'Walk the Plank' Unconference 2012 Session Notes

From Gangplank Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

32 topics were suggested for the unconference. Below are as many notes as we could collect for the various sessions. What will you do with the information? What are your call to actions?

Transportation: Relevance to Community Entrepreneurship

Challenges: - Young people are less likely to drive

- Part of systemic problem - Cars = freedom, isolation, burden to society, not collaborative

- Entrepreneur perspective - interaction important - local commuter/circulator service?

- Can community step in to solve problems?

- Need forum for everyday people to solve immediate, even "small" problems

- Speculative, profit-driven planning does not equate to VISION. Planning should respond to what people want.

- Decision makers: Stupid on purpose? Or…our education system doesn't teach them to think? And the same for voters…

- How do we get corporations to understand that transportation their problem/responsibility, not just government?

Big Data

Discussion: - Holistic view of systems

- "Healthy system"

- Synergy & commonality

- Education as a starting point

- Unstructured/unrefined

- Tampering with data

- Transparency - "Un-biasing"

Energy - Today vs Tomorrow

Issues: - Regulation

- Current grid loss

Solutions: - Open source network of small

- Create feedback to intice people to use

Community, Communication & Magnificence

Discussion: - Agile/creative

- Cultural shift between community & competition

- Trust, mastery, approachability, connecting, accessibility

Fear vs Anger

Discussion: - Fear as a motivator

- Successful people are open with their failures

- Why fear failure? If failure = growth

- Who is determining your path? (Boss, fear, etc)

- Secondary "gain" behind goals

Gangplank Community: What Survey Reveals

- Manifesto lovers

- Facility fans

- Business builders

- Respect/value each

- How do we: better serve them? help them help GP?

Ecosystem for Creative innovation

Blocks to Innovation: - Barriers between government/business/universities

- Polarization - prevents us from seeing grey

- Realize every cause has an effect elsewhere in the system

- Not "my" problem -- Proactive - not (over) reactive

- Fear - no rejection holds people back from trying

- Education system does not support creativity

- No company safety net; No healthcare

- Regulations difficult for small business

- Tax structure

Solutions: - Create flows - where/how plug in to system

- Create pathways/flow to choose from

- Plug in to the "rolodex"

- Team Visionary/Hustler/Hacker/Designer

- How do we make it easy for entrepreneurs to do what they do well?

The Gangplank Model

Discussion: - What is being unused in your space/business that GP could put to work?

- Lead w/ stories! Doing!

- Social capital means you're never done

- Work around challenges, start with something else

- Manufacturing vs more -- "Mass customization"

- Being wanted for the sake of being wanted vs 'keeping the magic'

- How to transfer 'touchy-feely' when separated from other GPs

- Layers of relationships

Healthcare: Reasonable Solutions for Taking Care of Humanity

Discussion: - Investment in life of neighborhood

- Self-organized

- Intergenerational

- Support locally

- Childcare in hospitals (intention/avoid liability)

- Drive into garages - isolationist/backyard

Education As An Enterprise

Discussion: - Project based

- Unschooling

- Gap year/exploritory/broader experience

- Shadowing/mentoring/volunteering/internships

- Education & collaboration on campus

- Fostering creativity & innovation

- Ownership & choice

- Change the focus of success

Individualism & Community

Discussion: - Corporations/working

- Workers are spent

- Frugality has become hoarding in corporations

- People/prosperity/planet

- Social collateral = $

How Do We Make Systemic Change

Discussion: - Corporate social principals in their business practices

- Conscious capitalism

- Integrity

- Seeing the invisible in our communities

- Self actualize

What Actions? - Be interested

- Create "do" communiities - Be that one crazy person - Be willing to see from another's view - System telling of stories - Get scared once a day and take action

How Can Nonprofits Work Better

Discussion: - Coordination

- Connect/bridge NP to ForProfit/Govt

- Breakdown resistance to share ideas/resources

- Figure out where overlaps are

- How to help NPs understand GP & not worry about "territory"

- Can we learn to think of each other as databases of resources?

- Who takes initiative to reach out for collaboration?

- What to do about "territory" feeling/realities

- Coordination of ideas/resources

- Permission-we wait for it instead of taking initiative

- Collaborative exercises (what do you have/I have; how can we work together)

- Think about the unobvious people

- Common vision can help break down barrier

I'm Not A Techie

Discussion: - Levels of understanding

- Self-education: Using tech experience to expand your understanding

- Exchanges: Culinary hack night, storyboarding, on call mentoring for conflict resolution

- Connecting w/ others who are lacking programming/content

- Remind tech of our value

- Perception issue --> Not reality that techies are hostile

- Don't think of it as fitting in, how can you be a catalyst for change? Lead!

- Avoid the box. You will already be losing if you start there.

What Can We Do that's Meaningful

Discussion: - Collaborate to build something for good

- Flip PHX rising --> PHX/AZ destroying

- Work the system in the margins

- Involve government

- Signature event for all

- Link smaller events

- Improve intimacy of relationships

What is our unifying theme?

Discussion: - "It's a hot place for cool people."

- Messaging: vibrant communities, substance beats marketing message

- Need champs (GP, etc)

- Tell what we're doing right

- Aim for retention via awareness/make time

- Stop bitching!

Preparing for Zombie Apocalypse

Discussion: - Screwed (no wifi)

- Creating power/pump --> battery power/alternator

- Abundance goes away

- Stay cool, dig into ground

- Food (garden/storage)

- Gangplank - organized looting/gathering

- Organized security

- Certain % expect marshall law & national guard rescue

- Feudal times/trade/barter

- Doing things together as a group already established

- Don't have to, then don't want to band together

Creative Communities

Discussion: - Creative Connect (no agenda, no egos, no kidding)

- How do we get people to go to the geographic urban core?

- Large groups --> small group --> organized by creative discovery

- Forming personal relationships

- Homogeneous vs heterogeneous groups

- What is the value to citizens? Entrepreneurs? Governments?

- What is the echo effect of a group life creative connect on the larger community?

- "Community of attachment" - Knight Foundation

Community Vibrancy

Discussion: - Connections through well-designed spaces/places

- Vibe = energy, clicking of minds, people out, activity, the aesthetics of the place matter

- Can be inspiring, mood lifting

- Creative thinking

- Authenticity/facility

- Opportunities for interaction/participation

- Shifting aesthetics of motivation

Leveraging PHX's Strengths to Tap Into CA Resources

Discussion: - Publicize existing innovation

- Ecosystems

- Visionaries

- Where's the CEO talent?

- Silicon Valley "takes care of the young"

- Making companies "investor ready"

- Mentors lack the right "frame of references"

- How can we leverage our ability to collaborate?

- Investors must set the pace

- Nimble - not huge companies we depend on

- Elected officials - need forward thinking

- Publicity - don't be modest

Is There a Different Level of Openness in Different Sectors?

Old school business start-up mentors’ advice:  lock down, keep secret.  These same business models envision unlimited growth (growth to no end), which leads to problems.  Do companies have a flipping point?  Now it’s novel to have 4,000 employees.  How do we keep values as we expand?  


How big do you need to be?  If you had 5-10% of the market, would you consider yourself successful?  VS strong-arming everyone into doing things.
Some friends want to grow a business where the main end-point is having a $75k/yr salary.  That's all.  Perhaps has to do with wanting time to grow a family too, and that salary is 'enough.'

  The world was expanding – now it is shrinking again.  Now that we have ALL the information we could want at our fingertips, we need relevance.

  WORDS:  If an idea is new, don’t have the words yet (term for dealing with this: ‘transderivational search’).  Have to distinguish, define, challenge. Setting examples becomes the new norm.   The feedback loop for creating  is via open-ness.  We use this word (open-ness) because we don’t have the words yet; works well for now.

  In Seattle, Jacob found out recently that until 1963, only whites were allowed in the neighborhood he now lives in.  Isogenic.  Question:  is this movement a middle-class movement?

Retrieved from "wiki.gangplankhq.com/index.php?title=%27Walk_the_Plank%27_Unconference_2012_Session_Notes&oldid=200"