Accelerating collective #socent impact? @ci2iglobal is born in the afterglow of #we_b

Below is a lyrical personal story of what recently happened when I invited some worldshaping women friends to Brussels in January 2012, to co-host an experimental co-creation lab for accelerating global social impact and innovation.

I compiled these images and wrote this story (without twitter handles or links) for a Pecha Kucha evening in Brussels on 25 January, which means I had only 20 seconds to speak about each image - that's  6 min 40 sec total to tell the whole story of what was an extremely transformative experience. It didn't go perfectly, but all in all, a great learning by doing experience I can highly recommend for sharpening your changemaker presentation and storytelling skills.

I would also share that collaging and then turning the story lyrical in the days following these events were both very intense, even catalytic ways, to distill and harvest what really happened for me. I have mindfully told this from a very personal perspective, because I can't say at all that the deep shift which happened for me is representative of what everyone at the #we_b event experienced.

I do know that the whole @ci2iglobal group, however, continues to be deeply moved by what we experienced together with the amazing #we_b participants, and in our debrief and planning session after the event (not to mention dancing together until 4 in the morning in between those!).

Enjoy the story ~ I'd love comments on how it makes you feel.

(You can click on each image to see a larger version, if you need to.)

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This is a story about a mosaic 

of social entrepreneurs, changemakers and worldshapers. 

In my belief system, they are the living angels 

in which the hope of our planet currently lies. 

It’s a her-story.

that’s becoming 

a history of WE-stories.

It’s a story about accelerating the work of “changemakers” around the world.

And since I am one of them, it’s also my story. 

I first fell in love with the simple word “WE”

when I was using it to catalyze 

Webbed Empowerment 

in an East African warzone.

I'd been amazed when 

an organization “labelled” me 

a “leading changemaker” 

because of essentially personal passions 

I was pursuing.

But I became aware in those days 

that there were other people like me, 

who were driven to serve the world 

by something different inside. 

My passion for WE 

moved with later me to Brussels, 

where I’ve explored & found 

work for myself in the emerging 

global changemaker scene.

There’s lots of us now! 

At the start of this year (2012), I invited five friends 

- fellow women changemakers -

to gather from 3 continents at my home.

Each in unique ways they are my angels, and

We see eye to eye on many things.

our plan was to have a conversation

and to host a conversation 

about accelerating collective 

global changemaker impact and innovation. 

We invited a few people we knew

to join us for an experiment in Brussels. 

that we called in the invitation "#we_b."

We also committed ourselves 

to moving a conversation forward

around the world in the next 2 years. 

Worldchanging folks heard the call 

and gathered with us for this first ever WE_x co-creation lab. 

The inspiring space filled with awe inspiring people 

Their uniquely powerful energies 

humbled us 

as we bumbled through 

our group’s first time working together as a team

Round 1 of group introductions confirmed 

it would be a very exciting day

We were 20 changemakers

from 9 countries

with work on 5 continents

and unlimited passion in the room

into this pool of empowered people 

we unleashed systems thinking content

and co-creative processes

and personal reflection.

With ease the group sparked and taught each other

about how the changemaker space is emerging today, 

and explored what that could mean for each of us.

For 12 hours we conversed, we played, we ate, and made plans.

It was exhausting and exhilerating at the same time.

I learned so much. 

One framework that cut naturally across

many of our conversations was

the @Thrivable action spectrum, 

proposed by Jean who was there to share from Chicago 

Seeing our actions as changemakers 

through the lens of 

what we can control

what we can guide

and what we can nurture

was so grounding.

a collective sigh of relief

seemed to ripple through

this group of often 

over-committed over-achievers 

as we got this.

Christelle from Paris

provoked us to think about impact 

in terms of social risk and opportunity 

How might we invite 

new conversations with old system institutions and corporations,  

that re-frame the story of why social inclusion matters? 

What if 

creating social impact 

was valued in terms of 

reducing social risk? 

Bonnie from Chicago and Carolina from Buenos Aires

led discussions about scaling impact which left us wondering:

Must we all scale our impact?

Or can we find ways to work together 

to achieve the impacts we seek at scale? 

There is only so much each of us can do, 

to control, guide, & nurture 

the world’s current transformation.

