(post 06/02/13)
“What is your view of the current world situation- I asked George Pór?
Well, I’m going to sit down to talk about this. How I see it is that there are two currents running at the same time. From one side, the world is getting worse and worse. Ecological crisis, economic ones, exclusion, poverty. And on the other, things are getting better and better, a greater awareness, creative movements, revolutions. Both currents are increasing in speed more and more. So when two currents like that operate at the same time, a clear result of it is chaos. An increase of chaos.
In a way ,to understand the moment we’re in, it is helpful to think about the image of a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. There is a moment, where the structure of the caterpillar starts to collapse, and the organism, lives in a cell-soup full of potential. The caterpillar is no longer a caterpillar but it is still not a butterfly. In this soup the key challenge is for the cells of the butterfly recognise each other and organise themselves to form the butterfly. So now, in this precise moment, the key challenge is that individuals willing to create a new society recognise each other. They recognise each other and don’t fall into ego traps of “I dont’ like you”, “this is not my thing”, “working collectively is too difficult”,and so on and so forth”
This one, and many other deep insights were shared on the 30, 31st of January and 1st of February, on the co-design workshop of the project Innovant Junts (Innovating together), hosted and promoted by CEICS, the Campus of International Excellence Southern Catalonia.
During this 3 days, we – George Pór, the pionner in collective intelligence, Jordi Cartanyà, the visionary director of CEICS, Yois Haro and Nuria Quince dynamic members of the CEICs team and myself – hosted a design meeting for 3 innovative communities of practice (CoPs), in the following domains: food, innovation and collective intelligence.
The gathering counted with around 30 individuals from the corporate world, research centers and health institutions with the curiosity and willingness to step into the unknown domain of learning together through CoPs. The framework we used was Theory U. We bravely engaged in Check-ins, Listen-up Harvesting and Visioning techniques. On the second day we celebrated a World Cafe to go deeper into the topics.
Each participant, thanks to CEICS, was given a book “Gatherings”, in order to encourage further the use of rEvolutionary techniques.
Before the 3 CoPs are officially launched in a couple of months, we are moving into a “transition phase”, where we will engage in specific tasks to nurture the initial efforts, water the seeds that were planted, coach and encourage the cells, every individual forming the CoP to recognise each other
