Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Lesson: Learn to set goals


Well, the warming party is over. It was fully enjoyable, I'm glad I have a virtual room. Now that I start a new process after the lessons learnt from the party, having the prezi does make it easier for me to think about goals. I also realized that I will be very busy!! but I can sense how I can become more organized and start working more efficiently.

So, at the time of the party, I thought that instead of having a google document to organize the pool of tools, a mindmap would do the work better and easier to navigate. I gave some instructions on how to build the map here. However, to my surprise, giving instructions was not enough. One of the attendants repeatedly asked why I wanted to get our of the mindmapping process. I tried to explain it many times, but it didn't seem to make a big difference..I wasn't understanding his questions I think. Then, a friend told me this after actually adding info in the map:

"so i (and probably others) want to help you and ourselves by collaborating, but its really difficult to do that if we don't know how and for how long.
Well I need to know what your main goal is for the Virtual Party, how people are supposed to contribute (exactly!) and how long it will take (resources)? But you need to make sure that all these things have a very simple and specific focus, otherwise it all goes haywire.
A leader is the focus machine, he/she ALWAYS refocuses people back toward the vision (or goal)...listen, redirect."
‎"having tools to use does not mean they are going to be used effectively. You still need a clear direction for the outcome, the method, and an idea of the required resources (money or time...)
In one way, it was upsetting to read this feedback because I had read it before in other situations related to the NEH, quite a few times.  But at the same time, it indicates that I am not as close as I thought to be clear to people. So, although I finished the day quite overwhelmed by the whole thing, I gave myself some time to think and rest the ideas, and here I am again. Quite timely, last week I borrowed "The Inner Game of Work" by Timothy Gallwey from the library which I started to read yesterday afternoon, and additionally and like a miracle, yesterday evening I got given as a gift "Grow your own carrots" by Bob Griffiths and Chris Kaday. I just happened to open Bob's website right now to check I had his name correctly and guess what?? From his website:

"The principle behind the GROW process is rooted in the Inner Game theory developed by Timothy Gallwey...Just as an Inner Game coach guides you by asking questions in order to learn a sport, the exercises and questions on this website will guide you through the stages of GROW in order to reach your Goal. Each of the stages of the process has been designed to focus your awareness on an important aspect of Goal achievement. I would go as far as saying that if you follow GROW carefully and honestly, get good support and put energy and enthusiasm into your efforts, it is hard not to achieve your Goal. You too can have a successful and exciting experience with the process. I wish you the very best."
I don't believe in coincidences. So my focus now is on learning to set goals and achieve them. I see goals like milestones, like steps in the process or even sign posts. Not as something for me to be stuck on. There must be a deep reason why after a year, I haven't been able to be clear when I decide to do something collaboratively and I am determined to work on it. Having said that, I won't work on setting a goal for the virtual room collaborative  mind map right now. Sometimes you have to "murder your darlings". This is one of them. I think that for now, my focus is on finishing the Business Model Folder V.0. 

As I said before, things are a bit hectic for me and my family at this time of the year, so I'm not sure if and how often I'll be posting, but it might be part of the process to achieve that goal that I do post regularly...we'll see. 

So...goals, here I come!!!


Monday, November 28, 2011

(Endless) Party is on!!

Welcome everybody to the NEH's virtual room warming party!! Please come on in.

The general conversations are already happening in the NEH's skype group (add me so I can add you to the group: tatiana.maya.valois). With the first conversations, friends started to introduce themselves and immediately sharing who they are and what they do with website addresses. It was then when I thought "oh...I don't want to miss this info, I want to check you out in the future". So it was a bit evident that the draft document and guide that I put online for us to add our tools in one place, was a bit too simple for the party. It was then we I explored using mindmeister as an option following the same categories I used when building the virtual room environment, which are aggregate, organize, connect, collaborate and create.

