Fun Check!

[Alan Webb]

Hi everyone,

Whenever we were playing some sport or game as kids, my parents would always stop us 10-15 minutes in and call a "fun check!"  It was an opportunity for us to tell them how excited we were about the new friend we just met, to tell them about the cool thing we just did, or to start crying because we weren't having any fun and wanted to go home.  Whatever it was, we always welcomed the call for a "fun check."

Now that we are all a week or two into our respective online courses and new citizen circles, I wanted to call a citizen circles and SoSI fun check.  This is just an opportunity for us to check in with each other and share or ask anything that needs to be.  What challenges have you been facing so far?  What new discoveries have you made?  Do you need help?  Are things different than what you expected?  Do you feel like participants in your courses are on setting goals for themselves, forming communities either online or offline that they want to stay committed to until the end of the course, developing cool project ideas, etc?  If not, how can we help each other?

A few updates I know of are that:

- Women as Social Innovators (dubbed WaSI) has formed local groups in D.C., New Orleans, and Chicago which have all begun meeting, adapting the syllabus to their local goals, etc.  They have really hit a nerve with this concept and this one is definitely going viral.

- The Sustainability Studio had its first call last week with Geoff Habron from MSU who helped explain their sustainability competencies criteria and had each of us discuss which ones we would focus on.  I am participating in this one and, in addition to some really cool projects, I'm personally excited by the idea that we could be developing a rubric for a "love" badge (love the planet, love your community, etc.)

- The Conflict Resolution group has 42 people signed up.  They have had some great activity on the P2PU forum sparked by David Ury's TED talk.  They have had big contingents forming in Toronto and in D.C., and virtual study groups self-organizing also.

Anything from the rest you want to add to update the group?

You can either:

- Just start a discussion on this group, any time you like, or just reply to this email.

- Propose a time and topic for call (maybe next week?) for anyone interested in talking, or just tell me you're interested and I can propose a time.

I hope everyone is doing well!

Best,

Alan

[Alison Jean Cole]

SoSI, this is soo exciting to see all the developments in the first week.

Also, course organizers - the orientation never really "ends" so if you have very P2PU.org/course-organizer centered questions you can ALWAYS ask there too.  We're here for you!

Keep up the amazing work.

Best,
ALISON
p2pu.org/users/alison

[Laura White]

Hi everyone,

Here is my fun report!

My citizen circle (Women as Social Innovators at Tulane) started on
Saturday. It was really great, we realized that there was a real need
to have a space where interested people could discuss social
innovation and ideas without feeling pressure to start ventures. That
led to a discussion about what social innovation is, who cares, and
how we can talk to our friends about social innovation to get a better
understanding of what student programming should be doing on campus.

Our interview project remains, but now it's even more interesting
because we need to figure out how to get these insights from our
friends. We don't want to make an awkward survey, but glean insights
from discussions that really get to what people care about. It can't
really be an interview either, because that's one-way and we don't
want to put people on the spot. I got some inspiration hearing from
Julie about her citizen circle's decision to host classes on each
individuals in the citizen circle. Maybe there is a way for us to
understand what our friends care about by compiling what we think that
person is good at, what that person seems dedicated to, and then
inviting that person to build off of what we came up with.

I don't know if that makes sense, but basically we need a way to build
a picture of how social innovation relates to Tulane students'
interests in a really organic way. Any feedback/ideas would be really
helpful!

Laura

> > some great activity on the P2PU forum sparked by David Ury's TED talk<http://p2pu.org/sosi/node/14427/forums/25157>.

> >  They have had big contingents forming in Toronto and in D.C., and virtual
> > study groups self-organizing also.
>
> > Anything from the rest you want to add to update the group?
>
> > You can either:

> > - Just *start a discussion on this group*, any time you like, or just
> > reply to this email.
> > - *Propose a time and topic for call* (maybe next week?) for anyone