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Here’s the latest episode of my EBD TV experiment, giving a first look at what’s up right now in Chatham at the Emerging Leader Labs incubator.
As mentioned in a previous post, the vision for the Labs is to create a replicable model that brings underutilized physical spaces together with groups of passionate, budding entrepreneurs, covers the basic costs of living and working via gift economy, and provides coaches and tools to help them make their ideas happen. A kind of startup accelerator to help build regional economies.
During the current 6 week Seed Project, a group has assembled to actually build out the core infrastructures for the Labs and prepare the physical space for occupation.
The first few weeks have been spent painting floors, covering the gutted walls with fabric and whiteboards, shop-vac-ing, and so on.
Time is being spent experimenting with “Social DNA” processes, like Presencing, as a tool for getting into group alignment and flow. The hackpad is here. They’ve also made a nice photo montage as the story of the Labs is unfolding.
Participants have also been tracking weekly Intentions, Accomplishments and Failures and putting them in the Seed Project Logs, so there is a record of outcomes from this development phase.
For anyone interested in getting involved, check out the Wish List of gifts the Labs would be happy to receive, or apply to participate in the Fall program. Follow progress on twitter at @EmLeaders, like on Facebook, or contact us with other suggestions.
emergent by design 
Yay! Go local, connect the grid. Thank you all for doing this.
One of the key lessons I take away from the fruitful discussions at The Next Edge is that in their intenseness they swiftly exhaust my tolerance for enjoying talk, making way for my urge to act.
Giving a talk about everyday sustainability yesterday in Tokyo I was overjoyed meeting a man I admire a lot, for his doing: Gunter Pauli. Look him up.
Btw here is my preso, links to a video of his. http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/cocreatr/everyday-sustainability-esd-forum-2012-tokyo
Is it possible to ask questions from a distance? I am wondering if the Weekly Intentions are co-created somehow by the group. If so, how exactly are they generated? is there any group process to keep people attuned to the Intentions? For example, does the group meet twice a day or something like that?
More generally, is it possible to outline what regular processes are in place that give the group some structure?
Thanks in advance!
Hi Suresh–
I’d be happy to share from the standpoint of a Lab participant of the last two weeks. We are spending around an hour each Monday morning gathering a list of intentions to reference through the coming week’s activity. These are statements made by/as individuals, which really just point towards opportunity for collaboration.
There is no distinct process yet for resolving shared intentions/directions for the group as a whole, although it is generally clear when we have surfaced targets that depend on substantial joint effort. So far, in a less concrete area of learning and development, we have invested a good deal of time and energy establishing group coherence that enhances the “backchannel” signaling for everyone, such that communication and awareness around mutual objectives is remarkably efficient and synchronous. This is a really interesting and powerful feature of the program, which is difficult to “instructionalize” and share in cookbook form–our aim is to learn by doing, from those who carry and facilitate valuable practices and personal competencies, and thence share by demonstrating in our subsequent work and relationships. That’s where the “social DNA” reference arises. Many codons. Hopefully, such know-how will begin to imbue the visible affairs and accomplishments which can be shared in media documents like this video.
I have been feeling the inclination to structure processes and product myself, and met with some valid resistance or caution from others in the group, due to general human tendency to fixate there on the overt reductions, and fall into conflict or stagnation for loss of the living vital system of participation. Certainly there is balance in this dance, with feedback from peers, and co-evolution. It is our aim to begin organizing patterns that stabilize beneficially for us, while holding space for divergence and emergence.
We do meet each morning to voice “bite-sized” objectives for each day, which orient towards the overriding intentions of the week (and perhaps some unplanned adventures). If you’d like to check out a couple of outputs which participants have shared recently around this conversation, browse here:
http://emergingleaderlabs.org/The_Group_Organism_journal_ben
http://emergingleaderlabs.org/Signaling_Session
…and stay tuned for more real, good, news!
Brilliant inspiring example folks! I will come visit you guys in November, can’t wait to be on the ground with you and share the learning journey.
Hey Ben – good to see you are a part of this project! I am interested in understanding what is working and what is not so please keep in touch!
A couple of other questions… how do you interface with the coaches? … What about livestreaming?
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