So here it is how I see the mindmap working. If you click here, you'll have access and permission to edit the party's mindmap without singing up for an account. There you'll find a node of the NEH's virtual room, or personal learning environment. It may serve as a guide for you to add your own tools and ideas. The aggregate, collaborate, organize, create, places, connect and people (within connect) nodes all have notes that will hopefully help you in the process. Then, after checking the NEH'S room, you can use an existing "You" node or create a new one to share your tools with us. 

Hopefully, the map will tell us if and how different people use same tools for different functions in their learning experience. If you decide to sign up for mindmeister, you can copy and paste your node and create your own mindmap to share (embed) with others. I would like to see the party's map frequently updated, so if you decide to create have and keep your own map, can I ask you to copy and paste it as a node in the party's map?? I think it would be a great source to connect to people, ideas and projects.  Put as much info as you want in your nodes, you can add links to your websites and notes to share contact info. 

I'll be online until 28/11/11  4:30pm EAST Aussie time but please!! keep partying if!! Let's make it an endless party!! I wonder how big a map could mindmeister support. I have a baby and a husband to go back home for. You can come and leave at any time. When you join us, please give us an introduction of yourself, what you do, what brings you here today...anything you want to share. 

If you want a bit of background about the party, here you might find the relevant information: 


Virtual Room Warming Party: Intro
Building the virtual room: Personal
Building the virtual room: Learning
Building the virtual room: Environment

Friday, November 25, 2011

Building the virtual room: Environment


The guide I followed suggests me to include 3 categories of the environment: people, place and tools and
additionally, recommends to think about 5 functions of those tools: Aggregate, organize, collaborate, connect and create.

I found it really insightful. Although I rearranged a few things, I managed to keep the advice and realized I have access to quite a lot of people, which means that although I feel that my efforts to reach people are helping me to build relationships with others and myself, the fact tha I wasn't aware of where they were and/or how many options I had was taking me to exhaustion and making me work very innefficiently.

I found mindmapping my environment with this process a very concise way to recognise my virtual room. The prezi is very heavy with words for now but I hope to introduce more images in the future as I assess my room and change things around...a photo frame here, the bookshelf there, some flowers over here...

Well, I think I have my virtual room ready to unpack my boxes of ideas!!! so I'm ready to celebrate!!! Honestly, it feels good to have a virtual room, which is my expression of what I understand by Personal Learning Environment. I feel like I know where I am going but I have the flexibility to change directions if I want to. I definitely recommend you to have one, specially if you are like many people, dealing with tones of information every day and trying to put ideas in place. I also see it as a partial inventory of my online resources...give it a go if you can. I can't stress it enough.

SOOO....CEEEELEBRAAAATION!!! I realized that celebrating on Monday (the 28th of November EAST Aussie time) works best for Aussie based friends, for most friends in other parts of the world the party is happening on Sunday, sorry guys if I wrecked your resting day...lesson learned for the next opportunity to celebrate!!  It just didn't feel right to change the date. If you're coming, please add me to Skype (tatiana.maya.valois) and I'll ad you to the NEH's skype group where the party will happen. I have put in place some instructions to put our pool of tools together, but the first objective of the party, is to party!!! I would love to share with you my excitement for the NEH's first year and virtual room milestone!! PLE's might be a central part of the conversations in the party, but please have some fun!! I'll be on skype most of the day on Monday Aussie time, you can show up at anytime for as long as you want, leave and maybe come back later...oh beautiful internet, we are all locals here, no commuting.


Other big news to celebrate for are that I created a few other blogs: Ultimate Peace and Disc, Love: The Verb and Holy Body!! It is not likely that I'll be posting on them this year, but I wanted to let you know they are there and I think they have a lot to contribute to the NEH's general purpose...well, that is why I created them. And last but not least, we've been relocated to central Queensland, part of our stuff is in Brisbane, some other stuff is in the Sunshine Coast, and some other stuff we need to get from somewhere so moving is gonna be interesting. We have quite a few things to get done before we leave and the Christmas period doesn't really help, so I think that in order to keep my sanity, I won't commit to feed the blog as often. I'll keep working on the NEH of course, that never stops, but the blog will run passive again for until about January I'd think.



