Howdy-
You are receiving this e-mail update because you have either expressed interest in Project PM at some point or have already joined up outright.
I wanted to bring everyone up to speed on how Project PM has advanced in the three months or so since it was first announced, at which point we had only a vague idea of how to
proceed and "we" consisted only of myself and a couple of associates. Today, we have what I and many others have determined to be a viable and comprehensive plan for bringing about some level of fundamental change in information flow while also creating an unprecedented entity designed to grow perpetually and to adopt and implement new tasks, all while retaining a high average level of participant competence without the need for human intervention. Meanwhile, "we" now consists of about 75 individuals with a remarkable range of skill sets and a common willingness to take responsibility for the changes we would like to see.
I've had a chance to speak at some length to only a handful of you thus far, but would like to again express my gratitude to everyone for their interest. I particularly appreciate the efforts of those of you who have already begun to contribute ideas, ask necessary questions, and even to take some initiative in our early tasks, which we are currently approaching in a somewhat informal manner but which we will soon enough be able to pursue with the help of our network schematic and the open-source software being developed by our lead programmer Andrew Stein. When the software is completed, we will be ready to launch in earnest, most likely in August or thereabouts.
Here's a brief rundown of what's going on in the meantime and how you can contribute as we continue to gear up. Remember that I am always available for questions or discussions, either by phone (512-560-2302) or e-mail.
1. We have initiated our first sub-project, the Africa Development Program, which will consist of a charitable entity (we're still deciding soon what legal form this will take) intent on raising and administering funds for the purpose of instigating various sustainable development programs on the village level; these efforts will include water purification, education, and financial assistance such as microloans. Aside from the overt benefits to the villages in question, the purpose of this early program is to serve as an experiment and demonstration regarding the efficiency of online collaborative networks in general and Project PM in particular. Currently we are using the latest version of shared Google Docs for the bulk of our work on this as our network, as noted above, will not come into play until launch, and thus what we hope to ascertain for ourselves and demonstrate to potential participants and supporters is the extent to
which our distributed, collaborative approach to various tasks is superior to the approach taken by more orthodox institutions of the sort that have not been designed to take great advantage of the information age. To put it another way, we hope to show that, in terms of dollars spent to benefits accrued, our particular approach and our particular membership is better-equipped to address such a task as philanthropy than are, say, most philanthropists or organizations - and this, in turn, is intended to demonstrate our viability in terms of other tasks, including our central efforts with regards to media reform. At the same time, I'm observing the specific manner by which our participants are proceeding in order to get a better sense of how we ought to approach certain yet-to-be-determined aspects of our governing network. If you think you may be able to assist us in setting up and overseeing this particular sub-project, or if you'd simply like to see
how the process is working thus far, let me know and I will invite you to the collaborative document that we are using as a sort of virtual base of operations.
2. We will soon be setting up our second collaborative document for the purpose of deciding the aforementioned questions that remain regarding the governing network, which is to say we are holding a constitutional convention of sorts. Although the basics of this network will be similar to that of our media network as detailed in the Project PM page on True/Slant, several important aspects remain to be determined. I've been discussing this with a few of our participants over the last couple months, and the document will include summaries of these exchanges in order to give everyone a sense of our thinking thus far as well as to prompt new suggestions. Based on what's been discussed thus far, I believe that we'll be able to come to a consensus on the details and end up with a particular schematic/blueprint under which this governing network will operate with the same superior efficiency that we expect to see from the media network,
which itself is almost entirely defined at this point. Again, let me know if you would like access to this document when it goes up so that you may participate in the proceedings (which will be necessarily informal) or even if you'd just like to observe; we have a number of very clever and erudite people involved in these discussions, so the process should be just as interesting as it will be unprecedented.
3. I'm preparing the Project PM manifesto, which will appear either on Vanity Fair's website or some other outlet in addition to True/Slant and Huffington Post; this will be followed over the summer by a few other texts covering various fundamental aspects of Project PM and those dynamics that make it both possible and necessary. I'm also working on a FAQ that may be of interest to those of our participants with whom I haven't had a chance to speak.
4. If you know of anyone who might be interested in participating, please let them know about the project and have them contact me. I'd like to have a couple dozen more people with random skill sets so that, whatever form it takes, our governing network will be able to draw upon an even greater pool of knowledge and experience in the course of advancing Project PM.
5. Also, even if we've spoken already, please send me an e-mail confirming that you are willing to serve as a member of the governing network, which itself will be the driving entity behind Project PM as a whole and which will take over from myself in most respects at some point after launch. As I've noted, participation does not entail any time commitment at all; the network is designed in such a way as that it won't suffer by virtue of some members being inactive (other than that we won't benefit from your ideas and judgement).
There have been a number of other scattered developments on various fronts, and I'll start providing regular updates soon by way of a Twitter feed or some such. I'll also be setting up a subreddit in order to provide another means of general discussions on the part of our members until such time as we have our software and thus can begin interfacing with one another in the improved manner on which Project PM is to be based. For now, I'd like to once again express my thanks to everyone who has gotten involved thus far. Again, please e-mail me at your earliest convenience and confirm that you would like to be involved in the governing network; if you'd prefer not to do so, you can still participate in a more informal sense to whatever extent you'd like, but the joining network will make it a great deal simpler for us to make sure that all suggestions and concerns are wholly accessible and thus more easily acted upon.
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Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302