OccupySandy is like a startup

by SandersAK • 14 years ago

42 42 14 years ago

tokenizer• 14 years ago

This was one thing I really enjoyed about camping out at Occupy last year. Most of the people being involved at the 'getting shit done' level, wanted to get stuff done, respected other's opinions, and left their ego in their tent.

untog3• 14 years ago

Not to be devil's advocate too much, but if that was the case then why was nothing ever done?

To the outsider, Occupy (Wall St, at least) was the very opposite of "getting shit done"- it had the world's attention for a number of weeks and appeared to do absolutely nothing with it, before fading away.

pyrotechnick8• 14 years ago

To the outsider

SandersAK4• 14 years ago

I'm totally with you - I was super skeptic of Occupy and was definitely a hater during the wall street protests. With that said, I've been impressed by what they have achieved compared to the likes of FEMA and Red Cross here in NY.

Consider me a convert ;)

shaunxcode• 14 years ago

And yet here we are on a thread months later discussing the occupy movement. A movement like this is async and concurrent. Promises declared are not immediately kept (opportunity must arise) - but that does not mean you can treat them as broken.

mkr-hn4• 14 years ago

It sounds like you relied on the shallow, useless coverage in the mainstream media.

Some of these are gone, but it's the first directory I found: http://directory.occupy.net/

SwellJoe3• 14 years ago

You've been misinformed, on all fronts, and that's not surprising, given the way it has been portrayed in mainstream media. It's endlessly amusing, but also a little disturbing, to me that Occupy has been declared dead, continually, since almost its first few days of existence over a year ago. And, yet, every time an Occupy thing shows up (which is frequently; Occupy events and actions are happening every single day across the US) the news reports it as an isolated anomaly ("Occupy Wall St. had one last gasp today." and a week later act shocked, or, more likely, simply ignore it, when some new Occupy event or action happens).

This is another example of that downplaying of the reality of OWS; "Oh, my goodness! You mean OWS still exists? I had no idea!" While thousands of Occupiers help the poorest neighborhoods get back on their feet...the only reason you hear about it, is because it's too big to ignore, though there's certainly plenty of folks trying to continue to ignore it. Maybe you should be asking why the media you trust is misrepresenting a mainstream movement like this on a continual basis, and for whose benefit?

OWS changed the political landscape in pretty dramatic ways, and continues to do so (and to deny that is to deny reality). But, for the folks who expected OWS (and Occupy groups nationwide) to take up the "Tea Party of the Left" mantle, and do politic-y things, like electing candidates to office, it looks like a failure. But, it wasn't and isn't a Tea Party of the left, and baked right into its very being is a set of values and a culture that would make such an outcome very unlikely (and undesired by most of its participants).

Occupy folks are very likely involved in every activist community in your city, right now. They may not even be involved in an Occupation anymore, and there may not be a very active local Occupation in your city (though you might be surprised; there's one still quite active here in Austin, and I know SF/Oakland, NYC, Chicago, and many others are still active)...but OWS or a local Occupation is what turned them from an armchair activist into one who goes outside and does things. That's true for a huge swath of people, and I think its impact has been wildly underestimated.

pyrotechnick8• 14 years ago

Natural disasters are a blessing in disguise; at least for those who survive.

Gaia often reminds us here in Australia that no matter how much we plan, how safe we feel, despite how high we build our dams, we're ultimately at her mercy.

The sense of community recent events seemed to extract from what is otherwise a reasonably un-spirited populace was nothing short of phenomenal. Humanity indeed possesses great redeeming qualities.

I wish all the best to anyone effected by the recent events. And my heart goes out to the friends and families of those less fortunate.

Please. Try to see it for what it is. An opportunity to rekindle your relationship with nature. To reflect on what's truly important. To fill the voids with something even greater than before.

gadders3• 14 years ago

That must be a lot of comfort to people who have had their house washed away.

pyrotechnick8• 14 years ago

Way to shoot the messenger. It's nature you should be upset with; as it is very much upset with you.

All those houses of sticks built on shifting sands.

All those priceless, irreplaceable material possessions.

What a tragedy!

Didn't the three little pigs teach you anything?

littlegiantcap• 14 years ago

These are just the general characteristics of any effective organization. I really don't see how Occupy Sandy is anything like a startup though. Steve Blank defines a startup as "a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model."

Copying the tactics of existing disaster response organizations (albeit with a grass roots spin) Is hardly anything like a startup.

