Loomio is decision-making software designed to assist groups with the collaborative decision-making process. It is a free softwareweb application, where users can initiate discussions and put up proposals. As the discussions progress to initiating a proposal, the group receives feedback through an updatable pie chart. Loomio was built by a core group of developers, based out of Wellington, New Zealand. However, many contributors from all over the world have donated money and time, in an effort to fund the new platform. In 2014, Loomio raised over $100,000 via a Crowdfunding effort to develop Loomio 1.0. The Loomio 1.0 software supports mobile phone usage and other enhancements. As of 2016, Loomio was used in more than 100 countries, with the software being translated into 35 languages.
History
Loomio emerged from the Occupy movement. In 2012, it launched its first prototype. It was utilized in the Occupy movement in New Zealand. After using the first prototype in this, the team behind Loomio felt that it would be easier to give everyone a voice with an online software, leading to the launch of Loomio 1.0. Since the launch of Loomio 1.0, Loomio has stopped using occupy hand-signals in the interface. It has since been developed into a social enterprise, and linked to the popular trend of "platform cooperativism".
Operation
The top-level organizational structure in Loomio is the group. A group is made up of members, who are granted permission to that group. Groups can be both public and private, permitting for both privacy and transparency. Within the groups, members create discussions on specific topics. During a discussion, members of the group post comments and create proposals. Proposals solicit feedback from members on a specific proposition. Members can either agree, disagree, abstain, or block. Blocking is essentially a strong form of disagreement.
Loomio has been used by the Wellington City Council for discussion with their citizens. The used Loomio to create 461 groups, covering 18 federal departments, 13 regions of Greece, 23 prefectures, and hundreds of counties and municipalities. The Internet Party of New Zealand also used Loomio to develop policy during the campaign for the 2014 General Election. El has also adopted Loomio through their own fork called Lumio, offering a slightly different translation into Spanish for the voting options aiming at both remarking the importance of consensus and improving language style by using verbs in the first person singular. Additionally, the PPCL has promoted the use of Lumio in different areas of political discussion and group coordination inside and outside the Party. Loomio won the MIX Prize Digital Freedom Challenge in April 2014.
Projects using Loomio
Prominent projects that use Loomio for collaborative work based on democratic process:
