Internationalisation

The internationalisation of the Decidim community is a reality. There are already some local MetaDecidim chapters (such as France or Japan), which have organically organised themselves. As in Metadecidim, the idea is to gather a community of speakers around Decidim to share advice, discuss approaches and propose new functionalities. Many users or administrators from the countries that use decidim do not speak English, Spanish or Catalan, so it is difficult for them to participate in the debates of the association or in Metadecidim. And we think that, with the internationalisation of the software, these types of local chapters will multiply.

During the last general assembly, the question of creating an inclusive international committee was raised, with the idea that internationalisation would be led and coordinated through the association.

In addition, in many countries, companies, individuals or institutions promote Decidim and the Association so that it is more widely adopted in the administration, with a discourse on the social contract, transparency and free and open source software. They act as a kind of Decidim ambassadors, spreading the technology, sometimes without any contact with the association.

The starting point for this debate was the Decidim Fest 2022 (see the minutes of the Open Assembly).

All this poses new challenges for us as a community. This debate aims to define two key elements to standardise the internationalisation of the community: Decidim ambassadors and local chapters.

Questions for the debate

Decidim Ambassadors

• What is a Decidim ambassador?
• How are they chosen? What are the requirements?
• What are the recognition and accountability mechanisms?

Organisation, management and governance of Local chapters

• How should the procedure for incorporating Local chapters be?
• How to give space to Local Chapters so that they have visibility in meta.decidim?
• What relationship should Local Chapters have with the Association?
• Who is in charge of making Local Chapters dynamic?