Maybe the best way to check on the Cells of the Earth progress is by having a look at the Business  Model Folder in google doc every now and then.



Ok...so here it is: My environment. Talk to you on Monday. If not, talk to you around, if not, merry christmas, happy new year and enjoy life!!.


Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Building the Virtual Room: Learning

Today it was "Learning's turn". I am really enjoying doing this. The focus of today was on what I need to learn to be who I want to be. Just to clarify, it's not that I'm not happy with who I am and therefore I need to be someone else in the future. Rather, I'm using the "who I want to be" as a sign post that sort of indicates me where I want to go. Not only did I think about who I want to be in the future, but to specifically work on what I need to learn, I placed myself in the future and visualize what I would be able to do. That was powerful, not just who I want to be, but what I can do in a few years time. Then I worked backwards to find out what I want to learn about for now. 

Now that I'm done, I feel like I still have a few things to include there so, I guess that's part of the idea: "Play, reflect, evolve"

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Financial Investors


So…what can you do if you are a financial investor??

Apparently, for a start up one of the biggest obstacles to implementation and even design is usually [lack of] official currency. I strongly believe that is not entirely true. The main constrains and frustrations in my experience have been polishing the ideas, exploring and reflecting on what I’m doing, iterating on people’s feedback and organizing ideas to mention a few. The inner struggle way overtakes the money constraints to a point where I realized that getting the money to start was not, in my case, the first priority.

Financial investors come to play as such at the implementation stage of the business model generation process. To be a financial investor you can be a person or an organization. You would have an investing account visible to the entire community (all community member’s accounts are completely visible). You can browse business models and find the ones you would like to follow up until they reach the implementation process, or you can browse those who are already in that stage. Business models ready for implementation will display a “budget pledge” page. In it, you’ll find the business model folder for that particular project, which will show you and explain in detail its canvas and all its building blocks, plus will specifically include an explanation on the use of the funds asked for. It will also tell you what sort of financial investment the project is looking for. The project may decide to accept individual and/or organizational crowdfunded investment, or it may expect to be entirely funded by one organization or kind of organizations to which its service is of particular interest. With this information you would know whether 1) you are interested in investing and/or 2) the idea investor(s) wants you to invest in that project.

Your investing account will show the community how much official currency you are happy to put available for investing, links to projects you have invested in previously and what projects you are looking for to invest in the future. Cells of the Earth will tell the community the total amount of financial investment available in the platform and, will provide an analytic tool that can give you information like, for example, the ten most desired project categories according to financial investors.

One of the big issues with current investment and financial system is that you don’t really know where your money is going to and what is done with it, not often are you aware of the reputation behind the projects and companies your money is supporting. Specially with government taxes that both individuals and organizations pay, the tax percentage and the use of your money is set up with very top to bottom approach, where citizens have very little space to voice their opinions. As a Financial Investor, you can think of your investments as a voluntary tax for the community, where you get to partly express your opinion with your investment behavior. By supporting some and no others you express your preferences. The government, which is to say, the community, presents you with opportunities and options of what they believe relevant to do by developing their business model, work investors partly express their opinion through engagement with the projects, you partly do it with your financial investment.

Another reason to think about your investment as a voluntary tax is because taxes, as I observe, are meant to be used for causes that would help the entire community. Currently, a government gets to decide most of those things that the community needs, how they need it, how they’ll get the money and how they’ll distribute it. In the Cells of the Earth platform, since the community is the government, it is the community who decides what the projects that require priority to get implemented are. You decide where to put your money and how much, and by doing so, you tell the community what is important to you. When the data from all types of investors is analyzed, the result is a true reflection of collective intelligence and social capacity to decide what is best for all at a particular moment. That is why, as a financial investor we ask you to consider investing without expecting financial returns, as when you pay tax, or donate. Our wish is that you're interested in bringing ideas to fruition because you need the materialization of such ideas for the betterment of society as a whole, rather than merely expecting the financial returns. We also expect you to visualize future returns by co-producing services with the help of the organization you helped to appear in this world. That visualization concept is mostly for financial investors who may become both work and/or idea investors in the future.