But collectively

We are a new landscape 

that’s daring to emerge

and through modeling with clay we learned:

We each define the impact we seek to create in this lifetime,

We each bring our own dynamic to the landscape,

and We each determine the direction we face 

as we keep moving forward to serve 

Our group included changemakers 

at every stage of the European talent pipeline. 

we were students and start-ups,

consultants and thought leaders and 

directors from globally operating organizations

We’re still developing the basic language 

to talk about what we do,

and why we do what we do. 

Our simplest shared truth is that 

we exist as a real community of human beings 

who feel called to live our lives in service to the earth’s 

transformation today. 

It might sound to some of you

like our heads are in the clouds.

But as an angel who joined us reminded me, 

each of us sees something different in the clouds. 

and learning from what we all see

is the essence of the magic 

that tapping into our collective wisdom offers. 

The perspective we gain when we gather 

helps all of us to see how to reach higher

another nugget from her, and this frilly doodle 

that floated in from one of the many flipcharts

have given me a new appreciation for ginger lately

Did you know that ginger is a rhizome? 

I’m told it’s a unique biological concept, 

that needs no beginning or end to grow

the nodes grow where they are called to grow 

without any perceptible effort

like the conversation that #we_b became

So people left us inspired, 

some embarked on new paths of commitment and collaboration

The conversation moved online

with #we_b angels like @ladyniasan and others

organizing themselves to connect and 

to share all their many thoughts. 

But although this first #we_x lab was done

we knew, 

the real harvest was yet to come.

In the afterglow 

a warmth of women’s wisdom infused my Brussels home,

where we debriefed and distilled, 

seeking meaning in it all

for another 12 hours.

With a renewed sense of common purpose, 

but still without clarity on what we’d actually done, 

we pondered ci2i logo options and 

discussed and discussed and 

asked ourselves, 

again and again

Where does the #we_b conversation lead us? 

For me personally, clarity came

once everyone else had finally gone.

In the house all empty and reflective 

The silence started rumbling 

as an organized unjumbling

of the many thoughts in my head

began to crystalize 

and spill itself 

onto the screen. 

It was our ci2i group’s mosaic 

of content and tools and process and future plans. 

It that thing that drives me on this path.

Forming a clear picture
where there hadn’t been one before

of an approach - our collective approach - 

to nurturing the changemaker’s call 

to learn and become

who we are and what we can do

in this emerging new landscape 

we're co-creating. 

Working together to guide this discovery

in ourselves and in others, 

is a natural way forward 

my angels see eye to eye on 

and I love it 

since there is nothing else we can control. 

For each changemaker carries our own cross for change

and follows our own integrated personal and professional development path,

that leads us toward the kind of impact on this transformation that 

we are each here to make.

And every day, 

more and more brilliant and 

driven people 

are picking their up their own crosses for change

and pursuing journeys in service to the earth's renewal, 

toward humanity's higher good. 

Look around and see us everywhere, 

gathering in places like Brussels every day.

Are you one of us?

I’m glad they like ginger in Thailand,

since Chiang Mai is the next step in my own unique journey

Now preparing for new projects in the orient 

I feel oriented. 

#we_b was a powerful affirmation for me

of the the thriving existence of a global tribe 

to which I know I belong.

I can only wonder 

at what we’ll see 

at #we_c !!

===== end =======

Special gratitudes to @appliedwisdom, @bonniekoenig, @christellevh @carolinatocalli @nurturegirl and the #we_b participants for all the amazing inspiration.

Thanks to you as well for reading and commenting if you feel so inspired. Feel free to share.

Follow us collectively at @c2iglobal

I'm at @ChristinasWorld

Part 3/4: A Social Business Plan for Serving the #socent Community: Collaborating to Build a Values Driven Collective

A vision is (and can only ever be) a framework for anchoring our thinking. What becomes "real" from a vision is always (and can only ever be) a reflection of how it resonates with others, especially with people who have the will to make what they see in it real.

Since I began writing about the Consultancy idea last month, some interesting people I know have shown an interest in moving forward to make it real. Some I reached out to, some got in touch when they read my posts here, some already know each other. Instead of writing a blog post to share with them the next bit of info about this vision that I'd planned to share, I've turned to prezi for help.  It's embedded below.

