Local community self management

Its been years since we’re developing our own software and all kind of digital initiatives in an open, collaborative, and thrustworthy way using tools such as Github, Trello & Stackoverflow.

Yet when we think about our local community we still rely on traditional ways of developing and maintaining it.

We think:

We believe that model is broken or at least not enough and we want to believe that if we can develop software, for free & in a collaborative & safe way, we can also do the same with our local community with the right tools & systems.

This is the idea that Selfcivic wants to build upon and see where it goes.

Tell me more

Right now this is a very early stage concept.

There’s no well thought process defined.

There’s no custom developed digital platform or apps.

There are tools with similar functionality developed by others that can be inspiring or reutilized, but the concept behind Selfcivic is different.

We’d like to move responsibility & engagement to people, as well as reputation & moderation.

We don’t want city council to take care of all the issues because we already know they can’t or wont deal with everything. And we also believe we should co-develop our community instead of just complaining & waiting for some magic to happen.

Depending in what country & region is your city or village located, things can look better or worse.

Of course you can take an issue to the city council, but I’m sure there are issues in your community that can be solved by some volunteering work as if you were taking care of your garden.

And even if you’d like to handle most of the thing to city council to take care of them, you’d still benefit from collaborative management & feedback on those issues with others in your community.

On what aspects of the community can it be applied?

Those can be some of the categories but there can be plenty more, education, emplyment? Be creative.

How it works now?

The long term idea is to develop a custom platform mixing functionality from Github repo, projects, issues + Stackoverflow moderation & reputation, but until then we can rely exactly on existing tools:

Step 1) We create a Github repo for a specific town

For example, we’ve created a repo for Pucioasa city:

https://github.com/selfcivic/location-pucioasa

Step 2) We start adding known issues

So start adding the issues you know about and you’d like to fix or have someone fix them or discuss them with others in your community, example:

Stuff you can mention on the issue:

Step 3) Create a Github Project & start processing issues

In the same manner we are used to do with software development, let’s just create a Github project to have a board with Pending, In progress & Done to be able to prioritize & track progress.

Check here Pucioasa’s Project board.

Step 4) Make progress & involve your community

Final thoughts

Issues can be solved by an individual or by a group or reported to the city council, depending on the nature of each of them.

We believe in taking responsibility & collaborating and if each of us provides a small push, we can make a big difference together and and as a result take good care of our communities.

Questions or feedback?

This is just a concept, an initiative, everyone is invited to take it and apply it to their community.

If you’d like to participate in the future development of the platform or to send some feedback or to discuss the concept, feel free to create an issue on this website’s repo at: https://github.com/selfcivic/selfcivic.github.io/issues

Current known communities

Happy self management of your communities!