Of WOLs and WWIBLs

(Working Out Loud, and What Would It Be Like)

We have recently started WOL in Samara, our organisation within the SEEDS currency ecosystem. WOL is not just the wise (or sometimes slightly foolish) owl of Winnie the Pooh fame, WOL is also Working Out Loud, as described by John Stepper in his TED Talk and on the Working Out Loud website.

If you haven’t heard of working out loud (and until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t), it’s sort of like Twitter, but also very much not. It involves posting your work activities online (we use Discord channels, with one channel per person), thereby sharing transparently with the people in your work community what you’re doing and thinking that relates to your shared endeavour. You’re not spamming your colleagues with a blow-by-blow account of your day, because you’re not sending the updates to anybody, but the information is there for your co-creators to dip into, browse, and respond to as much or as little as they want to.

This serves several functions:

• A logbook so you can see how you’ve been spending your time — but more humane and dignified than old-school time-reporting
• Transparency so others can see what you’ve…