Commanding Chaos for Coworking, Open Source and Creative Communities

Drupal, A thesis. | DPE

Mon, 11/23/2015 - 09:15 -- rprice

Structured Anarchy was describing the structure of the community that organized around Drupal. That there seemed to be chaos and disorder, yet some how everyone was able to build these amazing systems with limited effort and resources. As I started to go through the interview data though, I happened upon a different concept. I wanted to analyze where this community came from, because everyone talked about community but never identified who that entailed. What caused this vibrant community to emerge that keeps this chaos managable? I landed upon a phrase that seemed to resonate with others as well: Information Altruism. Information Altruism is the concept identified in my research that it isn’t Free Open Source Software that changes the nature of work, not in itself anyway. It’s the application of a community that utilizes that FOSS and more specifically applies the notions of free and time-banks to traditionally vendor and pay based ecosystems. Information Altruism provides a case study in how the intentional donation of efforts can alter the concept of effort and work within an organization.