Focusing on emergence is a way of finding these outliers.

No @Dan what I meant was focusing on the level of emergence is "wrong" because it's like saying "I want innovation". Innovation is the end result, the mushroom that pop up. If you want mushrooms, the best way is the think wider about the conditions in which fungus thrives, and support that, because we know thriving fungus tend to put mushrooms up. I'm saying _go deeper, and invest in systems which are doing good, which have the hallmarks of a healthy fungus forest"

One of the conversations I had at #enspiral-summer-fest-2019 was about starting an open list of networks that are somewhat aligned and publishing it on a website.

I'm not so interested in these things (though I encourage you to experiment). Pesonally I believe in human-based routing, so I'm more excited about lifting up the pattern of "let's grab lunch and talk about what matters", because for me / my mind, I can see ridiculously far after 4 such lunches. It's actually a lot like epidemic-broadcast-trees, but meat-space.

@mix Its awesome to see you getting pumped up about this work.

I'm not getting pumped on this, I've been pumped on this beat for years! Similar to @rich's "I don't know if it's obvious, but the last 2 years have been all about this...". It could be that talking about what we care about and our theories of change is just a new and exciting cross link that's not happened to date, and it's generating some fruitful conversation.

I think microsolidarity.cc is naturally going to be that list of networks. I got this fam!

Just caught your message @Dan.

Here are powerful women doing amazing things, all of which have potential for scaled up impact. And it got me thinking, rather than trying to build another new thing why not just focus on helping the women who have already got started.

THIS. I feel like there's an abudance of mana in networks around us that doesn't look anything like patriarchal fucking shortsighted capitalism. I want to cheer on these others.

I don't feel any need for a catalytic event, I think that's just a predeliction for narrative arcs. I'd say looking for a catalytic event is like "focusing on the level of emergence"... as in mushrooms only pop up because there's a massive body that's been growing for ages, you just might not have seen it.

I get you on the virus metaphor. I think it's a complex of genes that are going to do the work - as "doing checkins" is one powerful gene, but it only really shines when it's paired with other aligned genes like "valuing the full complexity of people" and "vulnerability enabled learning" or "long-term profit". I don't think there's a perfect synthesis, because the there is no such thing as uniform culture. But we can gather these powerful mini tools and culture, and share them. It's slow, but people experiencing care, and safety, and cheerleading, and constructive disagreement ... I think these change people quite deeply.

woo, I feel kinda passionate about some of this. Exciting to think big some, I don't often let myself dream or feel ahead that far. I'm often all caught up in the simple but very involved detail of listening, supporting, cheerleading, sensing, provoking, invoking....

I agree @buoyantair, I like the waves adding up. I often think about a drum beat as well... where the bass layer attracts people but also gives people space to bring instruments and jam around the beat.

hmmm, maybe we need a catchy channel name to gather some of the storytelling around @joshuavial

@Dan Hey, amazing writeup! I have another perspective towards change. I think it happens like small waves in an ocean. Small events eventually grow & push forward masses of people into various schools of thoughts / ideologies right? A catalytic event will obviously give a huge push towards this & bring more people into questioning the things that are happening around the world but I think the smaller, more personal events are what will eventually spread the "virus"

Nope, it's an idea baby @Alberto. I'm thinking about bottom up ways of building a network of networks ... or ... a way to share learnings more widely in a fun light touch way

hey it sounds good @mix, don't listen to my tummy, that's just for me!

If you can see an 'alumni check-in' pattern or a 'internetwork show and tell' emerging, I'm interested to hear how that goes. My gut reaction is, "sounds nice, but what's the value exchange? why will people prioritise it?"

I'm seeing that in the form of ecosystem builders connecting in #microsolidarity crews. The value exchange is sharing information and building bigger networks. @Sea & @Songyi might agree with me?

@rich why would people prioritise lunch with friends, or working in a co-working space?

I'm going for less A B thinking ( type), and leaning more into invite people together, and things will happen, not sure what yet but expect it to be good thinking ( type). If it was a show&tell + grabbing a drink after, things I think might work for people are growing empowerment by honouring peoples learning, and creating a container for pleasant surprises and unexpected challenges to hit one another.

I was leaning towards show&tell because it's a fun and low cost (right sized, not some miscy new protocol), it's easy to test (immediate returns / feedback). I'm leaning into the hype thing - I think of this as beating the drum - and am looking for people interested to experiement with me and get hyped in this space. I think nailing some big-vision motivation could be a good idea - this isn't about getting together for cozy drinks and talking about the good old days, this is about pulling your head out of your arse and getting more inspired, and learning more magic spells. (I need to work on my sales skills...)

