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cool hello everybody I'm presenting
colony colony is a platform for
decentralized autonomous organizations
the goal of it is to make it really easy
for people to start organizing ations
together online all over the
world um so the problem that we're
solving is that lots of people would
like to be involved in projects but the
trouble is that opportunity is pretty
centralized in just a few places but
actually Talent is really really
distributed so it's quite difficult for
a lot of people to get involved with
things other than open source
projects um and secondly it's also very
difficult to manage a distributed
Workforce um we're seeing more and more
people becoming freelance uh it's
reckoned I think by Forbes that by 2020
as much as 50% of the US Workforce will
be uh freelance whilst at the same time
more companies than ever are growing so
I feel that there'll either be a huge
growth in project management as a role
or software is going to need to mediate
those relationships and that's
essentially what colony does so our
solution is a platform that enables
people to contribute to projects that
they find exciting and yeah essentially
what if you could contribute to your
your your time to projects and earn
ownership of those projects just like
you would if you're an angel investor
investing
money so Colony makes it possible to
have efficient decentralized
organizations by removing the need for
hierarchical management and we think
that what this is going to mean is that
it will be able to exist as a sort of
aggregation platform that enables people
to do all sorts of kinds of projects
online so so the way that works is that
rather than it being managers who set
tasks and assess work and divide labor
the system helps people do that by
aggregating the collective intelligence
of of lots of people who know about very
specific skills as though they were sort
of a single super intelligent
manager um so this comes in uh a few
stages to begin with users contribute by
uh cont suggesting ideas that they think
should happen within their
organization uh making decisions about
other people's suggestions doing pieces
of work and providing
feedback um and what the the system is
doing while people are doing that is
essentially assessing what they are what
they are up to so for every interaction
that you make the system scores you
against other people it Compares you
with the uh the um reputation ations of
everybody else who's interacting with
that
system and contribut contributions are
weighted according to the value that
they've added and necta which is a sort
of token which indicates ownership sort
of like Equity um is distributed
proportionate to the value that
everybody's
contributed so we see it as being um uh
a layer that enables collaboration and
as such we don't want to do everything
so it will be will be able to integrate
it with all the kind of softwares that
you know and love so far we've already
done GitHub and I'll get into that when
I do a demo um and there'll also be an
API so you can use it for whatever you
wish there'll be two different models
they can kind of like GitHub uh the
community version is free open source uh
anybody can contribute to it well
anybody can contribute that's been
invited to join the colony and it's open
competition uh there'll also be a paid
version which is more for traditional
organizations that want to become more
self-organizing um and become more
efficient
accordingly uh right I'll do the demo
there here we go
so uh this looks a bit odd but cool
um is that going to
help that's a bit better okay so I'll
just guide you through the the uh
through the interface so at the very top
you've got the the dude's Avatar so if
we click on that it's going to open his
profile pretty standard really but the
important thing here is that you can add
tags add your skills and interest so
that's really the most important thing
that you do when you first start the
platform you add whatever things you
might be skilled at in as granular
detail as possible because that is how
you get stuff gets rooted to you within
your
Colony so so this guy some kind of
designer
um
so the colors that go around the
person's face indicate the kind of
things that they do on the platform and
in what proportions so it's making
suggestions about things that think
should happen making decisions giving
people feedback doing comments and so on
and actually doing pieces of work and
then you've got this level which is
their it's indicative in a single figure
of their overall competence so that
level increases over time based on the
amount of stuff that they've done and
how good they are at doing it so to
begin with it's purely quantitative it's
just about how much stuff they've done
but then over time it becomes actually
about how skilled they are so if we go
back to this profile next to their
skills we've got all these numbers and
these uh these are their skill profile
for that specific
thing
um so as you get to higher levels it's
about like I are you in the top 10th
10th percentile for a skill are you in
the top fifth percentile for 10 skills
and the higher the level becomes the
more difficult it becomes to get there
obviously so beneath the profile we've
got um we've got the tokens so there's
two tokens within Colony you've got
pollen which is essentially like a fuel
it's used or or a currency is used to
pay for everything you do so if you make
a suggestion it cost you some pollen if
you make a decision it costs pollen
tagging things cost pollen commenting
pretty much everything you do cost you
pollen and the reason why you want to
use that pollen is if you've done
something good like you've made a
suggestion that was accepted then not
only you're going to get your pollen
back so you can do something else with
it but also um you're going to earn some
nectar and nectar is like ownership of
the colony sort of like Equity although
yeah um so every 10 minutes some nectar
uh 50 nectar is created by the system of
that 70% goes into this Colony Central
reserve and that's used to pay people
for doing sophisticated pieces of work
that require human judgment to interpret
the value of so think things like coding
design legal drafting all those kinds of
things the remaining 30% is distributed
amongst everybody using the system in
proportion to the value that they've
contributed by doing things like making
suggestions making decisions tagging
things uh giving people feedback and so
on and that all happens completely
automatically and algorithmically based
based on the effort that they've put in
over the proceeding 72
hours um so yeah this is this is the
colony Central Reserve uh and that's
sort of under everybody's control as I
mentioned and then this is this is this
dude's actual colonies that he's in uh
so you can be in lots of colonies you
can contribute to lots of different
projects at the same time um and this
indicates the amount of nectar he's got
in each one and the little red flash is
like he's got something to do
so if we go over into the top right hand
corner we've got teams so teams is kind
