Dreamcatcher aims to provide a mechanism for alternate views on all aspects of a Project not only to co-exist, but to combine to improve that project and all Forks of that project.
This stems from the belief that it’s hard to see individually what particular opinions are correct ahead of time, and that the more outlandish opinions may often be the most valuable. It also stems from the belief that in gathering many opinions, de-duplicating and combining them to become more precise, and by combining the judgement of many people in deciding their worth, we’re maximising the chance of making the right decisions.
This approach is across the board. It applies just as much to how a Project is governed, how it’s funds are spent as it does to what work should be undertaken and whether it’s complete.
That is, the method of consideration needs in itself to be open to opinion and consideration.
This is important because, generally, the closer you are to the work, the clearer your thoughts on the appropriateness of that work. Likewise, the closer you are to the overall goals, the clearer your thoughts are on those. The DC needs to capture both, filter and apply wide knowledge on assessing them.
We want to be able to capture the fringe ideas because that's where the big gains come from. We also simultaneously want to manage a wealth of fringe ideas without being paralysesed when those ideas are incompatible with each other.
The Principles are:
- Give us everything. It should be free and easily done to raise any level of idea, from all levels of the project from the work being done to how the project is being run to the Wishes the project is pursuing.
- Then to be sensitive enough to detect which ideas are valuable, and to amplify and act on those quickly. We do this through de-duplication and merging to sort out the noise, and amplification of those views that stand the test of peer-review scrutiny.
- And where agreement can’t be found, give an easy route to Fork the Project, explore both stances to see which one is actually the better, and allow a merge back in preserving the history of both.
By doing this, the speed of the project to react to new circumstances or new knowledge is maximised, way beyond any traditional project structure.
Dreamcatcher is the home for all of those lone-wolf, smart guys that have so much untapped value, but which are drowned in the rigid structures that are currently used to produce stuff.