Some months ago I mentioned that we had a new center called "Global
Solutions Nexus" in Venice, California, which was intended to be a place
for new civilization activities, events, collaboration, etc.
Well, I figure I better give an update on that, for those of you who are
interested.
There were some encouraging successes, but also some elements that didn't
work and essentially the center "failed" and doesn't exist any longer.
I personally don't really believe in the concept of failure, other than as
a step or course correction which adds up to growth and learning. Anyway,
let me take this opportunity to outline what worked and didn't work and
what I personally learned from that. There should be some insights there on
what collaboration really is and what it takes to make an operation work.
I'll have to mention some names and explain it in a bit of detail, but I
trust it should be useful for others as well.
If started with that Edmond, the owner of an attractive building right on
the beach in Venice, next to the famous Venice Board Walk, desired to use
the ground floor for some kind of new civilization activity. He had
approached me several times about starting some kind of community center
there. I had been intrigued but had so far declined, as there wasn't
anybody else around to man it, as I figured it would take several people to
dedicate most of their time to it, and I couldn't see myself doing it
alone. And it would have to pay for itself and the people working there,
which I couldn't see happening without a major effort.
Edmond then ran into some more people who were interested in creating and
manning the center. Specifically he ran into a couple of people, Francois
and Conrad, who had a plan ready for how it could be essentially a
non-profit community oriented activity, but supported by some commercial
activities, like hosting of web pages, renting of the space for events, and
future profits from business incubation activities, that is, helping
various projects in getting off the ground.
Edmond brought me in to evaluate the proposal because he didn't quite
understand the technicalities they were proposing, such as setting up a
server and T1 line. He also brought in Tony, who also had an interest in
the project.
I listened to everybody and decided that, yes, this could probably work.
Edmond would finance the server equipment and give free rent for the first
6 months. Conrad would set up and administer the servers. Francois would
set up the legal structure, manage the center, and he had various ideas for
projects and activities. Tony would do P.R. and marketing for the center.
But now, Edmond said that he wouldn't feel comfortable going ahead with it
unless I was involved financially. So, he and I became the investors who
bought the computer equipment for the place, and I agreed that I would play
a part as well, providing the ideological and visionary support for the
center.
I wrote up a nice vision statement for what the place was about and what it
was supposed to be doing, and everybody else agreed and apparently went
along with it.
We have 5 people, with quite a well-balanced complement of skills. We have
a legal/administrative person (Francois), a technical person (Conrad), a
marketing person (Tony), a landlord and art director (Edmond), and a
visionary networker (me). But now notice what goes on with each of them...
Conrad and Tony basically move in right away and start using the place.
Conrad sets up the servers as promised and administers them, but otherwise
gets busy on his own business activities and doesn't really pay attention
to the center from then on. Tony uses the place as an office for his own
business, takes good care of the people who drop by, but otherwise don't
really do what the center is about. Francois wanted to be the director and
to be there full-time, but quickly didn't get along with Edmond, so we
agreed that he and I would be co-directors. However, then he didn't feel a
reason to be there, and basically never really showed up. He put together
the computer hardware, wrote up a lease contract, negotiated a couple of
deals on the center's behalf, and worked on some possible income sources
which didn't work out. He essentially went into a "wait and see" mode,
waiting for some reason to show up. Edmond as well basically took a stance
of waiting to see what the rest of us would come up with, would supply some
philosophical ideas once in a while, but didn't really have in mind to be
there to implement them.
And me, well, I didn't show up there every day either. But I started
implementing what I set out in the vision for Global Solutions. I scheduled
an assortment of event there. We had weekly collaboration meetings where
people could bring in projects they would like to have happen, we had a
couple of salons, Helen and Peter Evans brought in John Perry Barlow for a
lecture, and did an Emerging Artists weekend several times, and there were
a few other events and lectures of different kinds. I put ads in some local
papers and promoted the center in various ways.
There started to be a very hopeful atmosphere amongst the new civ related
network of people in L.A. Some sub-groups developed that were meeting there
regularly, working on making various business or non-profit projects
happen. A number of people were looking at moving their websites over to
the servers.
Many people were dropping in spontaneously on a daily basis to see what was
going on, to talk about what they wanted to do, etc. Random passers-by from
the boardwalk would often pop in during events and bring in intriguing
synchronistic elements.
But now, a couple of months into it, the atmosphere started changing.
Edmond started complaining about there being too many people at events,
them making too much noise and leaving spots on the carpet. And he was
having a problem about it not making any money yet.
And a few other people appeared on the scene who mainly saw this as a free
ride, a place to do business from without paying for it. Specifically, Tony
and Conrad invited a couple of other people to set up their office there,
based on some promising businesses they had going on. Francois and myself,
the directors, didn't pay enough attention to that before it was too late.
