In the lead-up to last Monday’s Strategy Meeting I developed a more detailed plan for using swarm organising within the party. I will outline it here as clearly as I can, I know @miles_w has criticisms of the roles which will need to be sorted out, but I think the basic premise is good.
Crews and Squads
These two types of sub-groups will be the basic organisational units for campaigning. Crews are geography based and act as the local branches of the party. Squads are issue based and will work on specific campaigns despite geography. The idea is for active members to be in both crews and squads as their interest and activity inspires them.
Meetings of both Crews and Squads need to be focused. In order to ensure time isn’t wasted debating irrelevant minutiae, time limits need to be set for the meetings. I suggest a maximum length of an hour and a half for important discussions, an hour for normal discussions. Socialising etc can always happen after the important stuff is hammered out.
Crews
As outlined in this post and subsequent discussion, we need a scalable model to direct local campaigning. To save repeating myself with different words (and diverting everyone to a different thread) the main idea is here:
Squads
Squads are issue based campaign groups within the party. They are not divided by geography, but by campaign focus. Proposed roles:
Captain- Spokesperson, needs to be across the issue better than everyone else. Their job is to front the media, be available for interviews and help prepare press releases etc…
Navigator- Responsible for organising meetings, discussions etc. Need to make sure interested Pirates can access the Squad and have input.
Bureaucrat- Responsible for reporting to the party and ensuring minutes are kept. Role can be fulfilled by the Navigator in smaller Squads.
How will these work?
Crews and Squads are the most basic organisational unit within the party. They should range from three members to about fifteen. They need to be small enough that everyone gets to know everyone else fairly well. This ensures that discussion can be more focused as everyone has some idea where the others are coming from.
Once a Crew grows beyond fifteen it should be split in two. For example, the NSW meetings include people traveling from Wollongong. Once we have the capacity, we should start Sydney crew meetings, as well as Wollongong crew meetings. Alternatively, they could be East Sydney crew and West Sydney crew etc. Each time a group grows too big, a new split should occur.
One of the more obvious Squads that we should form is an Education Squad, to help coordinate University activism particularly around University funding, HECS etc. They need to be across the politics and campaigning, and where there is the space, initiate our own actions.
Where campaigns are happening, Squads should reach out to Crews to get involved in actions in their local areas. This can happen any number of ways, members of both the local Crew and the Squad can just explain what is happening, or if there is no cross-pollination, just ask for Crews to get involved however they can.
Dividing a Squad requires more care than dividing Crews because the issue as a whole needs to remain in focus. Issues can be divided into smaller parts, like Education could split with one group focusing on University funding and HECS and another group on Academic independence and access to knowledge.
Combining Crews and Squads
There are different ways that swarms can be managed when combining different constituent parts. I suspect we will have to use different methods at different times due to our need to comply with various AEC and public association rules as well as to help with tactical flexibility. There are three main ways I see this happening.
Open meetings- Just invite all interested pirates along and discuss the topic at hand. The monthly state meetings would be an obvious open meeting.
Committee meetings- For complex, whole party issues and campaigns there will remain a need for Committees. Federal election campaigns will require oversight from such a body because a lot of money needs to be spent and our actions need to comply with various electoral laws. This isn’t to say other types of meetings can happen in an election campaign, just that there needs to be oversight.
Spokes-Councils- These are meetings made up of delegates from each relevant Crew and/or Squad. Like Crew and Squad meetings, they need a time limit set to avoid wasting time on irrelevant minutiae.
Each Squad / Crew needs to discuss the issues beforehand and appoint / elect a delegate to represent the crew at the Spokes-Council. The delegate is the only person from each crew who is permitted to speak, if other members of the crew are present, they pass their messages through their delegate.
Spokes-Councils are more for coordination than decision making. There is no expectation that all constituent crews and squads will agree to everything that is decided and space needs to be given for different groups to do their own thing. If whole of group decisions need to be made, a spokes-Council may not be the right forum. Open meetings, Squad meetings or Committee meetings would serve as better decision making structures.