politics

Potential revisited

The first day of 2gether08, Lloyd Davis wrote an enthused blog entry about its potential and voiced his concern for it may not get realized, and this unconference may end, as so many others, lacking a resolution of that potential. His closing line was “Irony Alert: this post lacks a real resolution.”

Dear Lloyd, your post may have lacked a real resolution but it didn’t lack a real passion that touched me, resonated with mine, and called me to write down what follows. Just like you, I’ve been seeing too many times the rising of potential, then the lack of resolution and the fading of the experience of the event into memory, then out from it. Yes, we do make one-on-one connections at unconferences, sometimes collaborative projects emerge or get stronger by them, but the potential of the event for augmenting and mobilizing the collective intelligence of its participants for the good of the whole never gets realized.

What is missing to grow collective capabilities for sustaining the momentum generated by events like 2gether08? One of the conditions is what ClareWhite suggested: “increase online connectivity,” and not only because the fear that “people in places outside the hubs, where the cool kids hang out, are going to be left even further behind.” Increasing the connectivity in and among social innovation initiatives is the key to increase their collective intelligence and consciousness. The movement (as in “the awakening of the social body”) depends on the presence of those qualities.

To manifest them, we would need new type of online environments, where social and project networking is coupled with a vibrant and well-attended community knowledge ecosystem, all designed for sustainability and scalability. To realize the full potential of the nascent movement of social innovation, even that wouldn’t be enough. I think, we need to jump start a vortex of innovation.

Why to do that? Because we can. “We believe that the UK is a global hub for digital development, futures thinking and the promotion of social innovation. 2gether should become a community which brings the best, the brightest and the most passionately creative people of change together, both online and face-to-face at events across the UK, Europe and around the world.” (from 2gether’s Vision for the Future)

2gether can, indeed, become such community if we manage to discover/invent/co-create a simple and elegant structure of engagement, continuously optimized to boost self-organisation, and a framework for collaborative meaning making.

Thank you Lloyd, for sharing your thoughts on the potential. I hope others will contribute what they see.

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