Intercommunity Work: The Experience of Supporting LABI's Community Governance Strengthening

In 2022, as MetaDocencia advanced its collaborative governance process, we stated, “Our greatest expectation is that our journey contributes to strengthening other communities around the world, as well as public and open spaces for knowledge, exchange, networking, and collaboration.”

In 2024, we established a collaboration agreement between the Latin American Bioimaging Network (LABI) and MetaDocencia, to develop a technical assistance proposal structured into three phases:

a) Diagnostic exploration to identify the strengths, challenges, gaps, and opportunities in LABI’s governance, institutional and community guidelines.

b) Planning of the community governance design with the goal of supporting the creation of a tool and workflow to plan the implementation of a community governance model tailored to LABI’s needs and expectations.

c) Review of agreements to assist in the analysis and support the implementation of the governance model, proposing improvements in legal and operational aspects.

The first stage motivated us to gain deeper insights into the growth opportunities and potential of this network, a regional reference in its field. To achieve this, we conducted interviews with members, developed an open survey for the community, and analyzed documentation across two dimensions of interest: institutional and community, each one with associated variables and descriptors.

In the institutional dimension, the onboarding process for individuals joining the organization was analyzed to assess experiences, perceptions, available information, support mechanisms, and clarity regarding the integration process. Additionally, we examined governance, specifically decision-making processes, and the members’ participation and understanding levels.

For the community dimension, we researched the community’s growth and future projection, aiming to assess the alignment and engagement of members with LABI’s mission and vision. We also explored the motivation and interests of network participants. Contributions, ideas, and observations were collected to strengthen community-based governance.

Based on this exploratory analysis, we developed an executive report, and we presented it to LABI before their annual meeting. This report was designed to create an open participatory experience that conveyed both the “current landscape” and the “future horizon” of community building. The goal was to make the process transparent and strengthen consensus.

It was a truly rewarding experience to participate in the 2024 LABI Meeting! Paz Míguez and Jesica Formoso were present to share the findings from the progress report and gather contributions from the LABI community. We found ourselves in a generous environment surrounded by individuals with solid and shared values and principles, open to exchange and ready to prepare for the growth of the network.

Following the meeting, we advanced in reviewing and enriching the governance documents by incorporating input and perspectives from the entire community. This effort aimed to plan iterations and improvements to best support LABI’s representativeness, participation, and daily operations.

The collaborative work took place from May to October 2024 and involved monthly meetings between MetaDocencia’s consultancy team and LABI’s coordinating team. These sessions created a trusted and constructive space, bringing our communities closer together and allowing us to envision a future of shared projects.

The work will continue through the Hive of Communities and new initiatives where we can meet, collaborate, and contribute. We were thrilled with LABI’s team’s response; here is one piece of feedback we received:

“Beyond your conceptual and practical contributions, which have allowed us to make significant progress, your warmth and kindness made this process incredibly enjoyable (even though these topics are typically quite tedious for me). I’ll personally miss these meetings."

The feeling is mutual!

If you would like to learn more about our consulting services, visit our Consulting web page.

Acknowledgments

This post has been made possible by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) grant (DOI: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.7386372), NASA Grants 80NSSC23K0854 (DOI: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.8215455), 80NSSC23K0857 (DOI: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.8250978), and 80NSSC23K0861 (DOI: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.8212072), and CZI grant DAF2021-239366 and grant DOI https://doi.org/10.37921/522107izqogv from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF, an advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation (funder DOI 10.13039/100014989).

Did you like this post? You can reuse it freely under CC by 4.0 license. Just cite it! Ascenzi, L., Míguez, M. P., & Formoso, J. (2024). Intercommunity Work: The Experience of Supporting LABI’s Community Governance Strengthening. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14288105