The New Meta Question
In January of 2005 the Free Geek community was four+ years into existence, and we authored two wiki pages dealing with "big picture" issues we'd need to confront. The Meta Question (How big should Free Geek get? How should Free Geek get big? Should Free Geek get big?) asked us to consider the impact of growth on our organization. Speculations on the Future of Free Geek described several other external forces that would shape the organization.
Four+ years later, it's time to take another look, re-evaluate those trends and forces given our current experiences, and make our best estimates as to how this affects our organization.
I believe that this exercise leads to an important pair of questions for consideration:
- How long will Free Geek be relevant?
- That could be restated "how long will Free Geek be around?" since if we become no longer relevant our purpose, mission, and volunteer base would evaporate and our organization would disappear. This consideration gives rise to a second, related question ...
- How will Free Geek be relevant for long?
- That is, by understanding the forces that are beyond our control but that affect us, how can we use that knowledge to adapt to the new reality and extend the life of the organization. Of course, there will be ways to do this that change the organization so much that is is no longer recognizable as Free Geek. But there may be ways to adapt that carry the mission and principles of the organization forward and are worth pursuing.
Unless we consider both questions together we can't really adequately address either.
RfS 14:13, 5 August 2010 (UTC)