DIY Economy Retreat - Participant Exchange

[DIY Economy Retreat]

Here are a few questions to engage you in thinking about our time together and what you bring to the gathering. Please feel free to use this forum to discuss any and all things related to the retreat (including logistics such as ride shares), such as your work and mission, your reason for attending, etc.:

• Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this retreat?"
• Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?" 
• Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive outcome?"  

• What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or this gathering? (Feel free to speak to both the content and the process.)
• What are you hoping to learn more about from others? 
• What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others?  

• Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you? 
  
  Please reply to this post with your answers to these questions and other insights about yourself and your passion for being a part of this movement. This will help us get acquainted and help the organizers leverage all the great talent in attendance at the retreat to increase our output and long term work together.
  
  Thanks!

p

[leesean]

I'm going to put myself out there and be the first to respond. Here are some of my initial responses:

Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this retreat?"

New friendships/collaborations, exchange of ideas, creation of new 

Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?" 

Yet another "talk fest" conference. Lots of talk, a temporary "high," then business as usual when we go home.

Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive outcome?"  

Self-documenting sessions through group writing, sketching, creating frameworks. Rapid prototyping with paper, cardboard, clay, art supplies. Focus on visual, kinesthetic, and other forms of communication in addition to talking. This helps bring out the best of multiple personality and creative types. 

Take lots of photos and video, but create cell-phone and laptop free times for presence and focus. I know we are creating a short video and will probably have a video crew with us, but it would be cool to incorporate footage and photos taken by participants as well. 

What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or this gathering? (Feel free to speak to both the content and the process.)

Some skills: brand strategy, communication design, facilitation, movement building. It would be interesting to bring some Gamestorming activities to the process. http://www.amazon.com/Gamestorming-Playbook-Innovators-Rulebreakers-Changemakers/dp/0596804172 

What are you hoping to learn more about from others? 

What do we mean by DIY economy? Is there away we can create a larger movement that is more DIWO (Do It With Others) than solitary DIY? Are there ways we can share experience and expertise as to avoid rebuilding the wheel? Where do we go from here? How do we take this DIWO/DIY economy idea and really blow it up and make it big? What is something that anybody/everybody to do, a low barrier, first step action to further this DIY Economy? 

What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others?  

Role of design and user experience in building DIY economy. Some international perspective from my recent stint in Brazil. 

Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you? 

On of the topic of DIY, one of my first DIY experiences was during elementary school (I must have been 7 or 8 years old) when I made my own "perfume" by infusing fallen rose petals from our backyard in some plastic containers.

Lee-Sean

[mfrazier]

Glad to be part of the gathering.

1. Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this
retreat?"

Coming up with micro catalysts for the DIY economy to spread in self-
sustaining ways

2. Concerns: "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening
here?"

Coming up with strategies to score funding from top-down institutions

3. Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive
outcome?"

Explore ways to concentrate DIY innovations in experimental areas that
can scale

4. What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or

this gathering? (Feel free to speak to both the content and the
process.)

Content: Helping communities lift barriers to entrepreneurship and
innovation in free economic zones, with the ensuing rise in land
values benefiting good causes
Process: Using Heart-Head-Hands storylines for co-creation of
projects

5. What are you hoping to learn more about from others?

- 3D printing/fabs and microfarming
- Community land trusts
- Popup/flash initiatives for the design economy
- On-demand learning and open badge initiatives
- Personal currencies and land-backed currencies
- Nondominium legal frameworks for stewarding of the Commons
- Unitization (revenue sharing) in lieu of debt

6. What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others?

- See "favorites" listing at http://MiiU.org/wiki/openworld

7. Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you?

- With support from Arthur C Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Bucky Fuller,
I worked on finding sites for Earthport, a proposed global space
launch center


On Jul 9, 9:33 pm, DIY Economy Retreat <diyre...@googlegroups.com>
wrote:

> Here are a few questions to engage you in thinking about our time together
> and what you bring to the gathering. Please feel free to use this forum to
> discuss any and all things related to the retreat (including logistics such
> as ride shares), such as your work and mission, your reason for attending,
> etc.:
>

>    - Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this
>    retreat?"
>    - Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?"
>    - Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive
>    outcome?"
>
>    - What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or this

>    gathering? (Feel free to speak to both the content and the process.)

>    - What are you hoping to learn more about from others?
>    - What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others?
>
>    - Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you?