The inspiration to serve

Every vision is initially selfish - sharing it starts with admitting what I want. What does my mind's eye see in my dreams of what I would love to be able to be a part of on a daily basis? What kind of legacy do I want this endeavor to leave on me as a person, as I eventually transition again and keep moving on into my old age?

So I admit it - if I am going to be building something new at this point in my life, I want to be investing my time in something that helps me to achieve an alignment between my core essential values and my professional life. I would also like to work with others whose personal values and professional integrity I have reason to trust, and who are also seeking alignment with their personal values in their lives as innovators.  In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that kind of alignment really needs to happen more if we are going to maximize the potential effectiveness of deploying social entrepreneurs as a cross-dimensional workforce in the world.

Last week, I managed to gather 7 amazing people together on a group call, and shared some thoughts on how we might structure and finance the start-up of a member governed Consultancy Collective that would help it's members - Social Entrepreneurs - to build dynamic careers that are strengthened by nurturing our core personal values.

Of course, the challenge in sharing a vision is to articulate it in a way that others will be able to see clearly enough, to be able to find that they want it too. The blog post I was trying to write wasn't working. I am still not sure the prezi captures everything I needed to say at this point, but it's out of my head and some next steps are already planned, so things are moving.  

And what about you? Do you see anything in the prezi that resonates with what you want? if yes, feel free to reach out.

The Big Idea

Consultancy Collective on Prezi

Where to now?

Space for the emergence of whatever should happen next is now open around all of the people who have already been involved in discussions about these ideas.

Present on last week's call and tentatively on the list of potential Builders are Sharon Bylenga, Simone Poutnik, Jean Russell, Christelle Van Ham, Bonnie Koenig, Cheryl Cooper and me, Christina Jordan. (Disclosure: yes, I have tweaked the prezi a tiny bit more since I shared it with the group.)

I will also be sending the prezi to former colleagues in consulting Marie-Astrid Corbisier, Michel Cervesato, and Walter DeSchepper (whom I have spoken to but who were not present on the call), as well as to Antonella Notari, Yann Borgstedt, Jennifer Milliken, and Jonathon Hirons, who all represent potential partnership opportunities I have been nurturing, and who should - for the sake of transparency - be aware of the bigger picture emerging behind the ideas I will be proposing to them in the coming days & weeks.

If you have a prior working relationship with any of the people noted above and you find the idea of getting involved as a "builder" worth discussing further, please reach out through your personal channels to get connected, and we'll talk.

Part 2/4: A Social Business Plan for Serving the #socent Community: Co-creating how we present ourselves

A key cornerstone to developing the unique consultancy practice I've written about will be the quality of our database of social entrepreneurs who are vetted, willing and available to be deployed on short term consultancy assignments related to their skills and sectoral/issue based knowledge.

When it comes to initially recruiting potential consultants, the prestigious "labeling" networks such as Ashoka, Skoll Foundation and Schwab Foundation offer existing vetting processes and profiles that we can hopefully build upon.  Asking those agencies' input on identifying their Fellows who fit the "post-late-stage" description comes to mind as a great place to start approaching those important standard-setting organizations with value we can help them to add to their Fellow's experience. 

However, we will need a scalable framework for effectively tapping into an even broader range of dynamic social entrepreneur talent pools than the "big" labeling networks alone can offer.  To that end, I am proposing a database development process that includes at least 6 months of gathering direct potential stakeholder input as described below.

Engaging our potential consultants in designing how we present their experience to potential clients will enable us to explore a variety of ways we can plan to leverage the value of the database we build, for maximum impact on the growth of all of our consultants' primary activities. It will also give us the knowledge of our consultants capacities we'll need to begin developing differentiated pricing models and quality control systems for the kinds of value added services we can confidently claim to offer.  

The inspiration to serve

After a presentation I recently gave at a #140confBrussels gathering, another of the speakers persuaded me of the "black hole of information" that he told me futurists are saying will exist around the recorded history from our time. As I understood his argument, too much valuable new information is being created in digital age real time that we are not yet capturing and sorting for historical knowledge sharing purposes.  Even powerful tools like the amazing wayback machine are having trouble keeping up with the pace of new online content growth in a self-sustaining way.

