Dreamfish Humanifesto

[Note: the Humanifesto has evolved with tweaks and nudges. The current version is here. ]

We want to flourish.

We want a workplace, where everyone can create meaningful work. We can find happiness. We can thrive in our livelihoods.

Dreamfish was born to create a new open world of good work for everyone, everywhere. Dreamfish is for us, all of us – the world’s women to work, get capital, move out of poverty or reenter a workforce or work in open source, for men to explore freely new ways to feel at work, for a person in recovery from anything to make a living, for a young genius to stretch wide, for elders to contribute experience, for the homeless to gain confidence, for a professional to learn creative out of the box skills, for the investor to contribute to what matters, for a young worker to gain meaningful work experience, free of silos. This is sustainability at work. This is ”our” world of work.

We are welcoming. You may speak Urdu, Spanish or Chinese. You may identifiy as a woman or a man. You may wear a baby sling, hijab, a kippah, a suit, leather, piercings, a pentacle, a political badge, a rainbow, a rosary, tattoos, or something we can only dream of. You may carry a backpack, a guitar or knitting needles or a cane. Conservative or liberal, libertarian or socialist — we believe it’s possible for people of all viewpoints and persuasions to be agents of entrepreneurship. We welcome youth and elders, mothers, activists, professionals, artists, engineers, bloggers, crafters, academics, musicians, photographers, readers, writers, gardeners, ordinary people, extraordinary people, and everyone in between. We welcome people who want to change the world, people who want to do business, people who want to keep in touch, people who want to make great art. We welcome Internet beginners.

We will thrive at work.
In our future, we want for millions of us to have created more meaningful work, moved out of poverty, completed thousands of successful projects, and grown as people. We want to:
*Increase sustainable income – Those of us who are below the poverty line will significantly increase our income and report an income that enables us to be self-sufficient.
*Resilience – The Survival rate of micro-enterprises is extraordinarily high after five years.
*Value creation – We each will have transformed our understanding of what is value, and be actively creating a viable, collaborative economy.
*Environmental footprint – We will reduce, reuse and recycle more. We will dramatically reduce our environmental footprint of our work by working locally and virtually, and sharing resources.

We can work our way. We want to:

* Create a livelihood for ourselves with all the necessary tools to succeed.
* Realize our dreams by working on projects that interest you, not the other way around.
* Learn valuable technology skills for the new economy.
* Build a strong support network of dynamic, like-minded individuals to exchange ideas and collaborate.
* Find the right people to help us accomplish goals.
* Grow both personally and professionally through collaboration.
* Share our wealth by mentoring and investing in other dreamfishers.

We are happy, healthy and principled:

Diversity principle

Diversity is core to Dreamfish as a work community. We welcome people of any gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, color of skin, ethnicity, nationality, ability, class, income level, religion, culture, subculture, and political opinion.

Collaborative Learning Principle

We mutually support our growth and development. We learn from experiences. We learn by working together. As we do, we develop socially, ethically and professionally.

We believe that when we jam ”with” our differences, not against, we innovate and transform. Resilient results can come when people from different worlds and world-views move as an organizational jam. A jam is a practice of presence. A jam is not a debate about rightness. It is not fight or flight. It is not positional arguments. Jamming is listening, really listening. It is saying, “Yes, And”.

Staying with the conversation teaches us about what we did not know, and humbles us in the awareness that there is much more that we don’t know that we don’t know. We learn to live in the gap between what we thought we knew and what is possible. Jamming is not superflous to our work. Jamming is the work. As we practice to jam with one another, so, we emerge with what is possible in our work, in ourselves, and in the world.

Sustainability Principle

We actively make choices that mindfully supports the health of projects we work on, our coworkers, the earth and its creatures.

We believe that sustainability goes beyond a triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. Physicality is core to what is sustainable work. We thrive with biodiversity here as we are part of the biodiversity of our planet. We believe accessibility for people with disabilities is a priority, not an afterthought. We think neurodiversity is a feature, not a bug. As we share the air with each other, our own breath reminds us that the self is common to both humanity and to the earth. Listening to our body, we learn that work is a practice, not a production. We learn that we are collaborative systems, not silos. We learn that our gut can make a critical decision, when the frontal cortex may not. We learn that our community is a dance, not a data set ;-) .