At this stage, I think you would not be asked any contributions directed to the Cells of the Earth organization because it would cut 5% on the funding amount pledged by idea investors, who have to provide a due date to achieve its funding goal. If by this date, the project does not receive the funds needed in its entirety, no money at all will be directed to them. Not reaching a funding goal by a certain date, means that the project requires refining to become a priority for the community. It is adapted from the Kickstarter approach.

I found this project particularly relevant for this topic, and also quite related to the Democratic Financial Redistribution Ideas

Building the virtual room: Personal

Not as straight forward as I thought. Basically, what I'm after is identifying and building my own Personal Learning Environment (PLE) to become both more efficient and more resilient in what I do. Knowing when and where I store information on internet, how I can access it, how we can collaborate, how to perform at a good pace and keep a balanced life...So reading Michele Martin's blog, I discovered that creating a PLE actually requires some skills and a process that I wasn't aware off. Doing a bit of research, I found this post which I have decided to use as an initial guide. He suggests:

"In order to create and effective personal learning environment you need to recursively go through the following process:
  • Personal:
  •  First figure out who/where you want to be (in 5-10 years time) using a visioning exercise, then try and see who you are now and note the differences.
  • Learning:
  •  In order to get from where you are now to where you want to be, you will have to learn things (skills, knowledge etc), note down what those things are.
  • Environment:
  • Learning is a product of your environment. You can adapt your environment to learn better, without adding effort. Identify ways you can change the environment around you.
  • Habits:
  •  The best way to change your environment is to create good and destroy bad habits. Only way to do this effectively is one at a time and with 30 day trials."
This entry is about the Personal aspects. Does a Prezi give you enough info??





Friday, November 18, 2011

Warm up for the party!!


Hey...you coming?? Monday the 28th of November.


Getting ready to party!! Ok...to have a good time I’d suggest you bring your own food and drinks to share, that is, your learning tools details. We’ll add them to this document in alphabetic order and we’ll add the following information for each tool:

1) Add your tool’s/site’s name
2) Add your tool’s/site’s web address
3) Tells us your perception of what it is and what it does, or is meant to do
4) Tells us how you use it, pros and cons.

If you use the same tool but you use it differently to the creator’s way, you can just add it to item 4).
For example, you can add your facebook page as item 4a) in my example below. You can discuss with the item creator to add more info, like the pros and cons that are not included in my example. And if you have a different perception of what facebook is all about, or you want to complement it, you can either add the comment as item 3a) or discuss with the item creator (me) to change the description of item 3). It’s the first time I organize a virtual room warming party...and it is a party anyway! so allow some mess and drunkness in the room...it’ll be ok, if there is anyone staying overnight, we might be happy to clean up a bit the next day over the hangover and a lot of water. I expect some broken glasses, juice spillage and stuff like that.

In the google document, were we’ll keep “the pictures” of the party, the conversation, drinking and eating will be happening in the NEH’s Skype group. If we are not skype friends yet, please add me (tatiana.maya.valois) and I’ll add you to the group, if we are friends but you’re not in the NEH’s group, please throw me a quick message to remind me.

If you want to add interesting websites that are not necessarily a tool for you, but you would like to share its content and make sure it is in our radar, we will discuss on skype how we will document it. I’d like to allow people to suggest tools to do that, maybe we can create a mind map, a prezi, a google doc, a wiki (I am not a wiki expert, so it would be good to learn), a facebook page, a forum somewhere, etc,.

And last but not least, if you are tempted to organize your own virtual room, I’d love to take you to the blog post that I found randomly and gave me the idea. Explore it and see if you get tempted. Exploring Personal Learning Environments

As an example, this is part of me:

1) Facebook
3) A social network to connect with friends and meet others, share ideas, let people know more about you, your likes and dislikes...one kind of a virtual expression of you.
4) I don’t use for personal stuff too much anymore, now, most of what I do there is related to the NEH through http://www.facebook.com/newecohumanity. It is a page that I use to update NEH’s fans and friends about videos, links, ideas, my own activities. Particularly for things that I don’t write posts about, it let me tell friends how I feel about certain things. I am getting a few other blogs on the way that are connected to the NEH in specific topics, they all have the NEH’s facebook page plug in so that friends of one particular blog have access to the stream of the NEH in general, that is, access to what is happening with the other blogs too.