So here's how I see it: If we want today's stories of social change to matter in the world, it is incumbent upon us to start building our history, and keeping a clear record of what we are gaining experience in and collectively achieving in the global changemaker space. I have been feeling a need to redefine how we profile ourselves for many years, and am thrilled to see that new online mapping tools like OpenAction.org are finally making it easier to imagine creating profiles for social entrepreneurs that, I believe, can add considerable value to our unique professional potential.

The big idea

Building a successful commercial consulting practice will involve developing an up-to-date database of the relevant experience that our workforce of consultants has to offer, which reflects the variety of current operational expertise we have to draw from in designing and deploying consulting teams to meet our clients' needs.  The internet offers us increasing shapes and forms of content to link to in evidence of that operational experience. Mapping technologies like what OpenAction.org is able to render make it possible now (finally) for individuals within a community to seamlessly and effectively consolidate a broad range of online content activity from different platforms, into a single profile and archive building interface.

If we begin to use that kind of technology to deliberately build upon the value of an individual changemaker's big and small cutting edge activities and achievements - historically and in real time - we will have also created something more. Our database of consultants, which is also in effect a trust based network with a high propensity of face-to-face connections, becomes a unique platform for showcasing what our experts' endeavors are achieving, have achieved, and even need help with right now.  Our database of links to the full range of a Social Entrepreneurs activities that are visible online becomes an "online superstore" of social change-related activities that can serve to invite repeated stakeholder and fan engagement.

In the consulting database of social entrepreneurs I am imagining, we would be encouraged to configure our profiles to automatically keep our resumes up to date with active links that offers a full picture of our operational experience, expertise and output. For example:

• video media about our projects
• business & community services our projects offer
• books we have written that are for sale
• socent competitions we participate in
• awards & distinctions we have received
• physical products our projects are selling 
• crowdsourcing campaigns we are spearheading
• other funding models we are experimenting with
• financing campaigns we have recently contributed to
• reports we have submitted from completed assignments 
• social media channels we are using to tell our ongoing stories
• feedback from our clients and teammates about our work on completed assignments

A collective digital space that pulls together links to this kind of content from a collection of the world's leading social entrepreneurs would not only give us a powerful platform through which to find, deploy and share about operational expertise, but would effectively serve to increase the visibility of every campaign, product for good and other kind of fundraising initiative listed in it.

Who benefits, how?

Our consulting practice will benefit from using technology that can tap into a wide range of evolving activities that our consultants are engaged in to create & demonstrate their impact;

Our partners and clients will benefit from the ability to see, find and personally invest in the ever changing landscape of social change that's emerging around people they personally know and trust;

The current and past Social Enterprise projects our community of senior experts has launched would all benefit from visibility within an online superstore of social change-related initiatives that invites engagement with each individual experts' current, past and future endeavors.

Most importantly, participating Social Entrepreneurs will benefit. 

In fact, an evolving profile is one of the things many Ashoka Fellows I know have wished for the most loudly during the 10 years since I was named a Fellow. Unfortunately, our Ashoka profiles are (by Ashoka's design) a static snapshot in time of where we were with our plans at the moment when Ashoka chose to invest in us. One could argue that what really matters is what happened after that investment, but our continued evolution as social entrepreneurs is not well reflected in how Ashoka (and other competitive award networks) have tended to present the work of social entrepreneurs to their stakeholders. 

The face-to-face client and teamwork relationships Social Entrepreneurs can build through occasional consulting assignments can fuel new levels of viral engagement with each of our ongoing and past activities. Pointing my client in the Corporate Social Responsibility department where I am deployed to an easily sharable professional profile that always offers them automatically updated ways to consider supporting or engaging with my other work in the world could be a very, very good thing. 

A one stop page that gets automatically fed with fresh content as we continue to blog, upload videos to youtube and participate in social media platforms and competitions as usual can also help to streamline the use of a social entrepreneur's promotional time. Instead of breaking our time up around promoting specific links to new opportunities as they arise, our consultants' profiles will offer a full picture of what each is actively engaged in right now to make the world a better place.