[glandua]

Dear DIY Economy Co-Creators.  I hope you enjoy the responses!  Hope to read all about all of you in the next couple days in a cascade of input and creativity!  We are already changing the world...we may as well do it right.  

By Gregory Landua

Director of Regenerative Development

Nova Monda Cacao and Chocolate

Founder

Terra Genesis International

and other lofty inspired and unfinished things far to many to name....

• Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this retreat?"

• The best thing I can imagine coming out of this retreat is a coherent shared understanding of a co-creative and regenerative economic model that is easy to participate with and can out maneuver and out "compete" business as usual.  That and some new best friends.

• Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?" 

• Arguments about irrelevant personal attachements to ideas or ideas without being able to have shared ability and understanding to hold multiple truths and perspectives as equally valid and valuable to the process.   
• Too much visionary energy with not enough pragmatic grounding in the everyday reality for users/participants of a "DIY" economy.  

• Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive outcome?"  

• Insure role playing as users of an economy is mandatory, and that we represent our users with compassion and realism.  
• creating spaces that are explicitly expansive to allow for optimal creativity
• create spaces that are explicitly contractive to allow for reality checks and design constraints.
• create ample networking opportunity and room for follow up.  

• What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or this gathering? (Feel free to speak to both the content and the process.)

• Content: Regenerative Enterprise Ecology Theory and Practice.  8 Forms of Capital Map and Multi-capital exchange theory and practice.  Current state of the economy from a start up perspective.  Permaculture in relation to economics, society and self.  
• Process:  Facilitation of expansion and contraction phases in creative process.  Facilitation of agile group design, world cafe discussion, appreciative inquiry and deep dive grounding practices.   carrying any number of embodies community roles from coyote, to magician to warrior.  

• What are you hoping to learn more about from others? 

• State of the Open Source tech (3D printing, AI possibilities, cutting edge tech as disruptive force in our world)
• Current Highest yield in investments and how that is being used to effect systemic change (not band-aid solutions)
• Successful enterprise funding strategies
• Critical learnings from alternative currency experiments. 
• Agile design
• user driven design and P2P economic principles.  
• some good songs

• What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others?  

• Permaculture Economics and Biomimicry in systems
• Collaboration process
• embodiment of values through production streams.
• small scale community governance best practices.
• Ideal world vision: simultaneously holding space for indigenous hunter gathering societies AND star-faring societies during this human speciation event.  

• Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you? 

• K.S. Robinson is my hero.  "I could have gone to mars, but I decided to stay and throw spears at things instead."  Neo-luddite with an iPHone, a facebook account and I tweet. I embrace the contradiction and hope to feed the holy and make beauty in the world with all the ridiculous ways I am a human being.  

[Josh Middleman]

Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this retreat?"

A coalition of empowered DIY Economy changemakers anxious for change and eager to build what they want to see in the world

Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?" 

Talk without action. Well meaning without commitment.  

Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive outcome?"  

As a co-host I'm a bit too close to this one, but I would say that having participants capture and share information. People who take it upon themselves to serve as facilitators and synthesizers for each of the small groups or to aid the large group in general will make this experience deeper.

What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or this gathering? (Feel free to speak to both the content and the process.)

Social entrepreneurship, social innovation foci, exposure and experience; communications and messaging; strategy and organizational design 

 

What are you hoping to learn more about from others? 

How do these practitioners, thought leaders, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, activists, community organizers and designers see themselves within the new economy movement? What role are they passionate about playing, or are they already playing that can be harnessed to create a powerful collaborative force for change. 

What each of us is committed to.

The open source maker movement and how those principles can be applied to mainstreaming New Economy principles

The future of food systems

All aspects of "New Currency" (P2P, Mutual credit, local currencies, others I've never even heard of) 

What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others?  

Vision for the DIY Economy movement 

The role I can play. The commitment I have made to this movement. 

Insights into the trends we are seeing and the framework that we believe we can create and help facilitate in order to spread New Economy values and solutions. 

At least one powerful new example of a social innovation that everyone should know about and probably doesn't

Changemaking ecosystems perspective  

Strategies for partnership building within the philanthropic community

Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you? 

Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana; Studied and worked in Cairo for 2 1/2 years before the revolution; Hiked a glacier in Argentina; Can shoot lightning bolts from my fingertips...   

