I got sucked into a project that consumed the majority of my free time over the past three months.
Remember how I facilitated an online learning session for poly leaders in the beginning of August? Through that session and the discussions that followed, the three attendees and I became friends. We also started brainstorming ideas on how to create greater public awareness about polyamory and how to help other poly folk feel like they’re able to contribute to “the movement” without necessarily being led (some pockets within the poly community frown upon the notion of community leaders).
The idea that formed from that discussion was a website/organization that put tools and systems in people’s hands. We wanted a site that could be used as a “one stop shop” for poly resources. In addition, we also wanted a site that would allow for members to add and contribute as they wanted (rather than take on a long-term commitment).
Thus, Modern Poly was formed.
There’s a core group of 8 people that do the planning, development, coding, promoting, and monitoring. We’re keeping the number of coordinators/organizers small for ease of decision making (less cooks in the kitchen). A smaller number of organizers also means a higher amount of visibility on what each person is contributing, so everyone feels more motivated to participate. The development of the site and the organization has been a pretty awesome experience in learning how to communicate with people cross-country and delegate based on people’s strengths and abilities.
Did I mention it only took 3 months to build the site, even with everyone having very busy personal lives? 
Right now, we have a community site that has close to 200 members. We are starting to develop the personal and leadership training resource component. In addition, we learned that one of the larger poly leadership organizations is interested in someone taking on the project of doing a wiki for keeping track of polyamory groups. The wiki software was easy to install (as in, the out of the box installation took 5 minutes), and we’re putting together a plan of how to go from concept to completion so that the average person can help out without having to learn massive amounts of coding. (Ease of use = more people use it, in theory).
That’s what I’ve been working on for the past 3 months. I’ve also been hit with massive writer’s block. Hopefully when I get the next phase of Modern Poly completed I will feel inspired enough to write (and possibly redo the layout of this site again).