The consultant's profile should be designed to be equally useful to the potential consultancy client who is considering expertise proposed for a job, to the former client or teammate who is looking to support or engage with the work of a changemaker they now trust after completing a job together, and to the online contact or family member who sees it in our email signature.  Our evolutionized profiles will become the one place where everything we Social Entrepreneurs do in the world can be seen, in a coherent, evolving, career-history documenting picture. 

A community co-created plan for supporting social entrepreneur careers

To begin transitioning Social Entrepreneurs' skills from our own projects to transferable skills that can be deployed in a social change consulting workforce, we need to first take stock of what we are currently doing and learning to do with new and old tools that we all have available. Technology will enable us to let what we are doing speak in the present and create a historical marker, so that what we have done can eventually start speak for itself. The question now is, which tools and systems are Social Entrepreneurs using to achieve what they are doing in the world, that our database should be sure to capture?

I am currently talking with a number of partners about what's emerging as a +/-6 month plan toward the development of a professional changemaker database with high impact value. The plan includes 3 basic activities:

1. Prototype an online collaborative process for developing a useful, trust-based community designed platform which serves senior social entrepreneurs in a specialized sector with new kinds of career-building support, visibility and potential to connect with new opportunities. 
2. Develop and test an offline series of seminar events for guiding Social Entrepreneurs at various stages in their careers through a process of building a reframed and expanded vision of their professional value. The process methods will be tested with small groups. 
3. Work with partners and potential consultants to co-create the consultancy vetting, training & certification process (and related database needs) that will provide a backbone in the quality control systems we put into place for pricing our consultants' services, coordinating teams, and guaranteeing the delivery of value.  

Existing groups of Social Entrepreneurs within easy reach for engagement in this exploratory process through existing partnerships over the next 6 months include: 

• Groups of regionally connected, self-identified social entrepreneurs who are members of the HUB Network in the Benelux region (Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam) and possibly the UK;
• Groups of actively connected changemakers and Social Enterprise support networks who gather at open space industry gatherings such as OxfordJam and SHINE UK. 
• Groups of senior late stage changemakers (Ashoka Europe, WomenChangeMakers Foundation)

Where to now?


I am in active conversation with a Social Entrepreneur support partner on developing a trust-based web community that offers high value to their soon to be appointed first round of Fellows later this year, and see clearly how that experience could serve as a prototype for building a broader database that taps into other kinds of specialized, issue-oriented operational expertise. 


As a Board member of the HUB in Brussels, I have recently been stepping up my engagement in helping to initiate a stakeholder engagement strategy in 2011 that - among other objectives - will aim to strengthen the HUB's community identity as a global and local network of self-identified social entrepreneurs. I will be looking seriously this week at the feasibility of incorporating the Social Start up Labs model in what I hope to develop with and for HUB members, and will continue to pursue discussions with OpenAction.org on how to use their mapping technology to build on the currently evolving HUB member information systems. 


I was thrilled to learn in detail last week about Ashoka Europe's plans to hold a Europe-wide collaborative gathering of Fellows and key stakeholders in the social change space in late June of this year. The most exciting new thing I learned in the presentation was that one of the main themes in the programme agenda is building social entrepreneurs' professional competencies. You can be sure I'll be exploring potential synergies with those developments in more detail with some of my Ashoka contacts this week. 


What can YOU do? 


Inspired by some of the very practical new technologies for changemakers recently launched by people I've worked with and been watching for a while in the social change space, such as OpenAction.org, StartSomeGood.org and wonderful initiatives like Amy Sample Ward's #commbuild chats, I am currently collecting guest-written articles about the latest developments online that support the social change space. These articles will feature prominently in a plan to bring the Internet4Change.com blog back to life this spring. If you are a Social webpreneur developing online tools for the social change space, you are invited to introduce your tool, tell us your story, and tell us specifically how you see it building project and career level value for today's Social Entrepreneurs. 


Please let me know @ChristinasWorld or in the comments below if you would like to contribute a blog post about a tool for #socent mapping, project financing, product sales or career building that you'd like professionals in the social entrepreneurship space to know is now launched, launching or growing. I will look forward to finding ways to connect further around your ideas for Internet4Change article submissions, and will be seeking an initial 12-20 articles to fill a pilot content schedule in the Spring.

