Sequence Generating

When we try first to work collaboratively in the crafting of a GP we set up a decision-making protocol. It did not work, because it was not generative. It was not a strong center because it was not what the wholeness needed at that moment. It was probably answering to phantoms of the past of previous collaborative processes. Then I proposed another path to work, based on our own generative process as a crew. It did not stick. The idea was to keep a track of the transformations in the wholeness of our crew, and then inferring a generative process for an space from it. I was so insecure about it that it never made it to Loomio, so you have to go to 11/28/2020 in Discord to consult it.

The driver of the proposal was to work on something we all were experiencing and observe as it unfolded. Ronen pointed out (rightly) that the space created for our crew had a different purpose than the one we were intended to create. Therefore, working in my proposal would help to work together in a GP, but in the best of cases would lead us to an “intermediate" GP that would inform the generative process we were actually looking for. As I told you, I still think it was a good idea; maybe poorly executed. Ronen was also right when he said that collecting and listing possible centers makes it too tempting to treat them as pieces to assemble, which goes in the opposite direction of what we are supposed to do.

By then, I accepted Ronen’s frame that my proposal was caused by my disorientation, but now I think that personalizing that disorientation was misleading. The best way to orient yourself in a space is by watching what others are doing in that space, but that did not help at all. I think the rest were disoriented as well.

I did not insist on the proposal, despite I thought it was a good proposal because it was not generative (and mostly because it did not trigger any reaction positive or negative from Alex a Josh.) In perspective, it could have been a good training process, so I will refine that idea taking into account the learning of the present and future cycles...

On the importance of the context of the GP

It took me two things to grasp what Ronen was after for: the example of the " Starter Cultures" as an example of the space he envisioned, and his description of such space at Collective one. With that in mind, looking back, all my "disorientation” appears in a different light. I am curious to know about the rest of the crew. Maybe it was me, lost in translation... I have to say that what I had in mind was a different space. Maybe less specific in the details, more open to different possibilities (participants, funding models). What Ronen has in mind has a target audience, and a concrete financial model implied. No wonder why any suggestion I made to the cards, that intended to open different financial models, were not taken as contributions to strengthen the wholeness but the opposite. In the meantime, I decided to write a generative process of a well-known domain, one that I have been putting into practice during the last three years with my partner Sergio. All the reflection and the experience helped me to perceive the wholeness. Ronen offered to give me a hand, and I was looking for the right time for that. The situation acted as a mirror of the process but with switched positions. And I see this very clear now: in order to work in a collaborative effort of crafting a generative process, a lot of context is needed to everybody have a shared perception of the wholeness.

A way to collaborate seemed to emerge organically in order to overcome the lack of shared context and the different knowledge on Alexander's work. Jennifer started to write her own version of The GP, which inspired Josh to do the same, and vanished my worries of doing that, as I was afraid that would be perceived as a defying "fork” (and implying a petition of "passing the stick"). Comparing versions of the GP helps to increase the shared context, the know-how of writing a GP, identifying weak or untended centers, or better orders in the sequence. An additional consideration is that it is not necessary that all the members of the crew excel or even have the skill of writing formally a GP. Actually, one is enough to guide methodologically the rest.

Taking the example of the dissonance of the word “financially” in the description of the crew. Simplifying a bit to keep this brief, if Culture Starters is the closest model of what Ronen had in mind for the space, you have to pay attention to the people that hold the space and the participants attracted to the space: mostly young overeducated people in advanced economies that do not want to work in corporate environments nor in traditional hierarchical or poorly paid positions in NGO organizations. Entrepreneurship “a-la-microsolidarity” is the answer. One of the things that those spaces somehow are failing to do is the financial sustainability side of the crews, (but for the ones that manage the space). In this context, Ronen’s insistence on the importance of the “financial word” in the description sounds like a good move, (so the marketplace as a beta testing space of entrepreneurship). Without that context shared, not even agreed, that is not possible to grasp. Choices are called choices because they include some things (i.e. collectives) and excludes others.

How to share context while keeping the wholeness (together)

Very recently I found this text in a serendipitous way. Looking for more texts of this author, I found much more material, and I experimented with some of the ideas I found. The most interesting to me was this one, which describes a practice that I adopted for working in my GP: drawing an egg that captures the strong centers and main sub-centers while keeping the wholeness. I tweaked a little bit of the process described in the paper.