Fishfood Principle

We believe that we value differently.  You may value the deep satisfaction of putting money to work. I might value:  food and shelter. Learning. Accomplishment. As we work, we each listen to what we truly value and then can create this blended value through projects. As schools of fish, we create fishfood for all. Our revenue model is designed for diversity.

Working Out Loud Principle

We are as open and transparent in our work as possible to be highly efficient with resources, and allow more people to benefit from the work created. Many of us contribute to open source development, and Dreamfish is built with open source software. Working out Loud allows one coworker to easily learn from another coworker (e.g., on how to use a tool, how to run a meeting or manage a project). This is also why our main workspace is a wiki. If you want a private space, you are welcome to create one. This may take some adjustment, if you have worked behind a wall for awhile. But, those of us who have made the transition, find this new way of work liberating!

We practice the work we want in the world:

Guidelines are agreements that we make to our coworkers.

We practice Respect

Each person’s contribution in this community is valuable. We expect for each person to be treated with the upmost regard and respect. We respect people’s time, efforts, and expressions. Please see our Diversity Statement.

We practice Extraordinary Project Management

We want a healthy workplace throughout the whole cycle of work, from the early relationship-forming process through project management to project close outs. Project-based work can be an efficient flexible way to get work done. We can keep costs low. To enable this new way of work, we strive towards excellent project management practices. As we are at different skill levels of project management, we teach each other as we learn.

We practice Effective Communication

There are things we don’t know that we don’t know. By giving each other feedback, we can become more aware and more effective at work. Our perspectives are often different from each other. We check our own assumptions out directly with the other person. We strive to own our own interpretations and feelings about the situation. If need be, we ask for help to facilitate.

We practice Responsibility.

When we leave or disengage from the project, in whole or in part, we do so in a way that minimises disruption to the project.

We treat creativity as a practice. We love creativity, especially collaborative forms that arise as people work together — from dance to video, from a code snippet to a page on the wiki, from the person who’s been doing this for decades to the person, who just picked up a video camera last week. We support maximum freedom of creative expression, while respecting our work communities. We will never put a limit on creativity just because it makes someone uncomfortable.

We are learning as we go. We may not be able to satisfy everyone. We may not be able to provide for multiple languages or better accessibility as quickly as we would like. We each can certainly work to avoid offending anyone, and learn. And we can listen carefully and respectfully to each other. We can work together.

We want a thriving workplace for everyone, everywhere.  We are not bosses and minions. We are not in or out of the workforce. We are not demographic groups. We are not producers and consumers. We’re people working with people.

Please,  support this humanifesto by adding your name to the list on the wiki.

==== Attribution ====

The context for this humanifesto:

As a practice of diversity, this text is a remix, with much thanks to Dreamwidth for allowing us to repurpose text in their Diversity Statement. This text is usable under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-SA license.

Our relations shape us. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to Dreamfish on a journey over the last couple years to arrive at where we are now as a work cooperative.  In 2006 in the International Society for Systems Sciences, we began under the name of Dreamfish as a NGO project, to support systems scientists to collaboratively work on issues of sustainability, and democracy. In 2007 – 2009, we engaged thousands of social entrepreneurs to share resources with each other in projects with PopTech and Craigslist Foundation, Fielding Graduate Institute, Organization Development Network, Greenmuseum.org, and Planetwork. Several core dreamfishers meanwhile worked as Touchy-Feely group facilitators for Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Women in Management program. Now, as a community, we are going to come full circle. Now, with the belief, sweat and effort of a small staff, nearly 100 community members working on projects, 3000 supporters, and investors who believed in this woman entrepreneur (!), we are moving our vision to life.

If you want to get involved, and volunteer on a Dreamfish project, we are looking for leaders, writers, programmers, operations folks, wiki contributors, investors and funders of open source projects. We are inviting employers who want workers to seed job opportunities to post jobs. We welcome you to join us in building Dreamfish.