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Summary: Added bio stubs and a bio for me
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< Lots of times we get questions about what constitutes membership in the Star Community. The answer to this point is that we don’t have a defined membership status. We’ve traditionally said if you’re participating in the community then you’re probably a member. The strategy of not defining membership has been a conscious one—creating a “bright line” definition has always seemed awkward and confusing because membership depends so much on the context of the person’s involvement. Do they live in one of the houses? Do they have life situations which limit their involvement? Are they involved in one area of our life but not others? StarCommunityMembership
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> Lots of times we get questions about what constitutes membership in the Star Community. The answer to this point is that we don’t have a defined membership status. We’ve traditionally said if you’re participating in the community then you’re probably a member. The strategy of not defining membership has been a conscious one—creating a “bright line” definition has always seemed awkward and confusing because membership depends so much on the context of the person’s involvement. Do they live in one of the houses? Do they have life situations which limit their involvement? Are they involved in one area of our life but not others?
This is a draft of text to go on Website2021.
Description of our membership matrix meeting results
Jack Pollard is a Ryan House resident (...)
Rea Clute is a Sky House resident (...)
Lion Kimbro is a Ryan House resident (...)
Ben Sibelman is a Ryan House resident whose strong skills include writing, programming, graphic design, and ritual design. He is in the process of earning a Master's degree in Human-Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington, and is using what he has learned so far to design tools and practices that help the community. He is also a member of SolSeed, a small religion founded in 2005, which embodies his passion for acting in service to all life.
Lots of times we get questions about what constitutes membership in the Star Community. The answer to this point is that we don’t have a defined membership status. We’ve traditionally said if you’re participating in the community then you’re probably a member. The strategy of not defining membership has been a conscious one—creating a “bright line” definition has always seemed awkward and confusing because membership depends so much on the context of the person’s involvement. Do they live in one of the houses? Do they have life situations which limit their involvement? Are they involved in one area of our life but not others?
However, we wanted to explore this topic in greater depth. On Sunday (May 23rd,2021) 12 of us explored our thinking, employing a special focus group technique called the Delphi process, about what makes a person a member of the Star Community. The goal was to get a better understanding of what are the dimensions or characteristics by which we intuitively feel someone is a Star Community member. We didn’t try to create a definition of membership. Also, there was no expectation of reaching consensus. We did, in the end, converge naturally on several dimensions which we felt are associated with Star Community membership.
The table (http://star-community.org/wiki/download/Delphi2021File) shows the specific dimensions that people nominated as indicating Star Community membership are in the regular black font, and the number of times that dimension was endorsed. For better understanding, the dimensions were later grouped into supercategories (labeled with the bold font). The votes for each dimension are listed for the four phases of the Delphi process (described below). Note that with 12 people attending, a vote of 10-12 should be taken as strong endorsement of that dimension.
Results:
A fairly strong consensus emerged of how we recognize someone as a Star Community member. The supercategories of: 1) Commitment to Personal Growth; 2) Participation in Community/Having a Community Orientation; 3) Commitment to Star Community Philosophy and Ideas; and 4) Active Involvement With the Development of Star Community Philosophy and Ideas, were the top four supercategories.
The lowest weight supercategories were the Qualities of the Person (e.g., maturity) and a simple unqualified Identification as Being in the Community.
In sum, we feel greater clarity about what constitutes membership in Star Community.
It’s worth noting again that we did not create any “bright line” description of membership. We are still quite happy with the fuzzy, intuitive and contextual understanding of who is a member of the community.
Description of the Delphi Process:
The Delphi process (or Delphi method; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_method) was modified slightly to meet our particular needs. There were four steps to the process.
Phase 1: First, people individually nominated dimensions which they intuitively felt indicated SC membership. There was no fixed number of dimensions that needed to be nominated. Rather, the goal was to make sure that there were no important dimensions left out, so that the Star Community membership “space” was fully represented. Second, there was a vote showing how many people endorsed each dimension. The number of people who endorsed a particular dimension is listed in black. A count of the total number of endorsements for at least one of the dimensions in the supercategory is listed in blue.
Phase 2: In Phase 2 everyone met in small groups (2-3 people) with people whom they thought would be likely to agree with their viewpoint. The small groups then identified the particular dimensions they thought were important in marking SC membership. Each group had one vote, therefore the smaller number of votes in Phase 2 than in Phase 1.
Phase 3: In Phase 3 everyone again met in small groups, but this time with people whom they thought would be likely to disagree with their viewpoint. The small groups then identified the those specific dimensions they could come to an agreement on that were important in marking SC membership. Each group again had one vote.
Phase 4: Following some additional discussion, in Phase 4 people again voted individually for those dimensions they thought were important in recognizing someone as a SC member. During the Phase 4 discussion several new, previously undiscussed dimensions were nominated as possibly being important and they were added into the voting process. Those dimensions show no recorded votes for Phases 1-3. Again, a count of the total number of votes for at least one of the dimensions in the supercategory is listed in blue.