My Notes from the #OxfordJam Gift Economies discussion, facilitated by @paulhodgkin

Christina's notes: 
Gift economies (Paul Hodgkin, Patient Opinion)

how to mix financial and gift economies in digital activities
wikipedia
linux movement
amazing things happening at scale

what is a gift economy?
system of social incentives where you are judged by how much you give, not by how much you have
pre-dated marketed economies by a millenium
evident in families, in well working teams

no money attached to the gift
if you think “if I pay for this, i’ll screw it up” ie don’t pay your mother-in-law for dinner she cooks
the gift always travels - what goes around comes around
- asynchronous return - invest now by giving for a return someday

market norms vs social norms
intrinsically motivated, not extrinsically motivated
intrinsic motivations come from the heart - healthier to us

how complete or incomplete is a gift economy

malcolm gladwell - 150 optimal size of a functioning group
web changes dynamic
endless supply of goods
network effect

gift economy effect- find meaning in the gift economy
digital effect - reduced cost of giveing & distributing
network effect - the one with the largest network wins

yum-yum objects - love, play, art, - unlimited supply
monster objects - oil, money, etc.

we need “we can change the world” objects

problem of freeloaders - everyone wants something for free - now freeloaders become active audience

there are disincentives for for corporations to run gift economies
gift economies in government are seen as a problem - corruption
govt. also have a need to make sure things are functioning so can’t rely on volunteer time gifts

what does it mean to “run” a gift economy?
differentiate between exchange system and infrastructure that facilitates exchange

pirate bay/wikipedia examples: large network where exchange happens; small part of it monetized to keep infrastructure running: how small must that remain in order not to ruin the gift economy? 

Draft Notes: first General Meeting of the Evolutionize It Board

16 March 2010, 10am - 12pm @ the "siege social" of Evolutionize It

Introductions

Present were Christina Jordan, Olivier Gaillard, Walter De Schepper, David Ewaku (on speaker phone).

Olivier is an Ashoka Fellow, also active in collaboration int he social change sector. He met Christina for the first time 1 year ago shortly after her arrival in Belgium. Is leaving Belgium end March for 1 year in the USA, working with Ashoka's Youth Venture project in Washington DC.

Walter is a private development consultant, who worked with Christina professionally at 2 consulting companies 1994 - 1998. Walter looks forward to understanding more about what social enterprise is.

David and Christina have worked together periodically since 2002. David is Ugandan, and once served on the Board of Life in Africa Foundation while Christina was chairman.

Christina's intention in founding Evolutionize It is to create a structure through which a number of project ideas to facilitate social sector collaboration might be realized.

Operational Logistics

1. Evolutionize It Blog - Christina introduced the Evolutionize It Blog and proposed that it should be used as a main tool for Board communication. Others will see it, but content written with the board as a primary audience in mind. The blog will also be seen by others - the suggestion is to stay as completely transparent and interactive with others as possible in building the business model. Everyone present agreed with the idea.
2. Titles/Bios/Contributions: We looked at the bios posted on the blog and discussed titles. Christina's title changed to Chairman. Walter & Olivier changed to Board Executive Member; David & Sarah changed to General Member. All members of the board have author access to post at the Evolutionize. It blog on issues relevant to the topics of Social Enterprise, collaboration for change, and/or Evolutionize It's development (posts might also include questions from our board members who are not yet well versed in this field). Christina suggested that all Board members should have a LinkedIn profile.
3. Christina's Volunteer Status - Christina will not receive a salary this year. Any income earned by Evolutionize it will be used to help pay operational and travel expenses. Income earned beyond expenses will be budgeted in 2011, and may or may not include any salaries. In order to be registered as a non-paid worker in Belgium, Christina and Evolutionize It will sign an official volunteer agreement to be registered with the proper authorities. Olivier to forward the relevant documents.
4. Bank Account: the suggestion had been made earlier by email to consider opening a bank account for Evolutionize It at Triodos bank, who is known for their sustainable investment practices. Christina presented the forms for an online professional account, requiring signatures by Christina and Walter as designated operators of the account. The forms called for us to determine the maximum amount any individual could authorize. Euro 5,000 was agreed upon.
5. Meetings: While the Evolutionize It statutes call for annula meetings, the Board agreed to periodically meet via pre-scheduled conference calls using skype, as needed.