This is cool. Like you @mix, I want my community development efforts to mostly be serving a commons bigger than Enspiral.

Dunno if it is obvious that most of my work for the past 2 years has really been on this network-of-networks thing: travelling, building relationships, and developing language that resonates in different contexts. First with the patterns for decentralised organising, now with microsolidarity.

If you can see an 'alumni check-in' pattern or a 'internetwork show and tell' emerging, I'm interested to hear how that goes. My gut reaction is, "sounds nice, but what's the value exchange? why will people prioritise it?"

I have some hypotheses about why microsolidarity feels like it has traction, maybe some of these are design principles that could inform what you're doing?

• big vision is motivating ("small crews of support are gunna fix the anthropocene")
• right-sized investment (if you want to participate you have to start or find a crew, probably with a commitment to 5 or 10 calls)
• immediate returns (good feels after the first call, noticeable growth after the 5th)
• someone who is willing to hype it relentlessly for a few years (me)

My bias is "networking networks is super hard", so it could be useful to puncture that with some 'appreciative inquiry': what have we seen work really well?

@katekb @joshuavial any ideas? (I notice there are people I want to tag who are not on SSB -- another data point for what makes internetworking hard.)

Oh yeah, for me I had this gut feeling that staying wasn't quite right, but that Istill had important connections and work to do. The decision to leave has felt like a conscious and good death and I've been really excited by the new things it's made space to grow.... like creating a new type of role and connection which is just right, or rather, is radically empowering. WOOP!

leaving enspiral membership

I just left enspiral membership. I requested an exit conversation and got lined up with @antz. We went out for coffee this morning and talked about a few things. The following is a brain dump of topics meant mainly as notes for me. I'm going to revist this space with an invocation for what comes next

• I've been a 'stagnant' member of Enspiral for a couple of years, but been very active in the adjacent Scuttlebutt
  • I'm still on the mission "more people working on stuff that matters"
  • it just looks and manifest differently
• when I left Unlimited, I still believed in the vision, and I was keen to stay in touch:
  • I wanted to stay connected to the vibe, and contribute where I could
  • I had brand new skills and connections (art school, social enterprise, open source)
  • I tried to build a bridge and invite others, because it felt like Unlimited could benefit a lot from what those of us who'd "left" could still offer
  • No-one cared enough (or understood), so it flopped, died
• I think this is the Network of Networks problem
  • I want to have a go at it in a ground up (instead of top down design some protocol way)
  • it might looks like a monthly Show & Tell
    • not as the ends, but rather to recreate the shared kitchen to keep communication and chance replication of ideas up
  • I want this thing to not be "owned" by enspiral
    • Enspiral and Scuttlebutt are welcome to be contributors / sponsors
  • I need 1 or more co-hosts (ideally someone still "in" Enspiral)

There were so many other great threads in our conversation. The next steps look like :

• @antz is gonna calendar a follow up call for us 2 weeks fro mtoday
• I'm going to reach out to other enspiralites who've left or are at a distance, and see what resonates for them:
  • @Chelsea, Derek, Silvia, Alanna, Bekka ...

cc potentially interested parties : @rich @mikey @Dan Lewis @Nanz / @nanz / @Nanz

I wondered if other people who had previous communities of practice feel anything about this sort of thing. Would also like to discuss @cameralibre (edgeriders, ...), @piet (kamahi) ...

you found a link then I take it ?

@martin ➬ i'm not aware of anything, but i'm not focused on the top-level Enspiral organization.

I think your wires are crossed @martin ➬. Enspiral almost never has "open positions".

@martin you started this interaction :

Martin: I hope you're also going to share some of your experiences with Enspiral is, they've been on my radar for a while.
Mix: ( @Martin check your radar, we're all around you )
Martin: @mix Hit me with your best sales pitch. ;-)

My initial response was "what? ... I'm not selling anything" or "this isn't about sales"
I don't have time to convince you of anything in particular, is there something you want help with convincing yourself of ?

sorry to miss you @dan_mi_sun

@Dreaming Jade if you want to spend some time in Paekākāriki my house is full but Doris has some space up the road I emailed you a spreadsheet with info

I think we'll have a kind of un-retreat out here, just people hanging out, interesting chats, some coworking, some beach time...

I think rabble/Evan Henshaw-Plath is coming too, if that is a name that means something to any of you

oh yeah, @rabble! he gave a great talk at OS//OS

I think rabble/Evan Henshaw-Plath is coming too, if that is a name that means something to any of you

@Ross Schulman in short Enspiral is more like a hacker space. It's many things and it's no definite thing.

