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Roads Not Taken

Threads that surface in meeting notes or planning documents in the source OGM Wiki, then don't get follow-up. Different from Minority Threads (single-mention concepts in any kind of page); narrower: these are things that were going to happen and then didn't, or that the corpus simply doesn't record happening.

This page is necessarily speculative — absence-of-evidence isn't evidence-of-absence. A thread missing from the wiki may have been pursued elsewhere (Mattermost, Notion, off-wiki conversations). But the wiki is OGM's stated long-term memory, and absences in the wiki are themselves a signal.

OGM Bootstrap → independent 501(c)(3)

From the MOU itself (OGM Stewardship/Documents/OGM Bootstrap MOU/1. OGM Bootstrap-Lionsberg Memorandum of Understanding.md):

"This agreement may lead to either a longer-term relationship with the Lionsberg Community, or the spin-off of OGM Bootstrap into a new and independent nonprofit entity of its own."

The MOU explicitly anticipates spin-off as one of two paths. The spin-off path doesn't appear to have been taken (the wiki contains no incorporation paperwork, no transition planning, no announcement of a new 501(c)(3)). The corpus thins after May 2021, which is consistent with either: spin-off happened off-wiki, or the question quietly settled into "stay with Lionsberg."

A 501(c)(3) successor doesn't exist in the wiki's record. Whether it was a road actively rejected, or a road that simply didn't get walked, isn't documented.

Federating Thursday calls

From OGM Stewardship/Documents/Stewardship Dashboard.md:

"how do we federate Thursday calls"

Asked once, in a list of issues for re-formatting Thursday calls. No follow-up call notes elaborate it. Federation here probably means running parallel sessions by region or topic — a real architectural move. Not pursued, or pursued without leaving wiki-record.

Identity and Handles

OGM Stewardship/Documents/Stewardship Dashboard.md:

"Identity and Handles

  • first discussed on OGM Stewards Jam Sesh, 2021-03-30
  • let's come back to this at some point"

The dashboard itself notes the deferral. Let's come back to this is an explicit road-not-taken marker. The OGM Community Patterns page touches on Handles (real name, nickname, pseudonymity, anonymity) — but as design space, not policy.

Stewardship Bat Signal — practice alerts

OGM Stewardship/Documents/Stewardship Dashboard.md:

"Stewardship Bat Signal

  • first discussed on OGM Stewards Jam Sesh, 2021-03-30
  • use @channel in mattermost [ogm] Stewards
    • we hope to get to the point where everyone sees and acts (if necessary) on it within ~12 hours
  • shall we have practice alerts a couple times in the future?"

The practice-alerts question is asked. No record of practice alerts being run.

OGM Code of Conduct

Referenced from OGM Structure/OGM Structure.md:

"OGM has:

  • …
  • an OGM Code of Conduct"

The page doesn't exist. Either the Code lives elsewhere (Discourse forum, Mattermost), or the Code was projected as a need but not drafted. A typical true orphan, but worth noting under Roads Not Taken because its absence is in tension with the structural page asserting it exists.

OGM Onboarding 201

OGM Structure/OGM Structure.md references OGM Onboarding 201 as a follow-on to OGM Onboarding 101. The 101 page exists; 201 doesn't. A planned next step in the onboarding curriculum that didn't get made.

Wiki Curator / Information Architect role

Organizations/Open Global Mind.md:

"Roles we need to fill:

  • Outreach coordinator (defining and coordinating how OGM approaches other orgs)
  • Wiki Curator/Information Architect"

Both roles are listed as needed. There's no record of either being filled. The wiki itself accumulates Orphan Gems, True Orphans, and Hidden Substance — exactly the kind of debt a Wiki Curator would address. The role description is a road-not-taken whose absence is visible across the discovery pages of this wiki.

OGM Topics infrastructure

OGM Topics Ops/Design Bible.md — 4 inbound, 14-char body. The design infrastructure for OGM Topics was projected (a Design Bible, Roles, Features) but not built out. Either the Topics initiative pivoted into the substantive Marley/QFB work (also in the Topics-area), or the Topics-as-such direction quietly closed.

Practice alerts, weekly retros, midpoint reviews

The MOU and project plan templates reference:

These are governance rituals named in templates and the MOU but not described or recorded happening.

Six speeches, two debates, two contests

From OGM Structure/OGM Infrastructure (Evolving).md under Contagion:

  • Reach out to six "neighboring" organizations
  • Give six public speeches about OGM and its work
  • Bridge to two other open data sources, document and publicize the results
  • Host two contests to explore new CX and UI use cases
  • Host two debates using visualization tools

This Sprint-1 plan has specific, countable deliverables. The wiki contains no record of the six speeches given, the two contests run, the two debates held. They may have happened (Pete and Jerry both speak publicly often); the wiki doesn't capture them. The Contagion layer in OGM is, per the source, the most acted-out and least documented of the five layers.

What counts as "not taken"

Not all roads-not-taken are mistakes. Some were correct deferrals. Some were reframed and absorbed. Some were pursued elsewhere. The wiki's silence on a thread isn't a verdict.

Three patterns worth noting:

  1. Many roads-not-taken cluster around the bootstrap → independent transition. The 501(c)(3), the Code of Conduct, the formal roles — all are gaps that would have been filled if OGM were institutionalizing. The corpus is consistent with a deliberate (or organic) choice to remain in bootstrap-with-Lionsberg mode.
  2. The Contagion layer leaves the least documentation. "Being out in public" is the layer least captured by a wiki built for stewardship and knowledge.
  3. Editorial/process roads (Wiki Curator, page maturity, midpoint retros) are recurringly not-taken. The wiki has more to say than its editorial infrastructure has been built to maintain.

Related

Methodology: Each "road not taken" here is a thread invoked in a meeting note, project plan, or vision document, then absent from subsequent corpus pages. This is interpretive — happy to remove or correct items here if the road was taken and we missed the trail.

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