Understanding the swarm

(Excerpted from Swarmwise by Rick Falkvinge.)

A swarm organization is a decentralized, collaborative effort of volunteers that looks like a hierarchical, traditional organization from the outside. It is built by a small core of people that construct a scaffolding of go-to people, enabling a large number of volunteers.

You need to release the control of your brand and its mes- sages. You need to delegate authority to the point where anybody can make almost any decision for the entire organization. You need to accept and embrace that people in the organization will do exactly as they please, and the only way to lead is to inspire them.

You can reap the benefits of the swarm: the cost-efficiency advantage and execution-speed advantage.

Timing, social context, and message are crucial. (See later chapters.)

Swarms like Anonymous or OWS share values, they do not share direction or method. That means they are confined to succeeding on small projects that span a relatively small number of people over a relatively short time span. {We want a hybrid between hierarchy and pure network. This helps old media etc. to build a narrative.}

Being leaderless [...]brings resilience, as no leader can be targeted by adversaries, [but] it sacrifices direction and purpose.

Focus in the swarm is always on what everybody can do, and never what people cannot or must do.

This sets it completely apart from a traditional corporation or democratic institution, which focuses sharply on what people must do and what bounds and limits they are confined to.

As everybody communicates with everybody else all the time, successful projects quickly create ripples to other parts of the swarm. Less successful ones cause the swarm to learn and move on. If you want leadership in a swarm, you stand up and say, “I’m going to do X, because I think it will accomplish Y. Anybody who wants to join me in doing X is more than welcome.” A key aspect of the swarm is that it is open to all people who want to share in the workload. Actually, it is more than open — everybody in the whole world is encouraged to pick work items off a public list, without asking anybody’s permission, and just start doing them.

Some work will be a duplication of effort [...] — but the result will be several solutions that are tried in parallel, and the swarm quickly learns which solu- tions work and which don’t. The workflow becomes an iterative, evolutionary process of trial and error, of constantly adapting and improving, without anybody’s supervision to make it happen.

The swarm isn’t just open, it is also transparent as a defining feature. There are almost no secrets at all.

Financial records, conflicts, and discussions about strategies and tactics are transparent for all to see.

This provides for trust and confidence. Since everybody can see all the information and all the discussions in the entire organization, it provides a very powerful sense of inclusion. It also provides an extremely effective rumor control. In the few cases where secrets are kept, they are to protect the privacy of people in the swarm, and anybody can easily find exactly what information is kept secret, why, and who has access.

By making all the information available to everybody, nobody will have the ability to distort it to parts of the organization. Conversely, nobody speaks for other people in a swarm, as everybody has his or her own voice.

All swarms are a matter of quantity. It is a matter of overpowering your opponents with sheer biomass through superior ability of organization and ability to channel volunteer energy.

The first hurdle your idea must pass: Are enough people affected by this idea, [...] how many people must get onboard for your idea to succeed? What event constitutes success, and what does it take to get there?

Need a tangible goal.

We’ll need a large recruitment surface with concepts that are easy to relate to people’s everyday lives in order to grow the swarm to critical mass. You need to identify the group of people affected in a positive direction by your provocative idea, estimate the size of that group, and then make an educated guesstimate as to what portion of this group may engage in the swarm at the lowest level of activation.

Swarms typically engage hundreds of thousands of people, even millions. They’re operated and coordinated by some thousand people in their spare time.