Did you know that a group of cats is called a ‘clowder’ (if they know each other), or a ‘glaring’ if the cats are not close associates (i.e. they just converged on the same tuna can)? A glaring of cats seems entirely appropriate, doesn’t it? This cat-themed trajectory started when I sat down to write a post about governance because the phrase ‘herding cats’ seems appropriate when considering some of the machinations required to govern and run a horizontally structured co-operative, such as Hypha. Convening, deliberating, and voting are not practices most people come across outside of the confines of academia, but they are essential to both running an organization and a key component of many worker cooperatives.

Actually though, when applied to Hypha the phrase is somewhat disingenuous. In the past year, our governance processes have become increasingly dissimilar to a rogue band of felines and more like a dance or a kind of creative but choreographed ritual of forward movement. There are several contributing factors here, not the least of which was the creation of a Governance Working Group in 2023, and the dissolution of our long-standing all-board model at the 2024 Annual General Meeting (a.k.a. The AGM) and the election of just four members. These two changes created both structural and process-oriented feedback loops to iterate and improve our governance model, and to provide greater accountability to the members.

Governance, “the act or process of governing or overseeing the control and direction of something (such as a country or an organization)” plays at two levels within Hypha; firstly, we are collectively responsible for governing the co-operative through participation in discussions, meetings, and voting when required. Secondly, some of our client work is interleaved with governance; Hypha has been a long-time participant in the Cosmos Hub DAO with all its attendant intrigue. We also supported the creation of the Friends of HEK community and helped shape initial processes there, and we’ve consulted and presented on aspects of co-operative governance over the years. Many of us at Hypha proudly wear (metaphorical) governance nerd badges.

The past year saw three additional projects on this theme: Vincent and I were published in the open-source governance themed MEDLab zine Change is in the Cards; I collaborated on a research project exploring the rise of cooperative networking ecosystems and new containers for work and labour; and the Co-Creation Lab took part in Metagov’s Deliberative Governance Interoperability cohort.

First up, much of Hypha’s work is done with open source tools and technology, and so Vincent and I were excited to contribute to MEDLab’s Change is in the Cards zine. This project used the tarot as a lens for reflecting on governance transitions within open source communities. The zine invited contributors to interpret tarot cards in the context of their experiences with open-source and cooperative governance, emphasizing storytelling as an exploratory tool for collective introspection. We both chose visual, rather than written, contributions to explore our thoughts on the subject. Print it out, and take some time to explore the zine. You’ll find our work there amongst some excellent essays and contributions on the ‘practical magic’ that flows through open source governance.

“Programming and community-building both are forms of practical magic: the writing and implementation of codes, spells, or “magic words” that do things in the world. Governance is the stewardship or oversight of these processes. By demystifying certain aspects of it (and mystifying others!), we can help communities operate more effectively and democratically.”

– Adina Glickstein, Drew Hornbein, and Nathan Schneider; Change is in the Cards

Shifting from open-source communities to real-world mutualism, the research shared in the Networked Cooperative Ecosystems: New Labour Configurations & Opportunities for Mutualism isn’t specifically about governance. But network analysis of the “communication channels, and more broadly, flows of power within these ecosystems” does surface some facets of governance and the role it plays in maintaining and supporting these organizations. In each of the three case studies presented in the research paper, the nodes and edges reveal power structures within the organization and track the implicit or explicit governance that propels the organization ahead. As each case study is responding to different challenges in their environment, the nature of governing varies widely from multisig wallets to formal boards of directors. Any of us on the research team would be happy to talk about and expand on the work presented there.

Finally, our participation in Metagov’s Interoperable Deliberative Governance cohort helped place Co-Creation Lab’s Governance Experiment in a broader context of what’s happening in digitally-enabled deliberation work (in short: a lot). We were fortunate to connect with people working on fascinating projects–including Decidim, Harmonica, Ize and more. These projects go far beyond our modest worker co-operative scope, tackling complex issues of deliberation within large organizations, municipalities, and national governments. Western democracy seems to be having a mid-life crisis, but the work being done by the members of this cohort has been energizing. To test out our own project, building an interoperable dashboard, we harvested key moments from Hypha’s history (i.e. read our copious amount of meeting notes documentation) and asked members to vote for ‘moments’ that could be incorporated into a public timeline. Lastly, we brought all the work together in a case study about the governance experiment journey that was shared as part of the Data Communities for Inclusion project.