# Brief for panellists - Open2020 Mike Hales : 07jun2020 : **Contact : susxanon AT icloud DOT com** https://notepad.diglife.coop/cU11HgjvRL-QKBCnMBWyLw A pair of [online sessions](https://open.coop/events/the-tools-of-collaboration/) is being organised at the [Open2020 conference](https://open.coop/2020/04/02/open-2020-reinvented-networked-commons-initiatives/), 11/12 June: *Networked Commons Initiatives*. This is the brief for panellists contributing in the June 12th session, 13:45-15:15 BST. >Current panellists: Alfredo Lopez ([May First Movement Technology](https://mayfirst.coop/en/), USA), [Francesca Pick](https://www.francescapick.com/) (Enspiral, ‘Better Work Together’), Emi Do (social.coop Mastodon service). Hoped for: Albert Tucker/Nick Hoskyns/Rachel Wallace ([Social Business Network - fairtade sector](https://www.socialbusinessnetwork.net/)) The topic of these sessions is **Tools infrastructure for making the new economy**. The session structure is here [Session timings](https://pad.disroot.org/p/todo-day1). >The segment where the panel occurs is the Day2 session: Segment 2 - **A panel - Governance in movement organisations**. As context for panellists, here is the [script of the preceding segment](https://hackmd.io/@mh2020/Hy8aaDqhI). I'm planning for 4 or 5 contributors (see current list above), assembled from movements and organisations who are **building infrastructure** for *'the new economy'/solidarity economy/next system*. The contributions will need to be brief - 5 min each - and oriented as far as possible to the issues framed in the preceding segment (see link above), concerning choices that need to be made, between familiar and less familiar forms of **governance over infrastructure** in activist organisations. >This is something to put the cat among the pigeons. It's my guess most participants in the event won't have thought a lot about this matter of **stewarding in commons** (as distinct, for example, from starting coops, or using free tools on the web). It's a messy area, easy to be confused in. I see the panellists as activists who . . - Have been infrastructure-building for some time, in widely-distributed organising, and - Have reflections on what kinds of **infrastructure and governance** our movements may be heading for, as regards web-based resources for basically non-geeky activist-organisers . . **weavers and dancers** in the 'new-economy' movements, simultaneously place-based and distributed. After the panel, then breakouts, the issues raised will be responded to by Wouter Tebbens of the **Online Meeting Cooperative**. The coop is hosting the conference in BigBlueButton as a pilot event, and hasn't yet adopted its final organisational/membership/governance form. This is a timely piece of questioning for them, as **a 'NOT-Zoom' initiative** on a global scale. But I know many other organisations in the past half-year have been pondering the question of infrastructure for decentralised organising . . acutely impacted by Covid-19, but already ongoing as a 'movement infrastructure' challenge, before the onset of the pandemic. Looking forward to this lots :smile: