Gathering #14 July 29, 2021 - Meeting Jennifer & Robert

This is the proposal for tomorrow (thanx @Alex Rodriguez for your help):

1.Entering in the space. Participants will arrive and stay in silence with the camera off. Once we all in the Zoom room, Alex will audio guide us into the space.

2.Quick check-in: name, location, context (feelings, practical matters, etc.) to take into account during the gathering

3.Thank the guest their interest for our work. The importance of our first guests. I will read the outline of the session, check if it is fine

4.I will read Ronen's invitation to the crew.

5.Questions to the guests:

• What are you more curious about our crew? What would you like to learn about it today?

• What kind of work are you doing that resonates with the one of the crew?
  

6.Questions to the crew Round of 10 minutes max interventions:

• How is it going for me? How is it meeting so far my initial expectations?

• Wishes and expectations for the future of the crew and its work?
  

7.Questions to the guests:

• What feeling/thoughts/ideas would you like to share with us after knowing better the crew?
  

8.Quick next steps that emerged in the conversations (if any), check out, Alex audio guide us out.

Thank you all for yesterday's gathering. It was special to have new faces in our space after over a year, and I felt that the quality of the space changed in a good and refreshing way. I arrived more tired into the space than I realized but it did not matter because I felt free to be myself and mess the planning and get your support to keep things flowing quite smoothly. I am also very happy that even being our first time together, the space was safe enough to share very personal stuff.

So thank you all as well for making our remote microsolidarity space something quite different to just-another-Zoom-meeting. You know that I treasure that we can use our active imagination to enter into a space that feels actually as a shared space (and that I give to it an ontological status).

I think that the experience informs both our generative process and the generative process we are collectively writing. I also deeply noticed gender diversity, something that we were aware our crew would benefit from day one. Possibly the most obvious sign is the emergence of the mothering metaphor, which I have the feeling that I did not dare to think about (despite I have been reading a lot lately about the deep archetypal meaning of the mother-daughter relationship of Demeter and Persephone). And despite @Alex Rodriguez and I talked about parenting on our last dyad we had to follow up threads of our previous gathering. But the way @Jennifer Damashek contextualize it made total sense and did not sound maternalistic, or of course, paternalistic. It is not us that we have to have this mother quality but the space itself because there is a lot of parallelism of what the remote microsolidarity space intends to do and mothering does. Take generosity as an example. As I said, if something made Ronen stand out from the rest of us in the general Loomio space was his generosity. Thanks @Josh Fairhead for pointing out the spiritual and hedonistic over transactional nature of our activity in the crew so far. Of course, the transactional dimension is important and not bad in itself, but a transactional view alone or as the main driver would have not triggered not maintained alive this crew.

I have to remind, that the material conditions (and money in particular) for this crew to exist is a matter of concern for us and we have explicitly talked about this from the beginning (and is an ongoing but not pressing conversation). So it is important. Yet, my interpretation of the lack of interest for @Ronen Hirsch's call by the rest of the Microsolidarity Loomio "community" is precisely the lack of clear transactional perspectives. And that is an important thing to keep in mind. In the end is going successfully into the market, with the right group of people that cares for you and the group, and doing meaningful work, the ultimate promise of microsolidarity. This is an interesting paradox/riddle we have to deal with, and I do not doubt that the "mothering" and the "finding my way" perspectives will contribute to illuminate. Because "finding my way" as @Robert Damashek put it, is also finding the right material conditions for me being in the world.

Thank you @Toni Blanco for initiating the meeting impressions thread. This time, I did not have it any me. I took the liberty and enjoyed sitting back, without doing any holding and submerging myself in present.

I felt grateful for the space yesterday. I enjoyed the questions that @Robert Damashek and @Jennifer Damashek chose to ask and I soooo enjoyed listening to you and @Josh Fairhead and @Alex Rodriguez reply. I felt that you were each replying with flow and ease, each from what was present for you. I enjoyed that no one felt a need to shoulder a responsibility of "officially representing the crew." And I so enjoyed that your answers felt resonant, true, and whole. This resonated deeply for me within my current "circumcision" context. I felt like: "these ARE my people."

I also felt ease. This connected to a feeling I previously expressed in relation to the dyad Toni and Alex recently had. I felt that there was no need for me to step into some kind of leadership role. I felt resilient trust in the small collective we have formed. In this gathering, I could almost taste the resilience ... the subtle but robust foundations we've invested in. I felt that in the ease with which Robert & Jennifer were able to step in. I wonder, and am looking forward to hearing from Robert & Jennifer, if they could feel this too, if it helped them to feel "oriented" in the space?

I want to bookmark that we identified but have not yet addressed the question of "what next?" I also want to remind us all that this question is not a vacant field. We had a soft end-of-year objective of sharing our work with others. The meeting with Jennifer and Robert has teased this out earlier then anticipated. For me, this is a good sign that we are aligned with what "wants to come into being." This thread also surfaced naturally in my dyad conversations with Jennifer. She asked that the sharing be extended to Robert. She also expressed a wish to connect with others and expand the sharing.

I also invite Jennifer and Robert to share (either here asynchronously or in a future gathering) if you have a feeling, given what you know about the crew and the work so far, of what you wish to bring to the crew or to what you feel you wish to contribute (I acknowledge that these questions may be premature in me).

Finally, I want to acknowledge the money thread. Gathering 9 was, I believe, the one dedicated to money. This is also why I felt that the money & value agreement set of generative sequences needed to be a part of the core generative sequence (with which we reach out to the world). This is not obviously true in terms of "minimum viable product." But here, both out of respect of the nature of the work we chose to take on together and because of the people I imagine this work we are taking on may serve, a "money pillar" was needed. I also felt that it needed to point towards new and unknown potentials without being too vague or non-commital.

I remember that this initial brainstorming I posted of alternatives/possibilities of income in this stage kind of fueled the conversation.

Thank you for inviting us here. I deeply appreciate the time we spent together yesterday and I am excited about the possibilities that lie ahead.

I felt comfortable in the space and at ease. I felt connected to everyone there by the end of the meeting. When I reflect back on the experience, I sense an intense vibrancy. The four of you created a beautiful container and I feel privileged to be welcomed into it.

Thank you, @Toni Blanco, for your reflections. I love being in spaces where real communication is taking place rather than rehashed words. I'm curious why you would not dare think about mothering related to what you have created? I'm glad there wasn't sense of being maternalistic in what I shared. My sense of this group is there is a balance of mother/father and boy/girl child in each of you, which allows for a whole experience of life. There is freedom to express any of those aspects of being human at any time you like.

Ronen (@Ronen Hirsch) asked about what I wish to bring to the crew. I think I don't have enough time to fully answer this now, but it brings me to something @Toni Blanco said. What I remember him saying was that most people probably wouldn't have the same kind of resonant experience that Robert and I did when presented with the generative process. While I agree that is true, I also think there are millions of people on this planet right now who WOULD resonate like Robert and I did, and I know of a few of them. 🙂 At the moment, Robert and I are on our way out of town to spend the weekend with his family so it will have to wait to share more about that.

I'd like to share a few things about my work right now. I am transitioning from a homeschooling mom to a new phase in my life, and have been delighted with the opportunities the universe has been bringing to me.

A couple of months ago I was invited to join the Post Growth Institute and I love working with this group. I am a volunteer and work in two circles right now: the Offers and Needs Market Circle and the Fundraising Circle. The PGI is organized using sociocracy and they are a unique organization.

I was also invited to join a study group with Cooperation Humboldt which starts in August. I attended a solidarity economy conference with them a few months ago and was sent an invitation to join the study group subsequently. While Cooperation Humboldt is on the West Coast, they are beginning to expand nationally to help others replicate their model of building the solidarity economy in the United States. A big part of their work is partnering with and being led by indigenous communities. The Wiyot people are the first indigenous people in the US to reclaim their homeland. It's quite a story. Cooperation Humboldt supports the work of the Wiyot people and wants to support others in working with indigenous communities. Participation in a study group with Cooperation Humboldt is a step towards leadership in their network.

I am a member of the Virginia Solidarity Economy Network. Right now we are working on mapping the Solidarity Economy in Virginia, including some aspects of the history of solidarity here. Over the winter and spring our group participated in a series of workshops offered by the Highlander Center, so I also have a connection there.

Here are some links from my post. https://www.postgrowth.org/ https://offersandneeds.com/ https://cooperationhumboldt.com/ https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/story/wiyot https://highlandercenter.org/

I look forward to our next meeting. ❤️

Yeah, I was surprised I did not think about the mother metaphor as lenses to look at the generative process. I mean, the nature of order, mother nature... it was in front of me. This is why I said "dare", because looks like a sort of repression. Maybe culturally mothering is something that I assume is out of my reach. Maybe I have an excess of "respect/reverence".

One of the readings that more deeply affected me the last few years was "Just Life - Bioethics and the Future of Sexual Difference" by Mary C. Rawlinson. I will never forget that at some point she asks "What are the ethical and political implications of the real universal that everyone is born of a woman? What are the ethical and political implications of the real universal that every human being must eat other living things, plants or animals, to survive?". Nor her answers to those questions. 

Shortly after starting the crew, I read a Keranyi work on Demeter and Persephone, with the previous book in mind. I was thinking of the "generative" dimension of the mother, but not the whole mother image, so to speak.

My observation regarding not everyone resonating in the same way as you and Robert did, was mostly to remark that our current "artifact" may act as a filter, like Ronen's call for crewing did. Probably microsolidarity, or solidarity economy for that matter, is not for everyone. Not now. We don't know better yet. But I agree that out there there are millions that are looking for a way to jump on something like that that will resonate. Knowing how network effects work, that is way more than enough for contributing to a societal change. And I feel that exploring with you guys how to proceed is going to be much better. And more fun. :-) 

I apologize that it’s taken me about a week to reply to the questions posed by the crew about observations, areas of contribution and next steps. I have had a couple of health issues to address along with my mom’s 97th birthday gathering and celebration in New York, plus preparations for a looming proposal effort that’s going to take a lot of attention for the next couple of weeks.  

That said, I want to say that I personally loved being with the whole crew for the first time and greatly appreciated everyone’s openness, vulnerability and caring for the experience. This reflects all the qualities I felt so drawn to as I experienced the generative process.

In terms of potential areas of contribution, there’s one that immediately come to mind. In my work on organizational transformation in Government (which emphasizes the digital impact), I’ve learned that some futurists are considering what might happen if company boundaries simply dissolve, and remote access to anyone and any kind of resource is just available dynamically when needed. Since this introduces the potential for empowering extraordinary micro-solidarity and equity, it kept me up one night when I first saw this raised in a Gartner paper on the future of contact centers.  I’ve since discussed the concept with one major contact center automation vendor whose technology has the capability to make those kinds of dynamic connections and routing right now, over multiple media forms, and intelligently based on needs.

I’m going to review the generative process, but I believe there’s a point in that process where this capability could be transparently inserted into a supporting, trusted platform. If so, I see tremendous opportunities for positive social and economic impact, in a way aligned with both a gifting and solidarity economy.  I know of a number of other potentially enabling technologies that could help realize that kind of supporting platform in a way that stays true to the generative process.

Finally, I want to say I see how realizing the generative process the crew has developed will empower beautiful creativity in many, many different disciplines and modalities. Since our last meeting, I reached out to a handful of friends to explore the principles articulated in Ronen’s wonderful blog on Christopher Alexander, and each responded with great interest. When I mentioned applying the process to co-create beautiful software, the response from one multi-talented friend was overflowing. He’s now starting a career in VR/AR development and immediately offered his support to help realize the vision.

No need to apologize, Robert. We already had the discussion that nobody here can take for granted the availability of anyone. We solve this with the "no deadline / when it is ready" agreement.

I am delighted that you see a point of a concrete application of the generative process "AS IS" despite (for now) the space is intended for the generation of more or less stable crews that want to practice microsolidarity.

The technical/technological dimension for implementing the generative focus is out of the scope of our present cycle (you will see how we try to keep the focus on our work dynamics), but again, I am excited to know about the existence of such technologies that would allow to scale the space and make it useful in large work environments.

Finally, I suggested in the past that a source of income for this crew could be training on how to apply our emerging methodology in other software projects. It might be worth having this conversation, given that seems to be some interest, and particularly if we eventually struggle to keep self-funding our work in this crew.

@Robert Damashek, regarding the future of organizations and dissolving boundaries, I think that you will enjoy reading my article on bureaucracy and Haier, and my debate with Zanini (Hamel's coauthor) in the comments. Do not pay attention to the silly tittle, for the whole article was a test of how an article with a click-bait tittle would viralize differently in LinkedIn and Medium if not promoted with money (results: LinkedIn beats Medium).

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-i-am-done-gary-hamel-my-clients-value-antonio-blanco-gracia

I work with the foundation of a big health European insurance company DKV that works on people with disabilities employment, being call centers one of their most strong activity for doing that. I would love to think about the possibility of workers going beyond salaries, either wih DKV Integralia or Cordibaix, an association that works in the same field and also entrepreneurship...

Thanks, Toni. The article was indeed interesting and was glad to see it triggered the kind of response you wanted to happen. What tends to excite me is finding new ways to trigger the transformation and heart/soul/mind liberation of people from the stranglehold of corporate structures, it’s really refreshing to hear similar chords arise from strategic consultants and advisors such as yourself. That’s why I was so thrilled to read Gartner’s thoughts on the implications of how contact center technology, driven by AI, might actually cut out the controlling middle man. I then had the opportunity to work with a few innovators from Genesys to explore how their predictive routing capability used in contact centers could be extended to a set of SMEs across corporate boundaries across any kind of medium.