.

Markdown

Markdown is is a way of writing plain text (without formatting), so that it can be converted to rich text (with links, bullet points, headers, bold, italics, etc.). This is the exact same editing syntax used for Mattermost, SpaceTime and Loomio, so it's a case of "buy one, get three for free"! You can find resources and tutorials in the Markdown entry.

Mentoring

When we refer to "Mentoring" we are describing a pedagogical process among peers. This is the way people learn how to DisCO: by doing with others.

Taking its cue from the Zapatista practice of learning by listening, Mentoring doesn't assume that more experienced DisCONauts have more or better knowledge than new members. Instead they have more specific knowledge and experience about DisCOs in general (as well as the mentor's own DisCO in particular) to share.

The ultimate goal mentoring is to learn and grow together by including the mentee's observations and feedback. This method of peer learning serves to make each DisCO's culture more varied and robust, as well as truly inclusive of new members ideas and reflections.

Learn more about mentoring here.

MOOC

Massive Open Online Courses are open-access online courses with unlimited participation. In a DisCO context, MOOCs are three-month online courses with webinars, synchronous and asynchronous discussion channels, and supporting materials for prospective DisCO initiators.

Multi-Constituent Membership

DisCOs extend decision making and ownership beyond the company structure, and enfranchise all contributors whether present in all value chains or affected by the coop's actions. Beyond workers, this may include neighbouring communities, suppliers, clients, reproductive and affective labour, financial backers, etc. as constituents.

Mutual Support

Mutual Support means looking after people and being attuned to others’ moods, needs and larger realities beyond the collective. By caring for each other’s well-being, we create a healthy work environment, and supported members have a safe space to express themselves and be heard within the collective. Conflict resolution is also handled through the mutual support system, ensuring the distribution of personal care work.

Mutual Support Pal

Your Mutual Support Pal is a rotating human who will listen and care for you. Here are some of the things you Mutual Support pal can do for you:

• be the ones you talk to if your coworker is being a jerk
• support you to meet your personal development goals
• help make sure you do the things you said you were going to do
• put a human face on talking to 'the organization'.

Read the Mutual Support entry for more info.

Open-Value Accounting

Open Value accounting is a way to capture individual contributions that blend into a unique product, to evaluate these contributions, and to compute equity in the end product, a % for every member.

It preserves the subjective nature of value, it can take, in theory, into consideration all types of value, tangible and intangible. The DisCO Governance Model is an instance of Open Value Accounting. See also Valueflows.

Open Cooperativism

Open Cooperativism, or "Open Coops" is an approach towards working together that aims for the democratization of ownership and governance, while focusing on the production of commons. Open Coops arose simultaneously with Platform Cooperativism in 2014. Read From Platform to Open Cooperativism to check out the differences and commonalities between Platform and Open Coops or this shorter explanation, which includes infographics and a TLDR.

Open Coops are the precursor to DisCO. DisCO evolves on the initial premises of Open Cooperativism by re-conceptualizing Open Coop's four original principles and adding new, explicit principles on Feminist Economics, Open Value and Federation.

Read more on the Seven DisCO Principles on Chapter 3 of the DisCO Elements or this wiki's entry on DisCO in 7 Principles and 11 Values.

Platform Cooperativism

Platform Cooperativism seeks to democratize the ownership and governance of the digital platforms that increasingly mediate our daily lives. Check out the Platform Cooperativism Consortium's website for abundant resources on Platform Cooperativism.

Radical Workplace Democracy

Workplace democracy is the backbone of traditional coops. Radical workplace democracy is an approach to workplace governance where communication is informed by complementary notions of value that reflect our experiences as human beings, in the workplace and beyond. Democracy can't be delegated to voting mechanism or techo-solutions, it needs to incorporate care work and mutual support. DisCO workplace democracy is radical in that it explicitly addresses the invisible biases and tacit power hierarchies that plague many coops and activist projects where these issues are not actively discussed.

Radical workplace democracy combines elements from:

• Radical Democracy: "... a type of democracy that advocates the radical extension of equality and liberty. Radical democracy is concerned with a radical extension of equality and freedom, following the idea that democracy is an un-finished, inclusive, continuous and reflexive process."
• Workplace Democracy: "... is the application of democracy in various forms (examples include voting systems, debates, democratic structuring, due process, adversarial process, systems of appeal) to the workplace. It can be implemented in a variety of ways, dependent on the size, culture, and other variables of an organization."

Relationality and Intra-Action

As a concept, relationality posits that culture, self-development and nature don't develop from individual, self-interested agents but from relations.

Relationality helps us break the self/other and individual/collective false dichotomies. The following is extracted from Chapter 1 of David Bollier and Silke Helfrich's Free Fair and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons:

Any individual identity is always, also, part of collective identities that guide how a person thinks, behaves, and solves problems. All of us have been indelibly shaped by our relations with peers and society, and by the language, rituals, and traditions that constitute our cultures. In other words, the conceit that we are “self-made” individuals is a delusion. There is no such thing as an isolated “I.” As we will explore later, each of us is really a Nested-I. We are not only embedded in relationships; our very identities are created through relationships.