of an important concept and it's a bit
of a misnomer because it's not actually
the people that you work with it's just
like your your friends the people that
you trust and you want to bring into the
colony um so when you join the colony
you can invite up to six people that you
trust and believe are going to add some
value to the
project um so everybody can do that so A
colony can grow to be arbitrarily large
but importantly your purview within the
colony is limited to the two teams that
you're part of the team that you were
invited to and the team that you
subsequently invited the reason for that
is what the system is on the whole
trying to do is to aggregate the
collective intelligence of many people
as I mentioned and in order to do that
you need to meet a few criteria which
are principally decentralization so
people are drawing on their own local
knowledge um diversity so theyve come
from a a variety of different
experiences and Independence so they're
not unduly biased or influenced by any
particular persuasive people and so all
of the functionality is kind of based
around those
principles um so what being in teams
means is that you can you can sort of
directly chat with these guys uh but you
can't chat with people who aren't in
your
team so you might have thousands of
people but you've got basically another
12 people that you can speak to that
doesn't mean that's where the
communication stops you can you
communicate indirectly Stig merically
with everybody else
and then down here you've got your most
recent activity so the stuff that you've
got to do um so in the the middle is
kind of where the magic happens uh this
white box up at the top when you've got
a suggestion that you think should
happen click in here add your suggestion
add some tags that uh uh pertain to the
skills necessary to uh to have an
opinion about this and then you just hit
submit and that will get sent out to
anybody who's got any one of those
skills
so here's a suggestion here's what it
looks like um and you'll notice that
you're being forced to make a judgment
based on the informational Merit of the
suggestion alone you can't see who's
made the suggestion so you can't be
influenced by by that
knowledge um you've got all the tags
that people had applied you can up Vote
or down vote them by clicking or double
clicking um you can add some more tags
if you don't feel that those
sufficiently encapsulate the skills
necessary to have an opinion about it
perhaps bring some more diverse opinion
in and then you simply make a decision
so let's say we agree with this which we
really should um you can then see what
other people think you can see the
comments that they've made you still
can't see who's made them but you can up
down and vote them do all that good rity
stuff um and then you'd hit next and to
get your next card and so what's going
on here is is obviously voting uh but
it's not trying to get to consensus and
it's not even trying to get to sort of
perfect democracy actually is just
trying to make an efficient and
collectively intelligent decision in a
timely fashion so what it's doing is
sampling the statistical significance of
the voting and once it gets to a point
where it realizes if it were to continue
polling people the outcome isn't going
to change it calls the decision it
either kills it off or it moves it on to
the next stage so what you'd get in
practice after this would probably be
another suggestion or it could be
anything but this is a potted demo so
I've got a a step-by-step process of a
single suggestion so I'm going to hit
next and it's going give us the next
stage which is to to specify exactly
what needs to be done to deliver that
suggestion so we've got the suggestion
that was made we've got the tags that
were created and the comments that
people had made and then you build the
you build the specification out of three
components epics tasks and commands so
an epic as you probably know from agile
is like a container for tasks um you use
it to help structure things uh a task is
a unit of work suitable for one person
and then a command within colony is
something that can be executed
programmatically by the system and what
that means for now is that it's
integrated with GitHub and so if
somebody creates a poll request rather
than that going to a cordev or a a
manager rather that gets given to all of
it's gets shown to all of the people
who've got an opinion about that who've
got those skills and they vote to decide
whether it's going to get merged in or
not so there's no manager at
all um you build task much like a Google
doc it's a realtime updating
collaboratively editable document it
tracks the additions deletions and
Replacements that people have made to
the text you vote on whether or not you
think those uh replace those changes
should be made uh apply a deadline which
gets averaged from what a lots of people
think and then you just vote on whether
you think the state at which you're
leaving the brief is uh is not quite
ready yet or or it's good to go so let's
say we think this is good to go it's
going to move us onto the next stage
which is to decide actually who within
your colony is going to do the
task so the system comes up with a short
list of potential candidates who could
do the task by comparing their
reputation profile with tag Cloud that
was agreed
collaboratively so you might say you
look at each one of these guys profiles
or perhaps you already know them you say
okay well John Doe he's he's awesome be
great if we could get him to do the task
this is known as a weighted preference
vote incidentally uh you say James is
also so very good uh jedo is completely
useless I don't know how he interfered
his way in here um these guys are both
kind of middling so um and then what the
system does is average what a lots of
people think and offer it to the person
who's collectively preferred essentially
the one who's most
expensive um if they accept the task
then great if not then it gets offered
to the person who's next in order of
collective preference uh once they
accept the the nectar the ownership the
equity whatever you want to call it goes
into uh an Esco contract um they submit
the work for approval H if it's accepted
then awesome it gets the the Nector gets
sent to their private wallet if not then
they iterate upon it with feedback from
The Colony until the colony is
satisfied and that's pretty much how it
works it's it's like a big system of
feedback
loops um so if I just go back to the
presentation where is
it you see yes
so where are we now we're in we're in
private Alpha um we are we've got a few
people using it always looking for more
so if you've got an idea you've got a
project and a team to engage please get
in touch we're currently a team of two
who've built all this over the last year
uh always looking for awesome people to
join the team so if you're interested
hit me up uh we're currently fundraising
the may or may not be a crowd sale in
the not too distant future um here the
contact details join our like please uh
more the Maria and thank you very much
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