[Allison Basile]

Sorry if this posted twice - I got an error message the first time. I'm looking forward to meeting you all in a few days! 

Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this retreat?"

• A vision and plan for how to turn our projects into the predominant economic system (we'll probably knock that out in the hour or so, I'd imagine ;)
• New connections and networks that will accelerate this work
• A humble analysis of who is and isn't a part of our conversations

Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?" 

• Too much focus on projects and too little focus on systems
• Precious time spent on unproductive diatribes :P

Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive outcome?"  

• Taking time to analyze systems and discuss tipping points
• Really good note taking

What are you hoping to learn more about from others? 

• What new economy experiments are working really well? 
• Collaborative design processes

What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others?  

• Impact investing landscape (Grassroots Business Fund)
• Time banking perspective (DC Time Bank)
• Cooperatives (Coop DC)
• Open learning (Citizen Circles, extended team of Open Masters)
• Organizing (Organizing Neighborhood Equity DC)

[Brandy Hall]

Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this retreat?"

• We each have clear roles and next steps as we bring the outcomes of the retreat into our daily work and communities.
  
• Networks and interconnections expand, and vision is grounded in action.
  

Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?"

• Lofty vision has no grounded outlet and practical pathway to become manifest.
  

Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive outcome?" 

• Integrate multiple creative/learning modalities (i.e. visual arts, movement, etc.).
• Lots of documentation from many collaborators and a clear story to tell that helps to keep the momentum rolling.
  

What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or this gathering? (Feel free to speak to both the content and the process.)

• Content: Organization, Eco-social entrepreneurship, building bridges/making "big ideas" simple and accessible
• Process:  PC design process, familiarity with Acorn/8 shields, lots of Playfulness

What are you hoping to learn more about from others?

• Legal strategies for joint land stewardship/ "owner"ship, land trusts, etc. and effective organizational strategies thriving land-based "demo" projects
  
• Open Source Tech
• New Currencies, certainly.
  

What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others?

• my experience working with diversified economic streams in a small regenerative enterprise
• engaging the "edges" (in communities, in business, in my own learning process...)
  
• integration of the 8Cap model to create Regenerative Enterprise Ecologies, as I've been experimenting with in the Atlanta area...
  

Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you?

• I make up songs about license plate numbers I pass on road trips to test my memory.
  

[khullar.aashish]

Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this retreat?"

Solve all the world's puzzles. On a realistic note- Direction and at least the next steps for a tangible plan of action for certain avenues within the DIY/New Economy movement.

Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?" 

The above not being established. Many have already mentioned the fear of a talk fest. Or even seeing the people that self identify as DIY Economy groups are action oriented and at very different places. 

Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive outcome?"  

Be effective catalysts. This sounds like the obvious thing to say, but good documentation and a focus on at least a framework for a concrete plan of action. This should not be done at the expense of discounting the importance understanding the deeper structural causes and imperatives responsible for the current state of affairs that we seek to tackle.

 

What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or this gathering? (Feel free to speak to both the content and the process.)

I have most recently been involved with the UN in the Rio+20 process very closely. I could speak to both the negative and positive aspects of the content and process of the institution. It is a perfect example of being formed on an idealistic action oriented vision but not quipping itself with any real muscle to do enough about the issues it seeks to resolve.

Working at a an ecological economics think tank I can bring the structural aspects of the economic system into the conversation.

What are you hoping to learn more about from others? 

More about new the application of new currencies.

Legal stuff- whatever it may be, specially as I am not an American citizen. I am totally legal though.. :-)

More efficient knowledge sharing processes.

Skills of execution in the start up area.

Innovative ownerships structures

Anything people have to offer

What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others?

My experience in main stream and partially non main stream finance and economics.

Everything I mentioned earlier in the questions.

Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you? 

I have a reputation for pressing buttons and disagreeing for the sake of it. I try to keep it under control. 

[benroberts.ipn]

>   Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this retreat?"

A set of inspiring collaborative project possibilities that have:
--prospective core team members
--seriously interested funders
--internally sustainable business models
--the potential to scale and iterate to a level where they can have
globally transformational impact.

>    - Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?"

People leaving in a state of cynicism and resignation.

>    - Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive outcome?"

