Hack-Along

Collaborative hacking patterns to co-create on planet earth

We’ve been conditioned to believe in the myth of the survival of the fittest: In this view, each one of us struggles against all the others for scarce resources. The strongest ones survive and pass on their genes, while the weak loose and die out. Outside of our family environment, this way of thinking seems to be reflected in every interaction in our so-called civilised society.

However, nature is much more about collaboration than competition. The very concept of an ecosystem brings every piece of the puzzle in an harmonious interconnection.

To resolve the greatest challenges of our time, we need a fresh new modus-operandi which starts from a sharing and collaborative endeavour.

People Hacking-along are moving away from a competition mindset embedded in scarcity, and aim towards collaborating at the local and global level in creating a mindset of abundance.

So what's an Hack-Along?

An hack-along is a prescriptively non-prescriptive event, so it is quite difficult to give a straight answer to this question.

Participants are not bound to any pre-requisite rules they did not choose for.

Therefore, first rule of an hack-along is: we don't talk about the rules of an hack-along!

Rules are coercive patterns by nature. They are decisions taken by a small group of people that are aimed to affect a greater group. They often come in bulk, they tend to be very difficult to change. You are generally not able to consent to a few rules while rejecting others. As such, it is not advisable to use them.

There is however an experimented list of "patterns" that participant have successfully used in the past. This handbook functions as a repository of these patterns for you to explore and to pick up. Every person, groups and locations running an hack-along chooses which patterns to adopt, or can propose new ones.

For instance, here is an opinionated list of values that could be used to guide hack-alongs:

Consent over Consensus: we don't need to agree on everything. If 49% disagrees on something, they shouldn't be forced to do it because "the majority" wants the opposite. Consent means you allow other people to go on with their idea, because you don't have any blocking objection. Non-coercive: no-one can tell participants what to do and when, unless they consent to that.

Intrinsically Motivated Contributions: every contribution is strengthen by the motivation that only the participant's life experience can. Participants should follow their bliss, contributing to the specific issues they want to see fixed in the world.

Globally Synchronous, Locally Asynchronous: Everyone choose what and when and where to do it, but we do have specific moments in which everyone show and tells. The moon is an indisputable world-wide progress bar is up in the night sky. You can use this to align your hack-with other people, wherever they are, without ever needing to set a dates again.

Find a project you like, or start a new one!

You can use the asynchronous forum to find and join projects that match your vision of the future, and help them out how only you can. You don't need to ask permissions, just pick up anything and use your skills to improve on the works of others, when existing contributors recognise your contributions by accepting a pull request, you will automatically be part of the team!

Do you have a great idea or project yourself? Then just propose it and keep your eyes open for people who are willing to hack-along with you!

Hack-along projects are open source and forked on the hack-along github. As such, you will mainly find projects and tools that focus on the infrastructure on how to collaborate in the most effective ways at the local and global level. They tend to focus on the co-creation of tools and technologies for sharing and collaborating, and thriving but anything that is open and useful for the planet and the people living on it will do!

If at any time you feel lost, ask for help on our discord server or rabbit-hole yourself down into the deepest parts of the hack-along forum.

Happy collaborative hacking!