Income Opportunities:

1. Life in Africa products: while at Life in Africa, Christina purchased a stock of paper bead jewelry. Investment in one social enterprise feeds another - Evolutionize It is now selling the jewelry via a display at the HubShop in Rotterdam. In addition to what they have already received 10% of Evolutionize It's sales will go back to Life in Africa; 90% to the Evolutionize It account. We need to talk to an accountant about how to reflect the jewelry stock donation to Evolutionize It. Walter will make introduce the idea to his accountant to see if he can work with us.
2. Internet4Change training: Christina is developing a social media curriculum for social enterprises, which she will schedule into the summer school series at HubBrussels. Each class in the course will have a fee, with a discount offered for following the complete curriculum.
3. Collaboration Event Planning: Following success of the Feb Unconference experiment in Portland, Christina is discussing the development of a replicable event series with several potential partners. The model for this and other events should be self-sustaining, with event proceeds priced at levels that finance online media coordination and local partner facilitation.

Partnerships:

1. General: we agreed that partnerships/collaboration frameworks should be formally documented when possible. Those agreements are assets to the organization. David suggested that we separate out financial agreements from work agreements, giving room for money flows to grow/change in the future.
2. Ned.com: looking at possible co-branding agreement re: unconference series collaboration that includes more than ned.com user agreement.
3. Thrivable: is also a start-up, not yet formally incorporated. Memorandum of understanding can be enough for collaboration between Evolutionize It and Jean (Thrivable project founder), but if there are money flows then Evolutionize It takes the management lead.

(David left the meeting)

Long Term Projects

1. Micro-Success: income generating model for social enterprise collaboration. Objective for 2010 is to create, participate in and document collaboration experience; objective for 2011 is to develop/launch incentive systems that draw on lessons learned this year. Currently in progress: 6 month local social enterprise start-up support group (Brussels), planned for July-Dec: online social enterprise support group, possibly to work together toward commonly established objectives.
2. Internet4change: collaboration Agent/Agency concept for underconnected regions, to be developed by David/Christina for simultaneous implementation in Asia and Africa late 2012.

(Walter left the meeting)

Learning/Leadership Opportunities

Christina briefed Olivier on current learning/leadership opportunities, including

1. co-hosting the #4change chat
2. Participating with Radical Inclusion in planning of a Virtual Unconference
3. exploring potential collaboration with OpenKollab
4. presentation opportunity at OxfordJam

Other Business

Olivier had some excellent advice & observations to share.

1. Board Books: Need to start a file with all official documents and board meeting notes signed by 2 Exec members. Don't forget to include a signed page stating that the Board resolved to incorporate the organization.
2. Project selection process: if we want Evolutionize It to be a platform for launching collaboration-related projects, we will need to have a process through which projects are chosen, and a clear framework for project management work undertaken by a project's initiator. We will need to think about financial agreements and performance risk issues, in particular.
3. Performance Indicators: It would be useful to identify indicators for the various activities so that it will be easier for the Board (and others) to assess organizational performance. Indicators can be simple, like how many participants, trainees, events, partnerships, countries, etc. Set goals for the year and keep count; at a glance we'll be able to see what we are achieving or not achieving.

(meeting adjourned at 12:15pm)

What next? Board members please add your corrections in the comments section below. Comments from non-board members are also welcome, but will not be included in the printed notes included in the Evolutionize It Board books.

http://Evolutionize.it springing into action

I'm having a ball developing Evolutionize It.

Today is the first day of spring, and the foundations of an organization are emerging... like the budding leaves on the Japanese Cherry trees lining the streets in my lovely neighborhood, which will bloom in powerful pink glory about a month from now. Lots is going on with Evolutionize It that's still only barely visible to naked to the eye.

Our registration was finalized here in Belgium in January, just before I travelled for a month to the US. Last week we had our first general meeting of the Board, I've just bought the domain http://evolutionize.it, and ordered some mini MOO cards. Tomorrow I'm opening an Evolutionize It online banking account with Triodos Bank.