Relationality is a key aspect of DisCONomics and key to DisCO's theory of value. This extract from the Re-imagining Value: Insights from the Care Economy, Commons, Cyberspace and Nature report proposes a "Relational Theory of Value";

This theory sees value arising from relationships. Value does not inhere in objects; it emerges through a process as living entities – whether human beings or the flora and fauna of ecosystems – interact with each other. In this sense, value is not fixed and static, but something that emerges naturally as living entities interact. “In a commons, value is an event,” said Silke Helfrich of the Commons Strategies Group. “It is something that needs to be enacted again and again.” The difference between the standard economic theory of value and a commons-based one is that the latter is a relational theory of value, said Helfrich.

For more on relationality and the commons, visit this article by David Bollier and scroll to section IV "Commoning as Relationality"

Relationality is closely related to feminist theorist Karen Barad's concept of Intra-action. The following is extracted from 3 of Free, Fair and Alive:

Intra-Action: a concept introduced by physicist and philosopher Karen Barad, describes how individual entities come together to create a new “entangled agency” that does not otherwise exist in preexisting individual agents. Think of crowd behavior and viral cultural phenomena. When two entities intra-act, their ability to act emerges from within the relationship itself, not as a function of the discrete individuals involved. The entangled agency constantly changes and adapts to the relationship itself. This concept helps us get beyond simplistic cause and effect explanations and suggests that responsibility for actions is spread among intra-acting entities, each of which may have different levels of intentionality and delayed manifestations. From the perspective of intra-action, familiar ideas such as subject/object dualism, linear time, and individual agency are incomplete and misleading ways of understanding how events happen in the world.

See this three minute video presentation to learn more about Intra-action.

DisCOs are relational, living processes, determined by the relations and care work among the DisCO's members and their relation to the DisCO's mission and values. DisCOs relate to each other in DisCOFeds and so on. All of these can be seen as a the Intra-actions of DisCO.

Social Solidarity Economy (SSE)

Any solidarity-based, non-capitalist and non-authoritarian economic system that includes ordinary people in practices that seek to overcome inequalities and transformatively address economic, social, environmental and political issues. See RIPESS's introductory page on the SSE to find out more.

SpaceCAMP

A DisCO SpaceCAMP is the DisCO version of a Quarterly Meeting. See the SpaceCAMP section on the Community Rhythms entry for more.

Synchronous Communication

Communication that happens in real time with people talking or chatting with each other simultaneously. In an office, this may happen in a meeting room or by the water cooler. A digital collective, however, needs a place to hang out online, send messages, contact any team member directly, or even goof around. For this, it’s useful to have a digital tool specifically designed for online collaborating teams, such as Mattermost.

THE DisCO

A pun in the hyper-pretentious The DAO, THE DisCO (with an article in front and in caps), refers to all federated DisCOs together, growing in solidarity to become an economic counterpower for social and environmental purposes. One way to illustrate this is through a quote from David Fleming: "Large-scale problems do not require large-scale solutions; they require small-scale solutions within a large-scale framework."

Individual DisCO LABS are the small-scale, trust-based solutions. THE DisCO is the potential large-scale framework. Within this large network, we have DisCOverses, which are fluid federated DisCO clusters.

Value Sovereignty

Is a solidarity-based strategy for economic resistance that allows all members of a DisCO to contribute according to their capacity. All members create value; part of this value is processed through a market interface (the DisCO “business”) and is converted into monetary value, which is then pooled and distributed to benefit all value streams (including carework and lovework). Essentially, the more effort and care put into the collective, the larger the share.

Valueflows

Valueflows is a set of common vocabularies to describe flows of economic resources of all kinds within distributed economic ecosystems of the next economy. It is designed to help alternative economic software projects that are solving different pieces of the same puzzle be able to work together.

Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits

Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits or WSDNPs combine the mission-oriented functionality and legal advantages of a non-profit, with the Radical Workplace Democracy of a DisCO. WSDNPs were originally developed by the Sustainable Economies Law Center. DisCO.NP is the generic DisCO name for DisCO-WSDNPs. The DisCO Mothership is a DisCO-NP.

Here are some articles and resources on WSDNPs:

• Original definition by the Sustainable Economies Law Center
• The truth is, structure matters. How you do your work is equally as important as the work itself.
• What Does the Future of NonProfit Leadership Look Like?
• Resist as a Worker Self-Directed Nonprofit

Working Circles

Working Circles are DisCO’s way of dividing up tasks and focusing efforts on thematic areas, each with its own membership and team stewards. Many members of DisCO are stewards of several of these areas. This means that, although they may not directly work in or even be the main contributors to any of these areas, they are ultimately responsible for their upkeep. Full, committed members of DisCO are expected to continually learn and improve in the Working Circles they belong to. The set of Working Circles within the collective can be flexible, but current areas are listed here.

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