It was a fireside discussion about emergent democracy with Joi at Foo Camp 2008 that planted the seed for CIRCUS foundation’s Themis project and the chapter on emergent democracy I contributed to O’Reilly’s “Open Government” book. The Themis project gave birth to One Click Orgs so there’s a poetic circularity in Joi getting involved with the project now.

In joining One Click Orgs’ advisory board Joi is in the distinguished company of Oliver Goodenough (Co-Director Berkman Center Law Lab, Harvard University), David Johnson (Senior Resident Fellow, Center for Democracy and Technology) and Matt Jones (Partner, BERG). Joi has some far-sighted ideas about how virtual corporate structures will enable changes in financial and organisational models. We look forward to working with him to turn some of these ideas into reality.

Oliver Goodenough is co-director of the Law Lab at Harvard University’s Berkman Center and also professor of law at Vermont Law School. He leads Harvard’s “Virtual Corporations” project and is one of the architects of the amendmants passed by the State of Vermont making it the world’s first jurisdiction to support entirely virtual corporations.

David Johnson is Senior Resident Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Prior to this he was Visiting Professor at New York Law School where he established the “Virtual Company” project. David (working with Oliver Goodenough) was an architect of the legislative reforms creating the Vermont Virtual Corporation. He is particularly interested in the potential of virtual organisations to enable new forms of peer production.

Matt Jones is a partner at BERG, the London-based design consultancy. He was a co-founder of the travel website Dopplr, director of user experience for the Nokia NSeries range and creative director behind the original BBC News website.

Oliver, David and Matt’s experience and wisdom will be invaluable in guiding One Click Orgs’ strategy over the coming months.

We were careful to observe established practice in convening and running the founding meeting, conscious that beyond this point we’d have few conventions on which to grasp. One of the nice things about unincorporated associations is that they are governed by the law of contract which means the members can collectively agree to adopt whatever rules they wish. So long as there is a clear paper trail leading up to the founding vote the courts will adjudicate that the constitution adopted at that point (with any subsequent modifications) is the legitimate basis on which the members have agreed to come together.

One of the most important characteristics of the Themis Constitutions is the complete absence of machinery for convening and running meetings. Therefore it was distinctly ironic to find ourselves going to such lengths in connection with the founding meeting. As the platform matures we’ll be able to streamline even this part of the process (though this first meeting will still be necessary) by providing a “wizard” which automates the production and circulation of the agenda, guides the convenor step by step through the workflow then circulates minutes at the end of the process.

From the moment of the founding vote One Click Organisations was irreversibly locked to the decision-making tools hosted on the system. Every decision registered there is binding on the organisation. As far as we can tell this is the first time anyone’s done anything like this. Whilst the system remains at such an early stage of development it’s slightly nerve-wracking. Day by day we’re thinking of more edge cases. What’s the legal situation if the server fails? Or if a bug leads to spurious decisions? Gradually we’ll add cover for cases like this in the constitution, but this definitely feels like terra incognita.

We’ve had a lot of offers of help and advice which have been gratefully received. 2009 promises to be an exciting year for One Click!