Collaboratively develop a clearer framing of the purpose of our
gathering. The invitation mentions a short video, a blueprint for
future action, and personal commitments. I think it would be very
useful in getting the energy to flow and productive outcomes to happen
if the group were to be given space to go one level deeper in
outlining a shared purpose and a sense of what might be possible over
these two days. In the end, the greatest value/opportunity here might
be in simply forming connections (between both people and ideas) and
in seeding relationships that can build upon those connections going
forward. Are we prepared to relax into that possibility? Can we trust
that there really is enough time to make the "Great Transition" and
that a sense of urgency, while entirely appropriate, must also be
balanced by a degree of faith in the power and timeliness of what is
already in motion?

An openness to "emergence" also strikes me as key to getting the most
out of this diverse group. In the words of the "GroupWorks" deck
creators (www.groupworksdeck.org): "welcome the spaces between rigid
structure and unproductive chaos, numbing familiarity and paralyzing
anxiety. To work with complexity as a generative cauldron, encourage
flexibility, self-organization, and mutual discovery. Embracing what
arises, the group gives birth to new insights and forms."

I hear a concern in many of the other responses here about "all talk
and no action." The focus on vision/blueprint might be a danger zone
in this regard. What is the big "missing" at this moment? What kind
of actions can reasonably be expected to emerge from this retreat? No
doubt everyone who is showing up has some set of projects/initiatives
they are already engaged in. Some may be looking for partners or for
funding and securing that might be low hanging fruit. Discovering
synergies that might lead to new initiatives is a more ambitious
goal. I would also like to suggest that some of the "talk versus
action" concern might be misplaced. Highly relevant, energized and
engaged conversation IS action, in my view. Constraining conversation
out of a fear that we are "just talking" can stifle the dynamic energy
that holds the greatest potential for creating something truly NEW.

>    - What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or this gathering? (Feel free to speak to both the content and the process.)

Large group process experience, especially around creating space for
emergent dialogue both in person and virtually. Specific expertise
in:
--The World Cafe
--Appreciative Inquiry
--Open Space Technology
--“Six conversations” for creating transformational community
(developed by Peter Block)
--The ability to listen deeply, synthesize ideas, and communicate them
clearly

Knowledge/experience in the world of finance in general and socially
responsible investing in particular.

A compelling and unconventional perspective on the true nature of our
global economic crisis (hint: it's not the fault of our financial
system!)

A generalist’s grasp of a wide variety of subjects, including
--economics
--sustainable agriculture
--entrepreneurship
--green building
--alternative paradigms for organizational development

>    - What are you hoping to learn more about from others?

--What transformational energies do you see that are powerfully in
motion at this time?

--What new possibilities for work that can make the difference do you
see “at our fingertips?”

--Where do you see existing networks (or the possibility of cross-
pollinating between networks) that represent fertile ground for the
formation of deeper connections and relationships that could
significantly enhance the impact of existing transformational
structures, initiatives and movements, or perhaps lead to the
emergence of new ones?

--What highly functional and easily implementable new economy
platforms are available now, or could easily be created, to support
exchanges of value within networks, e.g. time banking and alternative
currencies?

>    - What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others?

The incredible potential now available to us for co-creating
transformational and “trans-local” communities at scale, via the
melding of in-person and virtual dialogue.

>    - Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you?

I turned 50 on the day the Occupy movement began.

[willszal]

Hopes: that we shift economics from an individual to a bioregional-community-orientation

Concerns: that we try centralize/try to find one ideal model

Guidance: living in the ignorance worldview, focus on being

Skills: photography [flash documentation], deep conversation

Learn: how others are feeling about new economics

Share: gift economics

Interesting: I have a perfect life [perfection being an internal state]

[kyra.kristof]

Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this retreat?"

That participants form the central of a spiral in which we practice using new tools and inhabiting a culture of new economy amongst ourselves, then bring appropriate adaptations to our local communities.

Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?"

Too much conversation, not enough co-creation.

Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive outcome?" 

Embrace a deep respect for the unique contexts in which individual expressions of the DIY (or Do It Ourselves) economy is emerging and emphasize the remixing of solutions rather than replication or scaling. Create containers for the on-going co-development of frameworks that can guide newcomers to successfully adapt our work (and that of others) to truly meet their communities' needs.

What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or this gathering? (Feel free to speak to both the content and the process.)

adapting existing technologies to serve new purposes - hacking what exists to make things that are new; design; framework development; creative strategic exploration

What are you hoping to learn more about from others?