SandersAK4• 14 years ago

I think it's fair that most effective organizations do the same things. One thing that stands out there is the lack of rigid hierarchy in decision making. If you want to start making PB&Js to help out you can, you don't need to register, get orientation etc.

I also think that Occupy Sandy is building a repeatable and scalable output - that is relief effort for a disaster. They iterate constantly on their ability to gather, parse, and disseminate donation goods and manpower.

wpietri2• 14 years ago

I happened to be in New York a little over a year ago. Going down to check out Occupy Wall Street, I took a wrong turn and wandered into a high-level organizational meeting.

They struck me as very similar to a startup in culture. Smart people with mutual respect and a shared mission dealing adaptively with complicated issues. Rapid delegation, low on hierarchy, experimental, collaborative, supportive. I was impressed as hell. It was very different than the culture in an established hierarchical organization.

I agree that startups are up to something fundamentally different, but that doesn't mean that they don't have a ton in common.

guelo• 14 years ago

Occupy is absolutely not like a startup where you have a top-down CEO trying to generate a culture that promotes getting shit done. Occupy works on socialist/anarchist principles and is more like a worker co-op. If you want to get something done you have to start off by putting in the work, then as other people see you being effective they join in and contribute their own energy and ideas. Unfortunately this kind of organization, while good at empowering individuals, is bad at quick tactical responses such as when facing a well organized adversary like the local politicians and police.

SandersAK4• 14 years ago

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. For me, the expectation to each person to complete tasks and projects, the understanding that culture is about mutual understanding, and the sheer volume of production they've produced given their lack of resources is exactly like a startup.

To your point, well organized adversaries like local politicians and police are akin to pre-existing companies and vertical leaders who take too much time to act and are bogged down in rhetoric and bureaucracy.

Like any analogy, this one definitely has its limitations, but the points I made were things that struck me as uncannily similar to my experience working with my team on Backspaces.

That's just my perspective though, and can certainly see where you're coming from.

EthanHeilman• 14 years ago

I think many start ups are de-facto anarchist in the sense that tasks and decisions are made laterally and without regard for status. In fact most human organisations reflect anarchist principals at the small scale, the anarchist program is merely an attempt at scaling these tendencies.

>If you want to get something done you have to start off by putting in the work, then as other people see you being effective they join in and contribute their own energy and ideas.

This sounds exactly like a start-up and the way occupy is/was organized.

The spirit of iterate like mad, fail quickly and replicate successful ideas, much of which comes from modern military thinkers (for instance John Boyd's OODA loop -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop ). Such theories actually have deep utility in adversarial settings.

>Unfortunately this kind of organization, while good at empowering individuals is bad at quick tactical responses such as when facing a well organized adversary, such as local politicians and police.

I would argue this form of organisation is excellent at quick tactical responses, but generally bad at longer range strategic plans (which is generally ok, since long term strategic planning is near impossible at the tempo of modern business/conflicts). Look at the shift in military affairs toward pushing decision making down the change of command (what is often called network centric warfare).

SandersAK4• 14 years ago

yes! you said this way better than I did.

also to your point of chain of command - i used to work as a forest fire fighter and I can tell you that chain of command is definitely a contentious issue. It really does need to be a give and take where you can draw on the macro advantages of someone higher up but rely on actionable decisions from people on the front lines.

rhizome• 14 years ago

If you want to get something done you have to start off by putting in the work, then as other people see you being effective they join in and contribute their own energy and ideas.

In other words, a flat hierarchy of self-starters? Heck, if you consider cleaning up the streets of Long Island to be an open-plan office, it's not much different than half the offices in SOMA.

mikecane• 14 years ago

>>>Unfortunately this kind of organization, while good at empowering individuals, is bad at quick tactical responses such as when facing a well organized adversary like the local politicians and police.

That might be so -- as the many evictions have illustrated -- but on the other hand, people who only encountered them in the isolation of their own opinion or through portrayals in the MSM are now seeing for themselves what Occupy actually meant and means.

I watched The Men Who Built America on History Channel. Carnegie, Morgan, and Rockefeller bought themselves a President, McKinley, to thwart candidate reformer Bryan. Then reformer Teddy Roosevelt came along and they made him VP in McKinley's second term, thinking they'd buried him in a powerless job. McKinley got assassinated and Roosevelt rose to top man and got his reforms done anyway.

See, the Powers can crush Occupy as a place but the idea can't be killed and like Roosevelt rising again, so is Occupy and in a way -- firsthand experience by outsiders -- they can't now crush.

gadders3• 14 years ago

Full of hipsters?

OccupySandy is like a startup

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