One of these people in particular practically wrecked the place, by
covertly plotting to take it over and get rid of all these "weird" people
who showed up for incomprehensible events just to "talk and waste
everybody's time". He seemed to be well-financed, so he managed to string
along Edmond and the other guys for long enough to get us out on a side
track. Eventually he disappeared, leaving a few bounced checks and a bunch
of people who were mad at him.
Eventually, after 4 months or so, Edmond declared the experiment a failure
because it wasn't paying for his rent. Conrad started to back off from
taking care of the servers, because he wasn't getting paid. Edmond got mad
at Tony for bringing in too many odd people and only doing his own
business, not the center's, and he threw him out. Francois kept his
detached wait-and-see stance, but, under pressure, agreed to let Edmond get
out of the 6 month free rent agreement he had signed. And me, well, I
couldn't very well keep on optimistically scheduling new events there,
paying for costs out of my own pocket, if everybody else doesn't play
along, so I stopped doing that. And I couldn't very well keep selling
websites on the servers if I wasn't sure they were going to keep existing,
and the administration of them was rather shakey.
There are a lot more details to this, of course, I'm just giving the broad
strokes here, and only from my, possibly biased, personal perspective.
At any rate, some of what I learned from this is:
- Things don't just happen by themselves. If a specific outcome is required
somebody needs to take responsibility for carrying it through. If
everybody's just "waiting to see", it probably won't happen.
- Collaboration is not just a matter of mixing a few people with different
skills. The participants need to be clear on exactly how they're working
together, and they need to be willing to do so. A group doesn't accomplish
anything by itself if none of the members are doing anything on their own
to make it happen.
- It is important to gauge what people's bottom line is before one gets
deeply involved with them. A bottom line of "is it making any money?" might
not go well together with a bottom line of "are good things happening, are
people happy?". As it turned out, half of the people involved decided that
nothing good was going on because they didn't get a pay check. The other
half, or, well, actually only me, got frustrated because nobody else seemed
to care about the noble aims and non-profit orientation of the center, and
the excitement and successful events, when it really came down to it.
- Some people have a wholistic win-win collaborative attitude to getting
things done. Others will attempt to get the most they can for themselves
while giving as little as possible back. It doesn't necessarily work well
to mix those two approaches, at least not without suitable safeguards. Free
resources and space might easily be usurped by somebody who sees it as an
opportunity for getting something for nothing.
For me personally, probably the biggest lesson is that I need to pay a lot
of attention to what people's inner motivation is for what they do. Some
people come from a place of inner integrity and natural win-win where I can
feel confident in trusting them implicitly without having to spell things
out in great detail. Other people do the best they can mainly for
themselves only, and with them I'm probably best off making a very specific
legally binding contract on what we've agreed on and what we haven't.
It also taught me to careful not to become the leader of some activity by
default, just because nobody else shows up. I have no problem with being a
leader, but then I'd like to get my own vision together in advance of what
I'm trying to do, and I'd like to have the authority to lead whatever needs
to be led. I don't just want to be the only one who shows up.
I would very much like to see a new paradigm in action where people do
things because they need to be done, where it is natural to take the whole
into consideration, where an increase in quality of life is the bottom
line, and where things just evolve organically. However, we also still live
in a world that runs on an economic paradigm of taking what you can while
giving as little as possible for it. While we have a foot in several camps
it takes some discernment to know when to operate on what set of
principles. Sometimes a tight legal contract is what is needed. Sometimes
one can expect things to emerge organically from a group of people who
trust each other. Sometimes there needs to be somebody in charge and an
established hierarchy. Sometimes a self-organizing community of people will
work much better.
At any rate, the Global Solutions Nexus is history.
The space that housed Global Solutions is now used by Julie Solheim and I
for our Synchronicity Networks business. And, essentially, we're operating
based on some of the things we learned here. Julie was one of the
cornerstones of the collaborative meetings we had here and is a person I
have no problem trusting unconditionally. The same with a few of the people
we associate with. With some of the other people we deal with we use the
old civ business approach, of negotiating agreements, being very clear what
we're agreeing on, and putting it down on paper and signing it. So, for one
thing, we arranged things so that we own and operate the equipment, and we
have a clear lease agreement, and we call the shots on what we're part of
and what we're not.
I hope to see many collaborative ventures in the future, business oriented
or non-profit, many new civilization events, and much success on many
levels. And I trust that we're all learning to be better at discerning how
exactly it is all going to happen.
- Flemming
o o
/ \------------------ Flemming A. Funch -------------------/ \
/ * \ New Civilization Network / Synchronicity Networks / * \
/ * * \ ffunch@newciv.org / * * \
o-------o----------- http://www.worldtrans.org/ -----------o-------o
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