Meeting #7 November 5, 2020 - Cycle2 Initiation

Ready and willing. Attending Tuesday 14:00 UCT / 15:00 CET. Thank you guys for clarifying this.

Thank you SO MUCH for waiting for me. It has been an amazing meeting. I will write more about that.

Indeed, thank you SO MUCH for a meeting that felt pregnant with life. I enjoyed the way space and time flowed in and out of personal and contextual. It was a kind of "work space I've imagined for some tme .. but not yet experienced.

Given that we are moving into a period of asynchronous collaboration and less such meetings ... I would consider allocating more time for those occassions when we do come together like yesterday. I felt like we could have pleasantly filled 3 or 4 hours of work together.

The meeting was pretty much on the track we set for it. We established a baseline shared understanding and agreement of Sociocractic consent as a boot-strap for decision making. We practiced it both in a general context and in the context of the Remote Microsolidarity Generative Process. I hope that overtime we will find both more refinement and flow in actually collaborating this way.

On Trust

@Josh Fairhead I continue to be grateful for the meaningful way in which you brought trust into the conversation. Upon further reflection, I realized that trust goes to the heart of taking on (and in) generative processes.

To illustrate: If I had to first "explain" to you what a Japanese Teahouse is as a precondition for experiencing its generative process ... that would kind of defeat the process. In fact a generative process, as I understand it, challenges the very notion of a linear description. That which is generated simply by following a generative process is very difficult (it not impossible) to create in a descriptive strategy. While I could lead you through the generative process of the Japanese Teahouse, you would be hard-pressed to describe to me the full manifestation (in your mind) of the teahouse!

Open Conversation of Seed Process?

This speaks, I feel, directly to the question @Josh Fairhead presenced yesterday: do we need to first speak about what making a space is (and/or what is a space) or can we do so by collaborating on the seed process? I suspect the former will tend to be fast moving, subjective and divergent, while the latter will tend to be slow, safe and convergent.

If you look again at the seed process I HAVE offered an intentionally VERY minimal ... seed:

a space is an invitation for others to congregate around an idea

So while I truly remain open to an open/divergent thread about what "space" or "making space" are ... I also feel I want to re-iterate that I see at least two concrete possibilities to address that WITHIN the seed process:

1. A proposal to modify Step1 (seed) to refine/modify the current text.

2. Add a step either before or after Step1 that pre-empts or refines what is established in Step1.

The same can be said for the question that @Alex Rodriguez presenced about a single person holding a space or a group of people. The seeding of the process with one person is just that ... a seed ... and I suspect that it is often true at least in the context of a new beginning ... that initially it is one person that holds it. In time, the seed of "one person" can transform and morph into numerous people (which sounds like a very healthy direction to explore).

What is also interesting to me is a meta-question: If you (each one of us) had to choose which of these two questions should be addressed first (1: what is a space? 2: collective holding of space) ... what would you choose? how would you feel about that choice? PLEAE DO ANSWER this openly here in this thread.

I suspect that we will either be unanimous about this right away or that we will easily find consent on it ... and THAT is the point I am trying to bring home about COLLABORATING on a generative process ... there is a right sequence to do it in ... and only change one thing at a time (that thing which is the smallest change which most needs to happen RIGHT NOW)!

Asynchronous Consent

I will create a proposal thread with two objectives in mind:

1. To "ratify" the proposal we played with on making the "make space" seed process the primary process we are tending to.

2. To excercise our collective asynchronous consent muscles :)

Cycle2 Framing

I would like to make something implicit explicit. I have not suggested a limiting time-frame for cycle 2. I don't feel a need to do so. I am comfortable with it, for now, being open-ended. I feel no need to introduce any pressure (subtle or gross) on us. I feel we have brought to life something subtle and vital and I want to witness as it evolves and matures. I am comfortable collectively holding the sense of wholeness of cycle2 amongst us.

That said I do look forward to a coherent cycle during which:

1. We experiment, practice and discover asynchronous collaboration.

2. We author a coherent generative process for remote microsolidarity so that we can share our work with others to get feedback and a sense of how this work can become a "thing in the world"

I would like to hear what @Josh Fairhead and @Alex Rodriguez have to say about @Ronen Hirsch question. For now, I would address first the collective holding of the space. Rationale is here: https://www.loomio.org/d/uYW5F0Di/space-making-holding/1

To answer your question about the choice between "making space collectively" vs "figuring out what space means in this context" I'm open to either direction and just made a long post in the Inquiry thread that gets a little bit at both. I actually am feeling most compelled to work with both simultaneously as we develop next steps but will be especially curious to hear @Josh Fairhead 's thoughts as to next steps

Upon further reflection, I realized that trust goes to the heart of taking on (and in) generative processes.

Good point, I guess it applies to the Tao (*or insert other naming convention here*) as well. Trust is flow perhaps?

What is also interesting to me is a meta-question: If you (each one of us) had to choose which of these two questions should be addressed first (1: what is a space? 2: collective holding of space) ... what would you choose? how would you feel about that choice? PLEAE DO ANSWER this openly here in this thread.

I'm inclined to say two is more interesting (despite being the culprit that went meta) - assuming we have some degree of alignment as to what "space" is... which I kinda feel is a multi-dimensional quality anyway so we'll all have different interpretations... I think its more an exploration, so I'm with Alex that both are interesting (as I wonder how many frames I'm missing given the acquisition I related).