2013 Summer (in Chatham, NY)
Participants bring their own world-changing projects to develop in an eight-week residential session. Participants will be staying in host homes offered by residents in the local area. We provide food for participants who will be involved in preparing meals together. Our program operates in the gift economy, so there is no tuition.
Focus Areas
- Leadership: Learn to collaborate and work as a team as well as empower teams to fulfill projects and produce outrageous results.
- Projects: Develop implementable projects that produce a positive impact on the local environment or community.
- Service: Help us operate "Community Eats," which is a donation-based community hub for meals and events and is our primary service project this session.
Structures
- Daily Activities: We start our our weekdays with a short stand-up meeting to coordinatate the day's tasks and schedule. We spend our mornings on group work and afternoons on individual projects. We will also have various events and work sessions on random evenings and weekends. (A Typical Day)
- Coaching: Throughout the program, each participant will have a coach to support them in their personal and project development.
- "TED Talks": We will help participants improve their skills at sharing their project and story in an inspiring way. We start with internal "project slams" where participants practice with each other (while being video-recorded), and work up to sharing in open houses and finally give full presentations at our Exhibition event two weeks before the end of the program.
Participants are responsible for their own travel costs, spending money, and any off-site or weekend meals.
Dates & Location | Apply to Participate
Program Facilitators
The Program Facilitators are on site during the session delivering the special sauce of the Labs: the Human Alchemy of gathing people to produce outrageous results together.
Source Team
The Source Team is the Jedi Council, or Wisdom Council, or Council of Elders who are at the source of making this session happen. They provide the guidance, perspective, expertise and skills to pull it off. Although they'e not necessarily on site during the session, they also provide the Social Capital necessary to be able to do a project like this without money.
Support Team
The Support Team support the daily operations of the program and facility. This involves communications, logistics, housing, sourcing food, transportation, documentation, media production, publishing, public relations, social media, and the general activing of keeping the plates spinning in the air.
Program Participants
The Program Participants are what it's all about. They're the ones bringing their heart, soul and visions and running themselves through the ringer to break through the barriers between them and the difference that they want to make on the planet. Not an easy job, but someone's got to do it.
Coaches
The Coaches guide the participants through their growth, project development, and personal breakthroughs. Each participant has a coach working with them individually to make sure they get what they need from the program.
+Goals and Accomplishments+week 2+Accomplishments
Group Accomplishments
- Linoleum down in the kitchen & washable/whiteboard walls
- Flower of life in the yellow room / Yellow room
- Weeding & gleaning at Common Hands Farm
- built trust & vulnerability and fun
- project slams
- Ruben's crazy dance
- MetaMapping ELL ecosystem
- Came up with the menu plan, roles, delicious & healthy food
- Established connection with Quaker community (Friday potluck)
- Celebrated FOUR birthdays
- Shifted toward co-creative responsibility for generating ELL
- Accomplished a lot in upgrading the space
- Have an outdoor washing (triple) sink
- Upgraded electricity in building to 150 amps
- We're using metamaps and finding the connections between our projects
Individual Accomplishements
Eric
- Got a streamscapes workspace and whiteboard set up
Ishan
- Getting here and setling in
- Able to fit in the work I needed to do for projects outside of ELL
- Maintained connection and communication with the people from home
Sean
- Confident in direction I'm headed
- Resolved my issues about when I could be here and when I couldn't
- Telling a positive story :)
- Happy to go weeding and gleaning
Rob
- Realization: I have more value to share than I give myself credit for
- Identified more of my role and gifts around metamaps
- Finished reading book Eric gave me
Claire
- Getting here across the country
- Got connected, related, settled in, restored to myself.
Charme
- Got in touch with coach, and have gotten much clearer about my projects and the work I need to do.
Maia
- Jumped to next level of building field with coaches
- I threw my first dance party AND YOU ALL CAME!!
- The non-monetary context of ELL is spilling blessings all over other aspects of my life, and relationships, and clients. And it's AWESOME!
Connor
- Had personal breakthrough from coaching conversations with an unparalleled depth of value
- Got a lot of programming progress done. Beginnings of JavaScript rewrite done.
Yana
- Found where support was needed and took care of those needs
- Was being present, open and honest
- Excellent conversation w/ Conner (coachee)
Ruben
- Got to recognize the ways I can contribute and a sense of my responsibility at ELL this year
- Got connected with everyone, especially support team members I'm supporting
Haiz
- Moved from not knowing how to start writing to accomplishing good, focused, thoughtful writings about ELL
Arthur
- Got a workspace set up (mostly)
- Supported collective breakthrough in vulnerability and restoring balance of facilitation to being generated by the group.
Jackie
- Made strong connection to metamaps and using it for assignments for Gaia U
- Surprising consequences from being here... job offer
Madison
- Clear up things from home so I could be here with integrity
- Breakthroughs with Eric B. in working around food.
- Created a system to manage the food needs and process
- Worked with Story Telling after Ben's presentation
Ryan
- Feel like I got a lot done on MFS... moved from not knowing what to do into much clearer action and role
- Practiced my "prospective parent pitch"
- Felt like I connected to the group through the physical play/dance/sharing
Tomis
- Got 2 weekly newsletters written and sent
- Had critical conversations about foundation of ALC
- used metamaps to map conversation and outline our IndieGoGo campaign
- Got comfortable with everyone and ready to rock with them
+Goals and Accomplishments+week 3+Intention
Group Intentions
- Update GameShifting boards to one we'll use [That sounds great!]