So here you have it. We can build the pool from here. If you use the same tool, but use it differently to me, you can just add it to item 4). For example, you can add your facbook page as item 4a). And if you have a different perception of what facebook is all about, or you want to complement it, you can either add the comment as item 3a) or discuss with the item creator to change the description of item 3)

And remember, think cellular. How would we interact with each other if we were to the earth, what cells are to our bodies?? What if the earth is our body and we are its cells??




Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Democratic Financial Redistribution Ideas


How will the Cells of the Earth organization use the contributions from idea investors??
A bit of a refresher from a previous post: Let’s assume a core team of 5 people is already formed. We are all work investors.

As I see it, the 5 roles for this team are:

  • Public relationships (I call this social connector)
  • Platform development (all the programming, applications development, web development etc,.)
  • Democratic finance development (in charge of developing and designing the financial module of the platform where the community would be able to see the flow of money, it is a like a banking software with accounts for all users but with absolute trading visibility to the community)
  • Culture design (In charge of designing and setting the organizational culture of the community, the leaders by example that expect to replicate their biobusiness genetic code, the how we work, to all cells/investors)
  • Legal organizing research group (They are in charge of finding out the ways for our idea investment to operate legally, privately and independent from the public burocracy that slows down processes).
My vision is that every member of the core team, will have to get a group of work investors themselves to develop all this, which means that each core member, will create a core group for the Cells of the Earth as an organization. Meanwhile and/or simultaneously, few idea investors will be appearing in the platform providing feedback to those core groups. With time, more idea investors and more feedback, there will be a financial redistribution to these 5 core groups, but also there will be demand for those core groups to become, let’s say intrabusinesses, which are businesses that one the one hand provide additional value to the organization by keeping its platform development and organizational functioning up to date for the community, and on the other hand, they can offer their service to idea investors.

There are so far two options:

  1. Using 50% of the income towards organization leadership, and 25% towards core groups and 25% towards the platform community.

Organization leadership income goal = AUD$68000 per year by December 2013. (includes AUD$8000 per year for vehicle expenses and subscriptions)

Core groups = AUD$38000 per year by December 2013. Once a year, the entire platform community vote for the core group of the organization that has been more beneficial to the community. The 25% of AUD$136k would be distributed according to votes.

Platform Community = AUD$38000 per year by December 2013. Once a year, members of core groups vote for 5 idea investments that are, have been or have the potential to be more beneficial for all investors in the community. 25% of AUD$136k would be distributed according to votes. An example, someone is working on offering organic food as a service rather than as goods. His plan is to help you set up your food basket to be picked up from your back yard. Not a gardener?? Not a problem, he’ll keep the garden for you, or he’ll link you with home growers to supply part of your food basket. “Cells of the Earth” considers this project to have a huge potential to help the organization to develop complementary currencies and thus liberate official currencies, and also to progress as a society towards food security.

Goal timeframe 50/50 distribution
Income goals per year
Income goals per month

50% Organization Leadership
25/25 towards core groups/platform community
100%  Platform
50%
25/25 towards core groups/platform community
100% Platform
12-Jun
$17,000.00
$8,500.00
$34,000.00
$1,416.67
$708.33
$2,833.33
12-Dec
$34,000.00
$17,000.00
$68,000.00
$2,833.33
$1,416.67
$5,666.67
13-Jun
$51,000.00
$25,500.00
$102,000.00
$4,250.00
$2,125.00
$8,500.00
13-Dec
$68,000.00
$34,000.00
$136,000.00
$5,666.67
$2,833.33
$11,333.33