1. When I started to feel the wholeness, I perceive that I had a lot of ideas pushing and competing. This is important! Oh, this is also very important! And so on. I also noticed the pressure of linear thinking. What is first? What comes next? So I decided to put the egg aside and write everything down, non-stop. Spit out everything. Then, I told myself that I could rest easy and be assured that nothing important would be left out or forgotten, every key idea was written down. And I came back to the egg.

2. Then I followed more or less the instructions. I let the strong center emerge. And then the other centers that supported that centers. I thought of sub-centers supporting the centers. Every step I felt how it supported the center. I let that first version rest for a couple of days. I enlarge a sub-center as a center, and I completed sub-centers. I let that version rest again and slept on it. I let it grow in me and felt its wholeness. I changed some wording. I never felt the need to read what I wrote down. I did not analyze the kind of transformation (the major 15). This is how my egg looks like:

1. When I felt that it was a good egg, I went back to the initial notes with curiosity. Nothing essential was left behind. Most of the things I wrote were not that relevant for the egg. So it was at the end, just noise. I thought a little bit about the centers and how they were related. I recognized some of the transformations of Alexander, but I mostly used another perspective, a trivalent logic I learned from René Thom and Gilbert Durand that I consider simplifies a bit the classification of the 15 transformations but captures the spirit. (I offer an introduction to that trivalent logic if you want to know more about it).

I imagine doing the exercise collaboratively as a way of sharing the context at the same time that some centers are identified and shared before moving to write cards. Or even share individual exercises of the egg.

For instance, take the case of very asymmetrical knowledge of the domain, like the one I am working on now by myself. Explaining the egg above to the crew would force me to explain the wording, the rationale, etc. of the Pantheon Work Framework. (I am pretty sure that it could be improved and refined with the ideas of the collective. But that was not the aim of the exercise, but learning what I am sharing in this post).

On the generation of a generative process

I realized that it is a quite different thing to write now the sequence, when I have seen a bunch of beautifully functional teams that adopted the Pantheon Work framework, and the first time we introduced it to a team. And I think that is not very different from how Alexander’s wrote the GP of the Japanese teahouse, and how that “ideal”, archetypal I would even say, Japanese teahouse was developed with the passing of time, by identifying needed centers, by trial and error, etc. If we are writing the GP of our remote microsolidarity space as it existed is because we all agreed that our space would not be radically different from other spaces, but a tweaked one that solves the current deficiencies.

How to write cards while keeping the wholeness together

When I decided to translate the egg in a sequence of transformations (written in cards) I encountered again that context was important. I had two scenarios in my past experience (some teams/organizations had formal hierarchies and others didn’t). And I foresaw a new scenario that maybe I will try in an entrepreneurship university program: new interdisciplinary teams must be created for the course, from scratch. So, any GP implies some initial conditions. For instance, in the Japanese teahouse, we have a terrain plain and empty. That would be a non-hierarchical organization/team. If there are hierarchies above the team, I have an extra transformation (step) to “clear the terrain”.

Looking again back in my past experience, I started to play with implied conditions that could be met or unmet. Also, a generative process could interact with other GP. I remembered that Alexander said that the GP where mathematically limited in number, (but not limited to one).

I wrote some titles of initial transformations. I ordered them. I wrote two different GP, depending on different initial conditions. I merged them, and draw a pattern like this:

I worked again. By writing more generic transformations that included the ones provoking a bifurcation, I was able to keep a single GP. It gained simplicity and lost detail. So the alternatives are losing detail, or make explicit the initial conditions.

So I consider that by making explicit the essential initial conditions, and working with the egg, a group can work either sync or async in a GP, following the logic of what comes first that cannot wait for later and contributes to the wholeness.

(I am working now in developing the titles of the transformations -cards-by writing a text as long as I want, then highlighting keywords, and rewriting a shorter text).

On the possibility of working with audios

We have learned that sharing audio instead of text was good to connect emotionally with the GP. Reading overemphasizes our analytical mind. By listening we seem to activate our imagination and our aesthetic mind, getting better "the big picture”, and overcoming the temptation of not paying attention to counter-intuitive and paradoxical realities.

I imagined the experiment of recording myself talking about the transformations, then listening to the recording, and finally writing the text of the transformations.

I discarded it because I did not have the conditions to do it, but I think that I will try it when possible.

Context of the GP

The context of the GP has been and continues to be clear in my mind, and I believe true to the invitation for this crew: converting a random stream of strangers into cohesive crews.

