Product Development: Hosting a collaboration dinner event

I am currently exploring the value of "webbed" collaboration event design as an economically viable product to build the Evolutionize It core business model on. This involves creating contexts for collaboration to take place that integrate participation at online and offline venues for change.

The social impact objective is to develop easily replicable event models plugged into social media tools that can create a momentum of full-sensory participatory collaboration experiences which continue to live online.

So I was recently invited to host a dinner event at the upcoming OxfordJam, whose working title is "The Big Collaboration Dinner." My basic idea was that we design a team-based game that would involve creating some concrete collaborative action plans around the dinner table. My first game idea was too intricate, but then I had a wild thought:

What if the purpose of the collaboration game was to work together to enable the whole room to make a social impact; a practical exercise in building a stakeholder collaboration strategy.

Ben Metz liked it. We connected by voice, and had an exciting chat at which I took the following notes.

private room
[1:54:39 PM] C: 7-8 square tables
[1:54:45 PM] C: 5 people on each
[1:54:56 PM] C: 40 tickets
[1:55:38 PM] C: plan over-engineered
[1:55:48 PM] C: elitism in culling of winners
[1:55:55 PM] C: find a way to keep everyone playing
[1:56:19 PM] C: let people bring their own issues to the table
[1:57:09 PM] C: each table agrees to focus on an issue
[1:57:24 PM] C: table agrees to brainstorm interventions it can create
[1:57:44 PM] C: hearts/minds - technology - legal structures - financing (crowdsourcing)
[1:58:20 PM] C: rather than winner - we have 8 actions to take
[1:58:25 PM] C: central circle: idea
[1:58:31 PM] C: 2nd: people around the table
[1:59:12 PM] Ben Metz: 3rd = the whole room
[1:59:17 PM] Ben Metz: 4th = everyoines networks
[1:59:40 PM] C: use hashtags to map out impact
[1:59:50 PM] C: and other ways of keeping track
[2:00:06 PM] C: keeps building - waves of inclusion & collasboration
[2:01:46 PM] C: gift economy
[2:01:53 PM] C: food price 25
[2:04:00 PM] C: 7 pounds of dinner for everyone - contributes to breaking even
[2:12:33 PM] C: draft text about concentric circles
[2:14:09 PM] *** Call ended ***
[2:14:44 PM] Ben Metz: great chat

Yowza! I'm so excited to have the blank canvas of a dinner event upon which to design a flash collaboration game.

Here's what's tentatively on the evening's menu:

Connect-It Cocktails

Identify people working on issues you can agree to put your passion behind. Align yourselves into 5 man teams; 1 team per table.

Decide-It Dinner

Explore the assets at the table that can be combined to create a social impact your team defines. Sketch out a collaborative plan and a 1 month timeframe for measurable action that includes opt-in ways for everyone on the other 7 teams (and their networks) to participate.

Do-It Dessert

Announce your team's call to action to the other teams. Describe your action, and tell others how they can help.

Drink-It Uplift!

Toast to each other's great work, and pledge to act in support of your favorites. Let the games begin as the room starts tweeting their networks to do the same!

One month later, we'll compile an impact oriented roundup of what each of the 8 teams has achieved.

So what do you think. Could it be fun? What would you change?

Want to come? Click here!