Goal timeframe 50/50 distribution
Ideas required per year to generate $136,000.00
Ideas required per month to generate $136,000.00

at $200 each
$150 each
$100 each
at $200 each
$150 each
$100 each
12-Jun
170
226.67
340
14.17
18.89
28.33
12-Dec
340
453.33
680
28.33
37.78
56.67
13-Jun
510
680.00
1020
42.50
56.67
85.00
13-Dec
680
906.67
1360
56.67
75.56
113.33

If idea investors contribute $100 per idea per month, note that AUD$34,000.00 if divided equally between 5 core groups, which would be AUD$6,800.00 a year. That number doesn’t seem enough to me to catalyze processes within the organization.

On the other hand, it seems to me that the amount of ideas required to achieve the financial goals is not too big, regardless of idea investors contributing $200 or $100. This is a good opportunity for the core team to keep up with the load of work and feedback.

Let’s explore option 2.

2. Using 20% of the income towards organization leadership and 80% towards core groups.

Organization leadership income goal = AUD$68000 per year by December 2013. (includes AUD$8000 per year for vehicle expenses and subscriptions)

Core groups = AUD$136,000.00 per year by December 2013. Once a year, the entire platform community vote for the core group of the organization that has been more beneficial to the community. The 40% of AUD$340,000.00 would be distributed according to votes.

Platform Community = AUD$136,000.00  per year by December 2013. Once a year, members of core groups vote for 5 idea investments that are, have been or have the potential to be more beneficial for all investors in the community. 40% of AUD$340,000.00 would be distributed according to votes. Another example, someone is working on a car pooling and rental system that would reduce the traffic on streets and would make it convenient for you to not own a private car but having permanent access to good quality, safe vehicles all the time. “Cells of the Earth” considers this project to have a huge potential to help the organization to develop complementary currencies and thus liberate official currencies, and also to progress as a society towards non growth dependence.

Goal timeframe 20/80 distribution
Income goals per year
Income goals per month

20% Organization Leadership
40/40  towards core groups/platform community
100%  Platform
20%
40/40  towards core groups/platform community
100% Platform
12-Jun
$17,000.00
$34,000.00
$85,000.00
$1,416.67
$2,833.33
$7,083.33
12-Dec
$34,000.00
$68,000.00
$170,000.00
$2,833.33
$5,666.67
$14,166.67
13-Jun
$51,000.00
$102,000.00
$255,000.00
$4,250.00
$8,500.00
$21,250.00
13-Dec
$68,000.00
$136,000.00
$340,000.00
$5,666.67
$11,333.33
$28,333.33

Goal timeframe 20/80 distribution
Ideas required per year to generate $340,000.00
Ideas required per month to generate $340,000.00

at $200 each
$150 each
$100 each
at $200 each
$150 each
$100 each
12-Jun
425
566.67
850
35.42
47.22
70.83
12-Dec
850
1133.33
1700
70.83
94.44
141.67
13-Jun
1275
1700.00
2550
106.25
141.67
212.50
13-Dec
1700
2266.67
3400
141.67
188.89
283.33

If idea investors contribute $100 per idea per month, note that AUD$136,000.00 if divided equally between 5 core groups, would be AUD$27,200.00 a year. It sounds to me that this amount can work more as a catalyst of processes within the organization than the AUD$6,800.00 a year in a 50/50 distribution.

On the other hand, the number of ideas required to achieve financial goals from the beginning looks big to me. There is a risk of overwhelming the core team and core groups. But I do expect more work investors than idea investors…there could be some balance of workloads there.

If I had to stick to one of the options right now, I’d vote option 2 at $200 per idea per month. But if there is a possibility of starting with option 1 and progress to option 2, I’d take the time to explore it.

The reason to set organizational leadership income goals and work backwards from there, is that the goal is for the organization not to be dependent on infinite growth to function. It is not that the organization needs more and more. It requires a minimum to function but most importantly and it allows cyclical growth, which implies the acceptance and welcoming of periods of depression or recession as innovation and change opportunities.