How would you go about creating a more refined sense of shared context? My implicit question was: could collaborative authoring of a generative sequence be a good way to discover, communicate and collaborate on a shared context? When we could not find a way to actually do (take coordinated action) this together, I embraced the "sacrificial invitation" and ... well here we are :)

Financial Models

Starter Cultures is one example. The Stoa is another example. Warm Data (Nora Bateson) is another example. Microsolidarity itself is another example.

I do accept your framing of StarterCultures as a good example of where a financial model may be clear. I do not recall rejecting other "financial models." It was my conscious intention to altogether bypass any commitment to specific financial models. I was seeking an underlying "generative operating system" where different financial models could manifest. I recognize (and have spoken out and asked to be called out on) my own biases around this subject. The Value Agreement generative sequence is an attempt to do just that ... an accounting method that could be used to explore and implement many financial models. I believe that becoming consciously aware of value flows is fundamental to this effort. Beyond that, I have tried to shape value agreements in such a way that they could hold many financial models (payment, subscription, gifting, funding, etc.)

Methodical Feedback on Generative Authoring

I feel that I can offer feedback on the "generative authoring" regardless of the domain that is being expressed. In fact, in a way, the less I know about the domain/subject matter, the easier it may for me to provide feedback because it is (in my mind) the responsibility of a generative sequence to lead me towards clarity.

Emotional Work / Friction

"I was afraid that would be perceived as a defying "fork”

This, I believe, has been a major inhibitor. I feel I have done everything I could on my part to disarm this notion.

I am experiencing some discomfort and friction with the following framing:

"In this context, Ronen’s insistence on the importance of the “financial word” in the description sounds like a good move"

First of all, I don't feel it is correct to say that this is "Ronen's." Money was not originally a part of the generative whole that I had in mind. Money became a priority after our intimate conversation about money from which I got a sense that addressing money well was important to the crew and to the people that may one day inhabit the spaces we are imagining.

Second: "insistence" - I would really like to know more about where this is coming from. If this is, coming from you, a manifestation of communicating in English, then there is nothing to it. Otherwise, there is something here that I want to understand. Insistence is not a strategy that I employ (at least not consciously). I don't recall ever insisting on it. I do recall immediately paying attention and making space to explore it (and ultimately remove it) when Jennifer expressed dis-ease with it. I am sensing something shared between your response and Jennifer's ... I am sensing a reactive response from both of you ... and since I seem to be the trigger, I want to know more about it.

Also, in my mind "insistence" and "sacrificial" don't seem to make sense together for me!

Forking

I do agree that forking is a great way to explore this kind of collaboration. Make your own copy and start changing it and see what works for you. I have tried to integrate this (and other insights from our efforts to collaborate) into MetaGen.

The Egg

Thank you for sharing this Toni. Before I actually relate to "The Egg" and to "Your Egg" I want to express my amusement! This seems to me like such an obvious experiment that in my mind it hardly deserves all the fanfare of an official academic paper!

As for The Method of the Egg:

1. I understand the visual appeal of expressing ideas this way ... the apparent perception of wholeness it may evoke.

2. That appeal is quickly eroded for me when I attempt to express myself this way. I feel that I have too many ideas that are way too fluid to mess around with trying to contain them in a drawn egg. Maybe it could be more useful if there was a digital tool that allowed the egg to grow and morph as its contents take shape.

3. That appeal is also quickly lost on me when I try to "read" the egg ... it is exhausting.

4. The format only makes space for the "title of the centers" and no space for an elaborating description ... for me the titles are not enough!

5. It invites more recursion (things inside each other) and less linearity. I don't feel that recursion is helpful for understanding context. The Japanese Teahouse is a single linear sequence.

6. Sequence seems to be an absent dimension in this view ... and I believe wholeness is not possible without VERY good sequence

My impression is that many people are drawn to centers and 15 transformations and patterns from Alexander's work and that Generative Sequences (ie the Japanese Teahouse) are one of the most overlooked insights he has to offer.

I get it that the "egg" looks like a whole ... and maybe it is a good metaphor for teaching and talking about wholeness. But I don't feel it is a good tool for exploring wholeness.

Ryan Singer on Figuring out what to do

I encourage you to look at this post (and if you are interested, at follow-up posts) from Ryan Singer:

https://world.hey.com/rjs/13-beyond-to-dos-3cc8dd13

He demonstrates different transformations he uses to deal with a challenge that I believe is similar to yours.

I like his work very much, but I believe that he has a tendency to make things a bit too complicated in his attempt to find methodical patterns. In the end, he seems to arrive at (though not to recognize it as) a generative sequence:

"Okay — I'll set up the Calendly event, compose the recruit email, send that for review, and ... while waiting on that ... start on the last recruit steps and pick the email tool for blasting."

I am curious if it is possible to do the same work without "sifting & hunting for wholeness" but by "starting from wholeness & evolving it."

Your Egg

The title "Wholeness and Centers" is not very helpful to me. I prefer a title telling me what this is .. such as "Pantheon Framework for ..."

Is seems to me much easier to read and comprehend if presented in a boring linear sequence like this:

1. Federation of Competencies

2. Value Generation

3. Knowledge Flow

4. Agreements

5. External Signaling

... and I didn't have to decode handwriting, zoom in or out, or turn myhead on its side a single time to read that!

Additional sequences can be linked for each of those as centers.

"Explaining the egg above to the crew would force me to explain the wording, the rationale, etc. of the Pantheon Work Framework."

In my mind, if you need to explain yourself, then the artifact has not yet reached a generative quality!

Collaborative Exercise

Despite everything I've said about "the egg" I am open to doing a collaborative exercise if you wish to facilitate one.

Time and Collaborating on Generative Sequences

I agree with you. I think that the Japanese Teahouse sequence was actually created over centuries ... very slowly. Every teahouse that was built was an instance of a sequence and slowly, over generations it responded and changed (and probably forked!)

I recognize that the pace of process evolution that I am aspiring for is not as "natural" like this ... and I still don't know how to do it well ... and I continue to feel that learning to do so is a valuable skill.

@Toni Blanco I have a question.

You wrote: "Jennifer started to write her own version of The GP, which inspired Josh to do the same, and vanished my worries of doing that, as I was afraid that would be perceived as a defying "fork” (and implying a petition of "passing the stick")"

My question is: Are you saying that you understood the cards I wrote on Solidarity were meant to be my own version of the Generative Description of the Digital Space?

In case the answer is yes, I would very much like you to know that wasn't my intention at all, and I'm sorry I wasn't more clear about that.

My purpose was to write a description of a group of people practicing solidarity. I wanted to do that to make it clear to myself first, and I shared it with all of you so you could also understand my thinking as well.

I didn't intend it to necessarily have much to do with the Digital Space, because I'm not sure whether the crew intends to be a solidarity group as I understand a solidarity group, and that's fine with me. I also am not sure if the crews generated through the digital space are intended to be solidarity groups either (as I understand a solidarity group), and again, that's fine with me.

@Ronen Hirsch wrote: "I am sensing something shared between your response and Jennifer's ... I am sensing a reactive response from both of you ... and since I seem to be the trigger, I want to know more about it."

I want to clearly and concisely explain why I was triggered.

When I received the Generative Description of the Digital Space, one of the few things I knew about what I was about to receive was that it contained the word "solidarity." Due to that word, I had certain assumptions about the work.

When the experience of the Digital Space was generated in my mind, it was in the context of understanding it as a work to support and generate solidarity, as in the solidarity economy, which I have spent some time studying and trying to understand.

According to Ripess, this is the definition of the Social Solidarity Economy:

The Social Solidarity Economy is an alternative to capitalism and other authoritarian, state- dominated economic systems. In SSE ordinary people play an active role in shaping all of the dimensions of human life: economic, social, cultural, political, and environmental. SSE exists in all sectors of the economy production, finance, distribution, exchange, consumption and governance. It also aims to transform the social and economic system that includes public, private and third sectors. SSE is not only about the poor, but strives to overcome inequalities, which includes all classes of society. SSE has the ability to take the best practices that exist in our present system (such as efficiency, use of technology and knowledge) and transform them to serve the welfare of the community based on different values and goals.

(…) SSE seeks systemic transformation that goes beyond superficial change in which the root oppressive structures and fundamental issues remain intact.



These statements from their website also resonate deeply with me:

In  the last three decades, there has been an explosion of solidarity-based economic practices around the world due to a range of reasons including,:

1. An increasing number of people throughout the world are experiencing deteriorating living conditions and deepening poverty.

2. With the logic of capitalism, people and society become resources to be exploited. Their value in the form of labor or social relationships are reduced to their worth in maximizing profits.

3. The deep environmental degradation, provoked by an extractive, intensive and extensive linear economic model, leading to widespread pollution and climate change.

In this context, grassroots solidarity-based economic initiatives have emerged rediscovering timeless practices and cultural traits, renewing and adapting them to the current context through the use of new technologies and other contemporary, regenerative and resilient resources.

When I realized that the Digital Space wasn't actually intended to be in alignment with Solidarity Economy principles, I was upset. I was upset at myself for having the assumptions which led me to be inaccurate in my understanding of the purpose of the project. I was also disappointed that the experience of the space that had been created in my mind apparently wasn't the same experience as the creator's experience of the Digital Space.

I also was triggered because it felt to me that since the purpose of the Digital Space was to bring people together to do meaningful work that was financially rewarding, it was continuing with the logic of capitalism: people and society become resources to be exploited. Their value in the form of labor or social relationships are reduced to their worth in maximizing profits.
And few things anger me more than patriarchy and capitalism.

However, I've had time to reflect and shift. I'm not upset and I'm not triggered anymore.

My experience of the Generative Description of the Digital Space is beautiful, as it is, no matter whether the card with the word "financial" is in the description of the crews or not.

If we are able to actually create that Digital Space in the real world, I think we will have created something generative and practically useful for many different purposes.

I have no idea how to go about building it in the real world. I want to see it built and I will work to see it built.

The original experience (in alignment with the Solidarity Economy principles) I had when I first received the description of the Digital Space is what I deeply want to see built. But in order for that to happen, it's quite possible that the Digital Space as has already been described needs to be able to be built in the real world, FIRST.

We don't know how to begin to build it. Knowing how to create a Digital Space that transforms random groups of strangers into cohesive small groups who are doing meaningful work that generates income streams while prioritizing mutual care is a good thing to do. If it needs to be done in alignment with capitalist logic right now, so be it. I am supported in my life by that capitalistic logic at this moment, since my basic needs are met due to my husband's skills that are valued by the capitalist system we live in.

Thank you again for the opportunity to be here and to contribute. I'm grateful.

I remembered another idea from Alexander that I believe reflects on The Egg.

Alexanders points to written processes in early design phases and warns about using drawings (even just doodles) too early.

If, for example, I say to you "imagine stepping out of your house, looking to your left, and seeing a tall building" ... that TEXT generates an image in your head ... but if I make a drawing I have to make specific choices about things like scales and distances ... and these can become unconscious design decisions that are unnecessarily forced ... and they may preempt the generative capacity because they force a choice over whatever may be generated in people's minds.

The shape of the egg introduced some biases ... the top is narrow and feels lighters, the bottom feels more massive and heavier. Are such qualities projected onto the contents that you place in it? Do the sizes of internal centers indicate weight/importance/complexity? Are things that are placed to the side secondary? Do things on the bottom come before things on top?

Drawings tend to introduce many conscious and unconscious biases ...

... something else to consider from a methodical perspective!

Than you for the clarification. More than a "fork", I would say that I though that it was like a "pull request", like a proposed alternative to be considered. But now I understand that it was for articulate a personal description of a crew practicing solidarity.

My reaction is related to what @Jennifer Damashek says. My main interest in creating a digital space for generating solidarity crews was to replicate it for promoting congregations of microsolidarity to boost what it is usually understood as SSE. As I think I mentioned, I was interested also in more friendly way of entrepreneurship for women, and for people in risk of social exclusion. Although (or even better, because) I am very connected to the SSE in Barcelona and I know its upsides and downsides, I do not use usually their narratives and wording, even more when they are framed as alternative economies. Long to explain. Let us just say, for starters, that I would prefer call Antisocial Unsolidarity Economy to the mainstream economy, and Economy to what the SSE pursuits.

The invitation of @Ronen Hirsch is vague enough to admit that vision. But I learned / was reminded when commenting cards that the space did not envision any kind of relationships between created crews, which I think that makes the space lose strength but oh well, this is still a project and a crew I am interested in. How money is articulated in the GP seemed to move it away from possibilities I know from the SSE and ways of funding. I tried to introduce some concepts and words to keep an open view on the subject that admitted more scenarios. And I didn't like the "financial" and "pricing" words in the cards because seemed to orient/lean the space to the Antisocial Unsolidarity Economy.