Gathering #12 June 10, 2021 - Collaborating on a Generative Process

This gathering was instigated and relates to:

1. The "Money: Value Agreement" generative process currently documented in CollectiveOne: http://www.collectiveone.org/#/app/inits/ac1342e2-76af-1d0b-8176-b345e7a90011/model/section/ac10a88e-7889-1924-8178-899d4e780034/cards

2. Comments that @Toni Blanco left on this specific card: http://www.collectiveone.org/#/app/inits/ac1342e2-76af-1d0b-8176-b345e7a90011/model/section/ac10e3c6-7702-147a-8177-063458500027/cards/ac10e3c6-7702-147a-8177-0645f7b60031

3. Toni's comments relate to some ideas that he shared in a set of cards he created around value: http://www.collectiveone.org/#/app/inits/ac1342e2-76af-1d0b-8176-b345e7a90011/model/section/ac130ea2-7879-11c8-8178-7d2e3fbd0041/cards

4. Toni also pointed to this article about Value Network Analysis: https://pantheon.work/en/blog/2019/06/29/value-network-analysis-what-is-it-what-is-it-for-how-can-it-be-done/

I suggest reviewing these resources before the meeting and, Toni, I invite you to prepare one or more specific questions which can lead us into this conversation.

In this gathering we will be discussing Toni's ideas from a few perspectives:

1. The specific ideas and if/how they relate to the existing generative process.

2. Using these specific ideas to discuss how atomic ideas can be transformed into a generative description.

3. Using the special case of THESE specific ideas in relation to an EXISTING generative process as a test-case of how to collaborate on a generative process (specifically: how to add new ideas to an existing generative process in a remote asynchronous collaboration).

It is unclear if @Josh Fairhead will be able to attend the meeting. Therefore, this meeting will take place in zoom so that it can be recorded in case Josh is not able to partake. Both Toni and Alex have offered their Zoom accounts. Since @Toni Blanco you are the seeder of this meeting I would like to ask that you take ownership of the technical preparation for a recorded meeting. If this OK with you, please confirm by replying here with an affirmative comment.

Thank you Ronen, zoom link will be posted at the discord group.

Zoom chat:

16:06:30 From Alex Rodríguez To Everyone:
    lol
16:18:46 From Alex Rodríguez To Everyone:
    ok I need to hop off for a few minutes, see you back here soon
16:46:41 From Josh To Everyone:
    I’m appreciating the affordances that it permits; minimum constraints
16:50:06 From Josh To Everyone:
    Kairos on the questions
17:04:58 From Josh To Everyone:
    Sensing the wholeness
17:08:11 From Alex Rodríguez To Everyone:
    +1 to that, would love to talk with you about this Josh
17:13:50 From Josh To Everyone:
    Speed/gears is a great metaphor
17:14:14 From Ronen To Everyone:
    I want to acknowledge that I haven't lost site of the sacrificial quality of all this work!!!
17:14:26 From Josh To Everyone:
    (Experienced that quite a lot recently as I left isolated country and moved about a city)
17:22:59 From Josh To Everyone:
    Im getting the urge to suggest an experiment using qualsystems to explore generative processes
17:23:18 From Josh To Everyone:
    (Which in themselves feel like a generative process)
17:23:42 From Alex Rodríguez To Everyone:
    no idea what qualsystems is lol
17:23:55 From Josh To Everyone:
    Yeah, its the stuff Im studying at the mo
17:24:03 From Josh To Everyone:
    Id take you guys over it
17:24:18 From Josh To Everyone:
    They are a frame to peer through
17:51:25 From Alex Rodríguez To Everyone:
    I'd prefer to wrap up at the top of the hour as well
17:54:02 From Ronen To Everyone:
    Josh can you please add that to inspiration thread on loomio?
17:57:02 From Josh To Everyone:
    - {{[[TODO]]}} Add to Loomio Inspiration thread
        - Finding confidence in the use of speech acts

This felt like a substantial gathering. Thank you @Toni Blanco for prompting it.

The question that seeded this gathering was how to collaborate asynchronously on a generative process?

Though we've created a shared understanding and some initial shared experience of generative process it seemed there was a gap between our theoretical understanding and our ability to actually move together.

We'd experienced numerous small experiments in collaboration:

• There were typo corrections.

• Questioning the use of certain terms.

• Introduction of a new idea (missing center).

Exploring these experiments in this conversation led to some useful insights:

1. Contributing to a generative process (especially one that was authored by someone else) is a subtle and demanding task.

2. The process needs to be first taken in as a whole. Treating it as a "standard" text leads to fragmented reading, fragmented perception, and fragmented inputs.