The cultures and assumptions that are guiding their work

What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others? 

Frameworks for determining interoperability in the new economy; connections between agriculture, entrepreneurship and new economy

Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you?

"Doc Martin lima beans". You'll have to ask me in person to find out what this means... :)

[adam.e.white]

Look forward to meeting everyone tomorrow. For now:

Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this retreat?"

We can understand and articulate some of the values and the ideas that drive and especially create this "DIY Economy"

Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?" 

While I'm excited to discuss resilience, independence and community, the line between romanticizing and respecting a 'culture' can be very fine. 

Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive outcome?" 

We can consider what the difference between the ideal DIY Economy and the actionable one might be

What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or this gathering? (Feel free to speak to both the content and the process.)

Systems thinking (process) and lots of experience working with and designing for informal systems in developing countries (content)

What are you hoping to learn more about from others? 

interactions between biological and human systems

What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others?  

Some perspectives and interesting case studies from around the world. Likely from recent work on community data and entrepreneurship in slums in Kenya.

Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you?

Before deciding to go to school for engineering I almost ended up in a conservatory for technical direction in scenic design. I was always intrigued how in theater you create the facades of a place as cheaply, quickly, materialistic as possible--because they never need any depth.

[joel]

See you soon, Companeros...  Blessings on our gathering.  Love, Joel

Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this retreat?" Those of us into it do yoga together every day; we have a blast collaboratively designing a social entrepreneurial  business venture to demonstrate sustainable commerce from the local to the global level.

Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?"  Blah... blah... blah...  and we take ourselves too seriously to build deep, long-term relationships and have fun.

Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive outcome?"  Avoid committee of the whole strategic planning.  After initial getting to know one another time and a little high-level strategic sharing, use Open Source organizational principles (and Dee Hock's design process) to get people into meaningful work groups that come back with real content for consideration.

What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or this gathering?  Holistic systems change perspective; social entrepreneurial business experience; deep knowledge of money innovation and sustainable economic design principles; networking maniac who loves people and heart-to-heart connections; peer counselor/peer coach; playful and creative

What are you hoping to learn more about from others?  What's going on in your world... How do you take exquisite care of yourself, your family and your social change fellow travelers?  Know anyone looking to fund and/or help lead a business-led, market-based and profit-driven model of transformational commerce? (Think FaceBook meets PayPal meets Groupon meets Sustainable Prosperity!)

What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others?  Design principles of Dual Currency Commerce; living a commitment to healthy balanced lives and social transformation; IMHO, the 1% is a horrific stereotype and the 100% of us already occupies everywhere - only fresh thinking and open hearts will move us beyond the left versus right polarization and stalemate in politics and economics.

Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you?

I have a blend of revolutionary and mainstream sensibilities.  I grew up like a preacher's kid in a Minneapolis, MN family that owned a Jewish mortuary; living at the intersection of business, community service and spirituality.  I joined ROTC in 1969 before dropping out to join the anti-Vietnam War movement.  I became a 40 year activist, social entrepreneur and spiritual seeker.  

[dcstiver]

Hi, all. Dustin Stiver here from Pittsburgh. I look forward to meeting everyone tomorrow. 

Now, on to the questions: 

Hopes: "What is the best thing you can imagine coming out of this retreat?"

• Gaining a better understanding of DIY Economy principles and becoming part of a group of folks that are ready to implement these burgeoning ideas. 

Concerns:  "What is the worst thing you can imagine happening here?"

• Banal conversation that leads to little action. 

Guidance: "What could we do here that would further the positive outcome?"

• Allow time for attendees to build relationships and outline action steps that can be implemented after the retreat. 

What do you think are the skills you bring to your work, and/or this gathering?

• Philanthropic experience, nonprofit leadership training, creative problem-solving skills , a collaborative bent...

What are you hoping to learn more about from others?

• The economic principles underlying the DIY Economy movement (can we call it that yet?)
• The vision for this work. 
• How my organization can help further this mission. 

What are you hoping to teach/share more about with others? 

• The critical role that grassroots/storefront philanthropy plays in spurring movements such as this. 
• The value of partnership, collaboration, and network-building. 

Tell us one one odd/interesting fact about you?

• I help curate a fantastical annual photography adventure called FRIENDshoot. 

See you all soon,

Dustin 

www.sproutfund.org