The Founder's role was to connect the Pioneers together. Now this grouping will morph into a Fellowship.

 

- The Mesh -

Many of the Pioneers did not know one another until the Founder introduced them to one another. Now, through one-on-one conversations, stories are meshed. Connections made. Souls bared. Respect felt. Common ground found.  

Knowing that this is not at all about him, the Founder convenes the Pioneers and just moves out of the way. A circle is formed; a network weaved. Here is a crude visual representation of what happens as links are established.

Meshing

- The Groove -

'To found' has two meanings in the English language. In the metallurgical sense, founding is melting and melding material. In the human sense, it's about letting go of who you think you are, and letting your identity become fluid so it can mix in with others'.

This founding is what the Pioneers do as they assemble around the vision of the Emergent City. They engage in dialogue. A shared spirit emerges. This process is only slightly structured, and its outcome is definitely not controlled.

A common rhythm, a resonance is found - a standing wave, felt by all, but driven by no single participant. This shared bond envelops and holds the Fellowship together and allows divergence to exist and be calmly examined without breaking the circle. 

Space opens in the center; in this space the shared vision of the Emergent City will begin to come into sight.

Finding the Groove

- Play -

Pioneers become true Founders all, when they found in the second sense of the word: laying a foundation.

The process is playful, as it must when we create something genuinely new. It is spontaneous dance. It is improvisation. It is jazz. It is an experience of coliberation or group flow.

Everyone plays a different instrument, and nobody has played that song before. 

Make no mistake, though there is a unity of purpose, this is no snoozy lovefest. There is palpable tension; the occasional spark may fly. Power is involved. Assumptions are threatened. Maturity is required. In terms of psychological intensity, think less line dancing, more Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

(Okay, maybe not quite as intense.:)

- Infinite Play -

The Founders are infinite players. Their play has no fixed rules or boundaries.

The foundation they lay out is an overlay on reality. It is a lens through which one views the world. It provides language: labels, roles, relationships, structures, in the form of symbols. The basis for a fresh social operating system.

It spells out which things deserve attention, and which things are to be ignored.

Importantly, it signals what is to be valued in the Emergent City.

 

Upcoming pattern: 3. The Game

 

OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS I've been following quite closely the musings of a number of people who are sharing inspired thinking about the intersection of social capital, entrepreneurship, knowledge, innovation, money, and finance.

There are, for instance: 

• Max Marmer, Bjoern Lasse Herrman and their circle talking about emergent ventures; 
• The outstanding Gregory Rader and the eminently lucid Guillaume Lebleu who are hard at work expressing new currency principles; 
• Alan Rosenblith and Jay Standish thinking out loud about Symbionomics; 
• Dan Robles with his mind-opening videos; 
• John Robb on networked tribes; 
• Michel Bauwens and friends on the political economy of peer production; 
• And of course a number of people orbiting the Junto cloud like Venessa Miemis (Future of Money Project), Bernd Nurnberger, Mark Frazier and George Por. 

Ideas — big ideas — are flying fast and furious, and I'm starting to get the sense that they're set to begin to gel together over the coming year.

Most of these people are now aware of one another and adeptly making use of microblogging — talking AND listening — to become acquainted with one another and building mutual trust and knowledge. They are first-rate knowledge network weavers.

Network weaving is critical, I believe, because if something groundbreaking is to emerge of all these interactions, it will first have been nurtured within the protected environment of community - just like innovations start out as fragile prototypes in the lab before getting robust and making it big in the real world.

So what might that groundbreaking thing be? I'll tell you what it looks like from where I stand.

I think we're about to see the emergence of a new way of conducting innovation that operates quasi-independently of the current money system.

In other words, where conventional thinking tells us that investing money in research and development is the way to get innovation, we're putting together a means of innovating whose chief requirements are things like time, imagination, knowledge, initiative and trust, with money moving from primary to secondary concern.

What I see emerging is a set of tools and customs -- cognitive infrastructure, when you think about it -- that will give us the necessary scaffolding to grow a multitude of virtual "cities". These cities will bring together people with shared values and orientations towards the future, and who are in a position to collaborate to bring something new into the world. They are part and parcel of the burgeoning Relationship Economy.

No current-day structure really corresponds to this kind of "city". Is it a school? Is it a business? Is it a bank? A venture capital fund? An economy? Is it a lab? An incubator? Is it a creative space? Is it a living space? A community? A network?

It is all of those at the same time.

Joining the right emergent city provides a creative person with affordances to:

• Share her ideas and goals;
• Get oriented in the network of members;
• Enter relationships with people who need what she wants to create;
• Become known (gain "currency") and build reputation and trust relationships;
• Get support in the form of knowledge and perhaps time;
• Find partners who share her intent;
• Develop the skills she needs;
• Mentor others who are on a similar path;
• Feel a sense of belonging;
• Disengage, if she's not getting what she needs. 

Every emergent city is different from the others. Some are hidden and closed, some are visible and wide open, others are somewhere in the middle. When you scratch the surface, each is ultimately defined by some kind of organizing principle: its "social DNA" - a set of agreements, perhaps an ethic or even an aesthetic that you have to abide by to be a participant.

Some of them even have reprogrammable DNA, which lets them adapt to changing circumstances.

Although some emergent cities may be physical, most of them are virtual and not tied to a particular location. This lends them a very important property that physical cities don't have - you can easily inhabit several at the same time.

Just like individual people, cities have reputations; emergent cities too. There's a fractality to it. There are roads, bridges between cities; they interact with one another. Currency/reputation in one might help get you somewhere in another.

Some offer such a favorable environment for creatives that they act as 'strange attractors' for talent, driving a virtuous circle of growth and innovation.

If this all sounds abstract and metaphorical, it's because it is. But I know a few of you have been down this path in your imagination and I hope these jottings resonate with your own visions. I want to use this new blog to keep track of the most promising ideas and real-world examples that I encounter relating to these new (and at the same time, very old!) pieces of social infrastructure.

Wanna see what I see? The subscribe link is to the left!