3. Any changes made to the generative process need to be respectful of the existing wholeness.

4. This makes the task of making changed or providing inputs more demanding than it may first appear.

5. Making local (specific steps in the process) comments or picking on details without tending to the existing wholeness leads to an externalization of effort -> whoever is expected to respond to the changes has to do the work of tending to the wholeness.

6. Introducing new ideas into the process requires more than just "adding a card" (step in the process). It requires finding a place (or places) for the idea within the existing generative process. The idea itself may not find a place directly in the process but lead to numerous unfoldings within existing steps in the process. An example we explored is Toni's suggestion to tend to people arriving at a space together - already as a connected group.

There were also emotional aspects to this effort:

1. Toni expressed feeling unclear about how to contribute and inhibition around expressing his lack of clarity.

2. Alex expressed a reservation to contribute out of respect for the existing wholeness. The wholeness itself had an inhibiting quality (which, as I write these words, I find to be a fascinating expression of wholeness!)

3. I expressed a reservation to ask for more participation because I do not want to feel like I am pushing or demanding and because I feel that others have less time to dedicate to the work and that makes contributing (given the insights mentioned above) challenging.

There are two open threads:

1. Toni is holding a continued exploration of the value mapping framework and how it relates to the money generative process.

2. Josh expressed a wish to introduce "qualsystems" to the crew to feed into the question of collaboration on a generative process.

Thank you so much @Ronen Hirsch for your excellent summary.

I will build on some of the shared ideas, on the three layers I framed.

1. On the exercise of crafting a generative process alone

As I understood, Ronen's process for designing the generative process is not that different from my solitary work on his generative process. It is mostly an intuitive and meditative exercise in which you go through back and forth the sequence, and back and forth from particular centers to the whole. The difference is that Ronen already has somehow pictured in his mind the space ("the space I imagine"), and I have to wait for the generative process to unfold to picture that image.

Ronen has studied for years the works of Christopher Alexander. He might not be a world authority in Alexander's work, but he is the authority in our crew, and I am using this word with no negative connotations. We all have demonstrated to trust his judgment in this field of knowledge. But after his introduction to this matter, I guess that the only way to learn to design a generative process is by designing a generative process.

2. On the exercise of crafting a generative collaboratively

As if it was not hard enough to design a generative process, we want to do it collaboratively. This is the nut hard to crack. We have to sense collectively a whole that has not been fully unfolded, which requires, as Ronen put it, trust. 

I have been struggling in between Alex's experience of the inhibiting quality of the wholeness, and my empathy for Ronen's loneliness when writing the cards. As I commented, it is not that the lack of feeling of wholeness but the direction of some design decisions made that I felt were unnecessary limiting the options in which the space could be financially sustainable. For Ronen, groups arriving to the space was a plausible event that he did not take into account in the first place. For me, it opens generative paths for income streams (more on that in the next section). The thing is that messing with some issues like that in the cards implied rewriting lots of them, leading to what I felt an entirely different generative process that requires the same trust in the rest of the group. Writing another whole process felt also like forking it, which I thought was too much. We need to feel the wholeness and the centers of the generative process but also the wholeness of the centers of our crew (of its GP). My choice was to introduce and suggest ideas, as a less intrusive way to mess with the evolving wholeness, which could be interpreted as a sort of laziness.

The fragmented nature of the cards at collective one invites sorts of invites to fragmented intervention. We explore with no success other tools that invite to the opposite; to curate relationships between cards. Yet, not sure that this could contribute to working together on the GP. On an operational level, and after the meditative quality of thinking of GP, I think that we could work in parallel in different GP to sense the plurality of ways in which a space for generating crews can express its wholeness. To feel unfold them and learn from that. Then, maybe, and just maybe, we could work collectively in a GP.  

3. On the proposal of using Value Network Analysis 

When I chose VNA as a central tool for introducing what at Pantheon we call "the culture of the Internet" on organizations is because I found that it was the one that better captured the way Las Indias Electrónicas and X-Net intuitively and successfully managed their financial sustainability. I will never forget when Sergio, my informant then, answered my question "how will you fund that?" with an unpreoccupied "oh, the network will provide". By observing how they managed to finally be provided by the network, I found a mindset that Verna Allee captured well with her VNA, (and Sergio later confirmed that). So I exposed you to it, but if it does not ring anything in you, anything operational, I am not sure that is a lead to follow, for adopting a methodology is not adopting a mindset. 

Thank you for those reflections. I feel like they all have something to bite into )

1: Crafting alone/together

First, I want to remind us all that this challenge is exacerbated by the remote asynchronous nature of our work. An answer to that, I think, is moving forward slowly and with increased attention and care.

Second, I want to highlight the word "exercise" you used. I believe THAT is the key. I felt a few times during the gathering, and feel now, that because of the unwieldy nature of the beast (of unfolding a generative process together) that you expressed a movement I would describe as "escape." It is a movement away from doing the work (eg: yes do a major rewrite!) to an abstract theoretical exploration of what that would mean and what would be the repercussions. You need to actually do the practice and not think about doing it.

This IS the nature of this work. Alexander places so much emphasis on smart, low-cost trial and error ... to truly have an experience of the possible transformation so that you can choose the one that feels most alive.

My experience has been that this challenge is valid even if you work on your own. I recognize the pattern of escape arising in me all that time. My practice has been "do the work" ... write some cards, write bad cards, make them better, throw some away, bring them back, change the sequence ... you have to ACTUALLY do it!

practice, practice, practice!!!

2: Collaborating

Something that has remained alive in me from our gathering, and is now amplified by your comment is the conversation around tools! Having the right tools for a task is so impactful.

One of the most obvious changes in my workshop, that led to the possibility of building a cabinet and drawers has been tools. I took too long to get the tools I knew were needed to do the work I wanted to do. Once I got the tools it was as if I suddenly became more skilled. I have encountered this over and over again.

If it was possible with a click of a button to fork a generative process and work on a copy ... I think you would be more inclined to collaborate on a process I created.

If there was a way to indicate some words in the generative process as "terms" and it would be possible to fork a term (or a set of terms) it would be so much easier for @Josh Fairhead to offer an alternative to [Seeder, Keeper and Architect], for us to discuss alternatives and then to commit a better set of terms that would automatically ripple out and create updated versions of all the cards that mention them.

I am probably going to start some generative writing describing such a collaborative tool ... informed by our attempts to actually do this together.

3: Value Network Analysis

As I indicated during the gathering, I am still looking forward to exploring this subject, to feed on your experience and inspiration and to see how it resonates or maps onto the generative process.

Regardless of whether not in the end the model resonates, I feel that the experiment of mapping it onto the generative process is valuable. It will be excellent PRACTICE for taking an integrated set of ideas and seeing if/how they can be woven into an existing generative process.

From browsing the VNA article you wrote, I suspect that doing this may lead to useful feedback about the VNA model itself. I suspect it may be a good opportunity for you to practice re-writing the VNA model as a generative processs.

As I indicated in the gathering I am leaving the initiative to carry this forward IN YOUR HANDS!

As I am reflecting on a tool for collaborating on generative processes I created this card and wanted to instantiate it here, with you in heart @Toni Blanco :

The seed for the entire generative endeavour I have been trying to unfold in CollectiveOne is: a digital space in which random strangers are converted into coherent crews.

If for any reason you lose orientation when trying to read, relate or contribute to the generative processes, please come back to this. Set everything aside. Ingest this seed potential one more time, close your eyes and witness what arises!

First, just clarifying that the text VNA article was mostly written by my colleague Ingrid, and I would have written it a bit differently. That said, everything in it is correct, and the steps described are already a good sequence (with not much detail because it is just a post) of a generative process of a value map.

I am still thinking about the VNA and our project. My sense is that when the key elements of value and money are unfolded in the GP, describing them with the VNA would be an excellent activity to check its robustness (or identifying weak centers in that sense).

attn: @Toni Blanco
I have integrated a proposal you made into the generative sequence. I am capturing here how I did this as a demonstration, documentation, and anchor for discussion:

1. For some reason I was not able to edit your original proposal card and so I had to move it out of the generative sequence (I placed it in your personal section) and created a replacement card.

2. This is your proposal card: https://www.collectiveone.org#/app/inits/ac1342e2-76af-1d0b-8176-b345e7a90011/model/section/ac113c42-77e6-11eb-8177-e9e2196c0016/cards/ac110266-78ea-19f7-8178-ebf93c67002c

3. This is the transformation I added to the sequence: https://www.collectiveone.org#/app/inits/ac1342e2-76af-1d0b-8176-b345e7a90011/model/section/ac13096e-7712-14c2-8177-161cf5860012/cards/ac1160e2-7a94-198a-817a-96c7a2780027

4. I also changed the position of the transformation in the sequence. You placed your transformation at the end of the sequence and I placed it before the Schedule transformation.

Thank you @Ronen Hirsch

I wonder if we could define a sort process of "pull request" that does not require messing with the cards. Maybe in the comments of the container of each SEQGEN?