When we launched our Open Prioritization experiment, we said that we would review how things are going every 30 days, providing opportunities for learning and adjustment. We also said we’d like to leave this phase of the experiment (pledging to determine which to crowdfund) after a max of around 90 days.

We have just completed a review at 60 days, and here is an update and some adjustments.

When we began our open prioritization experiment, we had several goals in mind. Some of these, it seems, have been very successful: Shedding light on the challenges of prioritization in general, how the commons is developed and funded, and beginning new sorts of discussions around ways to improve things, for example.

Another aim of the experiment was to try to illustrate that groups of organizations or individuals could collectively fund the advancement of the commons. Figuring out how all of this could work in practice is pretty complex and involves many variables. Learned things along the way and figuring out how to adapt is part of the experiment.

We’ve learned from feedback that the process could be easier, so we’re introducing some new changes. We’ve seen some clear differences in support and we’d like to begin to pare down the list as well.

New, easier ways to pledge

In order to make this easier, we’re expanding the number of ways that you can pledge. The main goal is for us to be able to contact you to let you know if a project that you pledged to becomes legitimately crowd-fund-able so that you can commit actual dollars. You can let us know your intent to support a project via email or via twitter. You can tweet publicly, @ mentioning igalia or privately through our DMS. You can also email us. Just be sure to mention which project(s) you would like to pledge support to - this can also be “any of these projects, I support the idea”.

Elimination round and next steps

It’s important that we move this experiment along into the next phases. The goal is to pick at least one of these that would attempt to crowdfund, so it makes sense to reduce the projects that are competing if there is data suggesting that some just don’t have the support. This also helps ensure that we don’t inadvertently negatively impact timelines. That is, we wouldn’t want someone willing to do the work to be influenced not to because it remains on our list of things we might do.

There are at least 3 different ways that we can look at support: Total dollars, as a percentage of their goal, and the total number of people pledging.

To balance all of these factors, Igalia will run a matching and elimination round for the next week. At the end of 7 calendar days, we will eliminate all the remaining projects that don’t at least fulfill one of the following conditions:

• Being over 30% of the funding
• Having 100 different pledges or more
• Having funded at least 12000 USD

Additionally, for the next 7 calendar days, Igalia will match the first $250 of pledges toward the project that receives the most new supporters.