There are strong threads in the space though:

• people wanting to enable more good things in the world
• people motivated by good outcomes more than greed
• shared working spaces
• 6 monthly retreats - 2-3 day events where you go and stay somewhere together and get the conversation into a deeper space. Talk about your dreams over a whiteboard and hot chocolate. Talk about your fears. Cook food together.
• do work together
• share leads and route good connections to people who are value aligned
• gift time to people who are value aligned. (e.g. I support people all the time because I love what they're doing... and other people do likewise for me. Sometimes it's professional skill based, sometimes it's emotional / social).

I'm there, so is Nati, @haileycoop, and some dope folks I met on the road this year. Would love to see you all. xo

i plan on going, but since it's immediately after Kiwiburn there's a chance i won't have the energy, in which case i'll try and come for at least some parts.

Enspiral Summerfest

http://www.festival.enspiral.com/

hey all, who's going to the retreat this summer? My decision making about such things is usually derived from listening to gossip from those around me, but I've not been that in the loop, so don't know what to think / do?

cc @Mischa @craig @nanz @piet @rich @robguthrie @mikey @dan

wildcard ccs: @olizilla, @noffle, @regular

@Dan Hassan messaged me exploring the idea of coming out. If enough people are going I'm likely to make an effort (organising with a lil one takes a little more)

@Abbey it's easy to start a fresh identity - just delete the secret file, from your ~/.ssb/ directory. (planned: switching between multiple identities from the ui). The old id will still be floating around, but nothing new added to it.

@Abbey yes, although "pseudonymonous" is a better way to think of it. That said, if you have a high profile account, a bad pub, or a pub being observed closely, could retrace your IP address - so it would probably be advisable to connect through Tor.

My biggest set of thoughts is that groups really need to host their own pubs and have tight-knit networks of trust rather than exploring the whole scuttleverse

Yup, this is something I'm working towards. In the TechTree I need out-of-order messages, and then I can start working on private-groups. There will be two flavors of private groups: things like "friends" and "family" which have one writer and many readers (because they center around an individual) and groups that many many writers (where you can add people to the group, like facebook groups). The primary goal is metadata privacy - unintended parties will be able to see that someone posted a private message, but not who it is intended for, or whether it is an individual message or a group message.

@Abbey I'm quite curious about how this goes. I generally let people figure out the politics of ssb on their own, maybe mainly because understanding enough of how it works to imagine what social effect that will have is a bit of a hump to get over.

That said, there is certainly a social theory embedded in SSB's logic, and I am very curious where this thread goes.

you can declare a message someone has posted is false or is a lie. We don't have an easy interface for that at the moment.
Part of the architecture of this place is that you can't stop another person from saying something. All you can do is choose to not be near or talking with those parties.

Sounds great. Please do ask questions as you go, there are a few parts to how this place runs which might take some time and questions.
There's actually a rad resource that @Zach! put together that might be of interest https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/faq/

@Abbey that sounds great.

I think quoting or interviewing us for a piece that is yours is a good fit.
I think if you want to co-author and share the message then it would need people to be more involved. I'm happy with either (the former is less time intensive for me for sure), just let us know which way you're interested in.

yeah that could be interesting @Abbey .

We've got bits and pieces we've written and spoken already, would any of those be appropriate for revision and republishing :

• https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/stories/
• https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/talks.html

I'm interested to hear about what you specific needs are as a community. I think it could be a great ideas to invite some possible users onto Scuttlebutt, and have some conversation on here to see how this platform behaves and what it feels like. The community is really open and welcome to questions

welcome @Abbey . @richdecibels is a pretty good egg.

if you didn't find it already, you might like the channels :

• #anarchitecture
• #solarpunk

Here's some of the people I've been working alongside for the past 5 years :

Can you ask for the specific expansions you're looking for @bobhaugen - I could expand all of them, but would rather build more patchbay if you're only interested in some of them?

mmm not sure how much info is useful there, but :

• https://festival.enspiral.com/

other interesting links (possibly?):

• https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Enspiral
• https://medium.com/enspiral-tales
• https://handbook.enspiral.com/

at the enspiral retreat. we've had some interesting conversations so far today about meaning - as in what's the point of this community, does there need to be one, and given the current political climate should we be mobilising or playing a long game.

other interesting topics:

• reframing conflict, exploring outstanding conflicts in our community
• inter-subjectivity (didn't go to that conversation, figure of got enough already?)
• @mikey hosting a conversation on pods (see phyles, livlihood groups)
• @jessykate hosting a live-stream of her partner launching satellites
• @don and I talking about the challenges of the business we're in together

I'll post some photos sometime soon