- Implement a kanban board for our group work time [You may erase this note Kyle is happy about this since he has researched them some]
- Finish Kitchen
- Physical Play Session [ I remember 'I wish... why not?]
- Group Clean-up Slam
- Finish Yellow Room
- Continue to remove barriers to collective intelligence (shame, blame, ego, etc.)
- Increasing vulnerability and honesty
Individual Intentions
Ryan
- (my last week before leaving for Russia for two weeks)
- Get crowdfunding ready to launch. Support video process.
- Get un-blacklisted with NYC DOE
Madison
- Get the word out about Community Eats
- Implement a daily rhythm for myself and the support team about observations and needs
- Focused on growing and refining my new relationship to food
- I want to talk more with people... grappling with the balance of silence, listening, and speaking
Eric
- Start an implementation cycle on Streamscapes - getting tool chain up and running to build a virtual machine receptor
- Make the space beautiful -- Keep upgrading beauty, cleanliness and organization in the space
Connor
- Get a functional re-written iteration of JavaScript done
- The self-care and discipline required to accomplish that ^ goal
- Start an every 4 day cycle for a "what's missing meditation"
- Connect with Ishan personally early in the week
Jackie
- Explore implmentation of Gameshifting for my projects
- Refining my desktop kanban board
- Research grants
Haiz
- Move from stillness to thriving practices
- Break writing work into sections and start to structure what needs to be written
Yana
- Journal about this experience
- Find a way to support from afar
- Remain grounded
- Create a personal kanban board
Maia
- Extraordinary next-tier / new depth with coaching team
- Amazing gathering of women
- Preparation for studio voice session
Ishan
- Support Connor's focus on development
- See how I can manage workflow and support Robert in contributing from his strengths
- Review legal aspects / terms of service / terms of use
- Maintain consistent communication with the wider mm community and related opportunities
- Maintain connection with our other team members who aren't here
Sean
- Practice telling the story about ELL
- Connect with Chet
- 1 -2 weekly reflections
- Learn to post a video
- Support farm relationships
- Work on a web site for my Yoga Teaching / Garden Practice
- Feel more comfortable in the group setting / sitting and talking
Claire
- Connect with the support team
- Get social media stream flowing
- Collaborate with Haiz around writing
Arthur
- Support Eric in Streamscapes development
- Physical exercise 3x this week (dance, yoga, ultimate)
- Eat high protein breakfasts instead of cereal
- Finish getting workspace workable
Charme
- Proactive in my project development
- Meditate every morning and exercise every day
Tomis
- Make progress on launching crowdfunding campaign
- Conversations: interns (How to attract the right people and build long-term connection), pull together resources for increasing staffing and supporting interns, coaching (how to structure and develop our coaching program), recruitment (strategy and actions we can take to increase enrollment)
- Read more (at night and in the morning)
- Continue physical workouts in new ways
Ruben
- Explore with the support team how we can support better
- Martial arts bounce back to feet move
+Goals and Accomplishments+week 3+Accomplishments
Kyle
- I got rid of what was holding up the space there (in other words this Accomplishments section/page here)... please continue the intentions, accomplishments and such. It's been a couple weeks now and nothing new has shown up on the site... could be due to me..
- An introduction to who I am: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIL5LnTEDxY Next Steps Talk (With Ben!)
- An Understanding of Game Architecture and coming to the fact that I am a Social (Game) Architect
- That GameShifting got implemented into the Agile Learning Centers and the Manhatten Free School
- Here is the link to my Facebook and Twitter and Google Plus About Me : I know its buried in the site. https://www.facebook.com/kyle.sykes.14 and https://twitter.com/ErgoFlows https://plus.google.com/u/0/101450272276894168819/about
- I made a PearlTree this year based on #DeepWealth It's dubbed #TheFreeSpace and based on #LiquidCurrencies such as the #DreamBank http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-u=1_507861&N-fa=4194042&N-s=1_8821300&N-f=1_8821300&N-p=85654509 and I dub it the FreeSpace. A MakerLab that doesn't need a physical space, but encourages one. Or Many.
- http://prezi.com/e5zrfimyza4p/thefreespace4dream/ The Prezi that I made about the #FreeSpace4Dream.
- P.S. Keep at it. Don't Stop. Fail Better. Be Uncomfortable. Makers do! I might write some more (coherent) journals in the future as I am working on my Reportage skills. The Democratization of content and information is important to me. I also have this idea about A.R.T. talks aka Agile Resilience Talks. So it would come out like this.... A.R.T. Make things possible. Perhaps that is what the Vision Showcase was. I read the PR online. It was nice.
- P.S.S. Look up my Next Steps card in the website. Under Chronology or Kyle Sykes [Next Step]
-But please keep me posted and updated. I want to engage in correspondance with The Fellow Makers! That includes the other Founders. I'm still in this. I also hear your now designing a Fall Session. I want in. :D