I'm wondering if it has ever been considered that the members of the crew form seed spaces based on their own skills, abilities and interests?

This would allow Robert, Alex and Toni to form a seed space based on helping organizations become more aligned to their purpose.

Couldn't Ronen form a seed space for yoga and generative processes? And the work of Christopher Alexander?

Josh seems to have many skills for a seed space.

I suspect there are many other skills and talents here in the crew that could generate seed spaces.

I would like to form a seed space, and I'd like to offer funding to help it be built. Would that be the same as self-funding? I have no idea what it would cost, but perhaps we could start with the parts most needed.

The seed space I would like to form is for parents. Two specific groups of parents. 1. Parents of children with special needs who want to support their children becoming more functional in the world. 2. Parents who want to do better raising their well kids to be functional human beings than what they see around them.

I have a friend who would very likely be interested in doing this with me. Her name is Alecia. Alecia has three children, all of whom have varying degrees of special needs. Her youngest child is three years old. When he was a baby, he had seizures that were not able to be controlled so a significant portion of his brain was removed. She and her husband were told her son would never walk, see or talk. Her son now does all of these things and is thriving.

I have told Alecia about the digital space and she knows it would be incredibly valuable for parents to have access to activities that support them in learning new skills and ideas about parenting, and for there to be small groups for mutual support, sharing, and learning.

Alecia and I have many things in common. We used two specific programs with our children that generated amazing results. They are not practices I am comfortable talking about with almost anybody. I recorded an interview with Alecia about the practices so I could share it with people who I wanted to understand what Alecia and I did with our kids.

The reason I don't share what I did is because most parents won't be interested in what I did and might have a negative reaction to it. However, I would LOVE to work with parents who would be interested in what Alecia and I have to offer. Parents of special needs kids especially are more open since their children are not doing well and they are usually willing to try things they might not try otherwise.

I would also like to invite other people who work with parents to help them raise functional, healthy people to join the space as gardeners.

Alecia has a podcast and already has a community of parents to invite to such a space. I am on message boards for parents who would likely be interested in such a space.

Here is her podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/2oJjEihSkc6v2Gwm1t9Xhj

If anyone wants to hear the conversation we had, let me know and I will share it.

How I see the space for parents being funded is by inviting dwellers so support it financially. There would no set price for activities. I think the financial arrangement between the space and the crew building it would need to be negotiated separately, and it would be up to the culturizers of the space to figure out how to meet the financial agreement with the crew.

Until there are activities and dwellers to support it financially (and perhaps even on an ongoing basis), Robert and I are happy to fund it, within the constraints of our budget.

I have ideas about plenty of others others who might be interested in forming seed spaces. I am enthusiastic about reaching out to people. I know that it will take reaching out to many, many people and being persistent in communication to get anywhere. I would be happy to set up readings of the generative sequence for the digital space, and I would be happy to follow up with people to have conversations about what they found valuable, if they think any part of the digital space would benefit their work, and whether (and how much) they would be willing to pay for that benefit.

I am also willing to initiate the creation of a website for the crew.

Thank you @Jennifer Damashek for this seed.

Personally, I am not currently interested seeding a space, however, the space that you want to seed (I will refer to it as the "Parenting Space") feels very much alive - it seems there is a reachable audience and grounded offerings to make.

However, I don't see how this fits into the scope of Cycle 4!

I do have some initial thoughts to capture and share with you in response to you bringing it up.

• It feels like a good opportunity to simulate what it would be like to actually seed a space and actually try following the generative sequence to do so.

• If you were to follow the sequence you would actually need to back up one sequence and form a crew (3-6 people).

• If you were to follow the sequence you would actually need to back up to another sequence and seed first the Seed Space ... which would probably, as a point of departure, be our current crew to help guide and provide feedback as your seed crew would try to seed the Parenting Space (you would be active in both spaces).

• This requires involvement from the crew and is the reason I don't see it belonging to cycle 4.

A few meta-thoughts:

• The first spaces to be seeded will probably have a sacrificial quality because they are the first and will absorb the cost of a learning curve. That needs to be taken into consideration when proposing a space in the early phases of seeding.

• I did a brief loop in my mind through what would be needed to seed a space without the Digital Space existing to support this effort. I believe it would take much more than "creating a website for it." In fact, I believe it will take quite a bit of work and integration of numerous tools and protocols to bridge them and even then it would leave a substantial administrative load that would need to be held by the seed crew. This was a useful exercise in realizing that most of what needs to be created for there to be a digital space is really effective administration!

• This also brings up in my mind the question of MVP (minimum viable product). I believe that it can be very tempting to have an MVP that is primarily about a scheduled menu of activities and to leave out of an MVP small subtle things (like signaling vocabulary) and elements that make up the social fabric. However, I suspect that doing so may compromise the generative quality of the space which is the fundamental purpose. So you may end with a space where activities actually take place but a social fabric is not weaved This made me reflect on MVP and I came to wonder if it should include most of the elements of the GP but initially with only basic functionality. In Alexander-talk that would be placing all the centers even if they are weak ... and then gradually strengthening, deepening, and refining them over time and in response to what is most needed.