Assembly Sprint

What is an Assembly Sprint?

Assembly Sprints are for organizing the most important discussions and decisions for this season into one place for us to have our say and move the network forwards. Your voice matters, and we invite you to bring your gifts to bear on our collective potential, unfolding the value of our collective, its resources (even its agreements, protocols, tools and shared understandings) and its current and future relationships.

The Assembly will typically involve a number of Loomio discussions and some community gatherings (sychronous meetings over video calls and in person when possible). Imagine months of Enspiralling concentrated into two weeks to help a bunch of conversations and proposals move forward.

Assembly Sprints will concentrate discussions and decisions—those that may have wide ramifications for many Enspiral stakeholders—over a period of (typically) two weeks, scheduled well in advance, for the purposes of inclusion, accessibility, transparency, and better synergising collective attention & efforts.

All Enspiral members are able to participate and have blocking power if they commit to the Assembly Sprint.

Process Guidelines

First, [eg. 2-3 months in advance], we would invite public submissions of concrete and/or specific proposals or topics where we imagine we’ll need to make a decision in the next year.

Then, [eg. 5-9 weeks in advance], the Assembly Working Group would use advice process to elect the decision-areas that are on the agenda—to be moved towards action during the time-boxed, asynchronous Assembly Sprint. [At least a month in advance], the Assembly Working Group will notify the network of what’s on the agenda for the particular dates, and will make an invitation for people to commit/ sign up to participate in the two week endeavour.

Then, it's time for Assembly Sprint!

More on Why/ Background

Decision-making 'assembly' sprints—if run regularly, a few times a year—could increase accessibility, supporting more people to be able to participate in shaping the network as their intrinsic motivation calls them to. By picking a short and specific time period (typically 2-4 weeks) several months in advance, and choosing which decision-areas are on the agenda, we can grow everyone's capacity to voice their values and share their wisdom on the issues that matter most to them.

Hopefully, this will result in conditions of more coherence, transparency, and accountability in the process of decision-making that affects our Agreements, and will give each of us an opportunity to indicate the commitment that feels right for a given set of significant (or substantial) decisions in a given season. @joshuavial outlined this approach in his document, 4 Worlds (link → relevant header), which you may have seen posted after the Members' meeting before last.

You can read more in this thread from Assembly Sprint 2018 documenting the initial Assembly proposal, and the more legible text/ iteration inviting participation in the inaugural 2018 Assembly Sprint.

Assembly Sprints Documentation

🎙 Here's a conversation about Assembly Sprints with our ex-catalyst John Gieryn.

2021

Assembly Sprint 2021: Minimum Viable Revolution

The time feels ripe for an assembly sprint - scoping the Assembly Sprint and providing historic context

Enspiral Handbook