I have yet to write up the Board meeting notes. It's on my list for this coming week. Following the Boards agreement to use this public blogspace as our primary mode of communication, I will be posting those notes here. I will also be sending each of the founding board members an invitation to post here, with their thoughts about social enterprise, collaboration, and Evolutionize It's strategic development. In addition to falling behind on the Board meeting notes, I have also fallen behind on my participation in the World Bank's Urgent Evoke game. (If by chance you're also playing, please connect with me there!)

But while I haven't managed to achieve everything I'd hoped to have done by now, collaborative activity over the past week and a half has been quite busy:

• I am engaged in a couple of ongoing early discussions with potential partners (including Ned.com, HubBrussels, and w1sd0m), in developing a replicable series of financially viable, co-branded unconference events, that facilitate concrete offline and continued online collaboration between the changemakers who attend.
  
  
• I also reached out to some really smart people I know to get their impressions on some plans that Jean Russell of Thrivable.org and I are getting ready to embark upon, in the context of creating a proposed guide to collaboration in the social change space online. We are currently working on developing structures through which stakeholders of the guide can participate in it's development. My old ally Thomas Kriese and my new ally Allen Gunn both offered some very useful feedback. Jean has sent requests for feedback to her friends Kevin and Greg. We're both looking forward to their input as well, in finalizing the next steps in our stakeholder engagement strategy.
  
  
• Amy Sample Ward was kind enough to invite me to host a session on Social Media and Stakeholder Collaboration at the upcoming OxfordJam event. This past week, I've been working with the event's initiator Ben Metz (who served as Ashoka's UK director for 3 years) on possibly co-facilitating a dinner event as well, and am having some good fun imagineering participant experiences.
  
  
• Last week was also when I hosted my first #4change chat on Twitter, learning by doing at another kind of collaboration event. Tom Dawkins of Ashoka, and the collaborators he has assembled in the #4change crew, have developed a system for managing the monthly chats that I am excited to be learning from. The chat itself was also lots of fun (though I will admit to being a tiny bit nervous behind the scenes!)
  
  
• Earlier in the day of the #4change chat, I delivered a practical seminar for the @HubBrussels host team on developing a team approach to using twitter, in a way that builds their personal profiles and promotes a dynamic twitter presence that serves the #HubBxl community. I am thrilled to have recently joined the Board of Hub Brussels, and look forward to playing a continued active role in Hub community development.

The upcoming week's highlights include a discovery call scheduled with Suresh Fernando of OpenKollab, a Micro-Success offline start-up support group meeting, my first scheduled meeting with the Radical Inclusion virtual unconference planning team, and a weekend with Ashoka's Francophone Europe region Fellows and Investor Support Network members in Lille, France, where I get to invite folks to a 1.5 hour Evolutionize It strategy development session.

All in all, I am tremendously grateful to the universe right now for all the social enterprise collaboration work I've had the opportunity to embrace in recent weeks and months. Nearing the end of Q1 in our first year of existence, I am delighted with how Evolutionize It's structure and portfolio of experience is shaping up.

Happy Spring!

Evolutionizing Board Transparency

Just today, I've started this blog as a place to report on and organize information about what's happening with Evolutionize It.

There's a lot of info that's gone into shaping the direction and design of the 3 year action plan and the 10 year growth plan that I am trying to piece together to present to the Evolutionize It board. Some of that info is in my head; some of it's out there online. The content I will personally post to this blog will attempt to combine the two into some concrete project plans.

Reader feedback, dialogue and questions are most welcome. My hope is that this blog will become an interactive chronicle of social enterprise development experience that can not only inform my board about Evolutionize It developments under my leadership, but also inspire other social entrepreneurs to engage in more broad-based open dialogue about the development of collaborative business models.

As I write this, I do not yet have a clear sense of how involved, or uninvolved, other co-founding members of Evolutionize It may wish to be in creating additional content for this blog. It belongs, however, to all of us, and readers can learn more about who we are at the Evolutionize It, ASBL page. The first-ever meeting with the Board of Evolutionize It will take place on 16 March, at which time I will propose a framework for board members to consider contributing here.

View from the mountaintop -collaboration systems in the pipeline

Evolutionize It is far from alone in the landscape of players who are working to create infrastructure for Social Enterprise and changemaker collaboration. You may be interested in the group notes from the Ned.com Unconference session on w1sd0m and other system level collaborative efforts called by @MattNathan.