Not everybody can afford to travel to Lao to see the light, but it happens that it is where I saw it! Seeing it is not the right description, as it was there all the time, but so blindingly obvious that it could not be named: Emergence!
Any OVO that aim to be efficient should not be organized because it relies on disorganized workers: the bee workers mentioned earlier.
What the OVO should aim at is to provide an environment for the people to be able to work together with minimal rules, interferences and dependence from a mother-like figure organisation. It should be self govern like Wikipedia is, it should broaden space rather than constrict it, it should offer a minimum number of regulatory processes but a large number of "opportunity processes".
Most fundamentally it must be based on the expectations and interests of those who contribute to it and not try to create a system framing people! On the contrary it should fit itself to the people. The OVO should not aim at framing working environments but should let them grow by themselves.
The best example here is MySpace and Facebook. MySpace is well know for a messy interface but that did not stop people joining in and making it the archetype of social networking! (despite the pre-existence of other similar but less flexible systems).
What MySpace did was to say: here is a space, here are some efficient and trendy tools for you to use, do what you want with it. People joined in, created their environment, attracted and found others with similar interests and started to exchange with one another, learn from one another. MySpace pushed the boundary of blogging one netuniverse further.
And this is what the OVO should not be doing: Re-inventing social networking, it has been done already and we are past it!
Of course I am not blind to its fault. As it is the case with blogging, assiduity and interest in developing one's space has fadded quickly in a majority of cases.
The operational rules of the OVO should be simple, limited and favoured one thing: emergence, also known as self organisation.
What all of this is about is social networking, but with an aim: philanthropy. But nothing new here. It already exists, it already happens, it already works (see Idealist for only one example), but its full potential has yet to be revealed and exploited so that those most in need can benefit from it.
Answers will come from the people, not from the tools. The answer to cutting raw meet was no the silex, but the person who came up with the idea of silex cutting, then it was only a question of craftsmanship
More to come soon….
PS: You may wonder what that has to do with Lao.. Well, it is fascinating to observe how people in a resources limited setting come up with solutions to their everyday problems and without the Internet, simply by networking. A lot has been forgotten and need to be re-discovered.