Hi @slim - thanks for the great introduction. Sorry for the delayed response - there's been a lot on and the Loomio threads are just now being updated. I hope you had a good introduction to Mary Jo Kaplan of Loomio: @richarddbartlett and Nati Lombardo will be in Providence RI soon and you guys could meet up. Check out the other threads here when you can.

Great to have this introduction - looking forward to connecting in RI soon :)

I'd like to add to this thread by welcoming two new members to the Lab: @glenlauder1 and @trislumley. Glen is well-known to Enspiral and to me for several years, and it is really great to have his distinctive and poetic presence with us. Tris was introduced to me only a few days ago by Mary-Jo Kaplan of Loomio but in our first Skype call we became soulmates. Rather than my attempting to tell the enthralling stories of both of you, I wonder if you might follow the example of @slim above, and post a few introductory notes about yourselves here, for the benefit of the other Lab members?

Hi everyone, and thanks @theodoretaptiklis for the invitation to this group. I'm intrigued by the work that's being shared here, and I have a hunch I'm going to enjoy getting to know you all.

I don't know quite where to start with my own story, but here goes. I was brought up in Kent, England, and ended up studying the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University. I found it a fascinating and eye-opening subject, and it left a lasting impression on me that rather than science being a pure, theoretically-driven endeavour, it's inextricably intertwined with people as humans, business-people, communicators, and egos. I became very interested in the relationship between what exists in the world, and the concepts we construct to represent what exists based on our own social constructs.

After a detour into management consulting and a couple of tech consultancies in the dotcom boom, I spent a year teaching scuba diving in Honduras and Thailand to work out what to do with my life. I then chanced upon an organisation called New Philanthropy Capital in 2004 which has been my home ever since - a charity whose mission is to help the charity sector and philanthropy achieve its full potential, working as a think tank and consultancy.

Over those 13 years I've become increasingly troubled and ultimately disillusioned with this piece of society whose sole purpose is in theory to work for the benefit of people who have been excluded, marginalised or disenfranchised by society in its current form. I've found that individual organisations, that fundraise for their work, tend to become accountable to the money, not to those they exist to serve. The behaviours that result include competing not collaborating, hoarding knowledge for competitive advantage not sharing it for public benefit, being led in their strategies by availability of funding not maximising impact, and failing to organise to advocate for change collectively. I've spoken and written about what I call the anti-social sector, where it turns out the real beneficiary is the staff, volunteers, boards and funders of these organisations, not those they're meant to serve.

Of course there's a great deal of fantastic work in the social sector, but what I'm arguing is that charities achieve impact despite the funding market they operate in, not because of it.

Recently I've been exploring possible mechanisms to shift incentives and create alternative structures for how social change is funded. In particular I'm developing a pooled grant fund to invest in technology for social good in a particular sector - the first one being in women's empowerment internationally. The idea is that user journey mapping and user-centred design identify the priorities for technology to make a difference in a group of people's lives, and investment is driven by these priorities, working in collaboration with the nonprofit sector and technology sector. I wrote a bit about this here https://ssir.org/articles/entry/a_new_paradigm_toward_a_user_centred_social_sector.

I'm keen to learn more about methodologies to build people's lived experience into strategies, programmes, and networks; about developing networked approaches to social change and the role that empathy and communications methodologies like NVC can play in these; about confronting power dynamics and working to shift them through that explicit recognition.

And the question that nags away in my brain is: How do we build a distributed global think and do tank of 7 billion people? How do we surface the questions we haven't yet answered and others who are also asking them? How do we use the web and the potential of the network to create new ways to work together to address those questions?

I've been a fan of Loomio and Enspiral for a while, and feel both humbled and excited to be part of this group.

And if anyone can make it to Canberra on April 10-11, you might like this www.braveconversations.org.

Sorry for the long post!

Also, what's the deal with inviting other people into this group? I want to be respectful, but am not sure how that works. There are a couple of people I've been talking to recently who I think would love it and have something to add...

Good question. Guess we'll be guided by Enspiral experience on this. Could be something like: Any HML member can invite another person to join, but accepts responsibility for on-boarding them and settling them into the group. Then, maybe we need to check (after 3 months?) whether they want to stay (applies to some existing members we haven't heard from for a while).

Also perhaps there might be something about paying for the use of Loomio. Presently we're on an extended free trial, but if 20 people paid $1 a month we could be fair to Loomio. So, after 3 months, we could ask people to pony up.

Should there be a limit to numbers? Any thoughts on this and related matters from other HML-ers?

Might be a good one discussion for a new thread. Personally I'd suggest we copy the member-contributor model to distinguish "participating" from "committed".

Dear all,
I am very happy that Theodore suggested me participating in working together …..
I have completed undergraduate studies in both Psychology and Business Administration and postgraduate studies in Cultural Organisations Management, Human Resource Management, and Counselling. He has a Ph.D. in Social - Organizational Psychology from Panteion University. My dissertation topic is on autonomy, well-being and innovation in different work contexts
In Athens I have participated in numerous projects related to migrants integration (i.e. AMIF/SPARDA), refugees relocation scheme (UNHCR Relocation Scheme in Municipality of Athens) and awareness raising campaigns and I hold over ten years experience in adult in courses such as organizational psychology, management of cultural and social services, entrepreneurship and innovation, social networking and communication in organizations My main research interests include social innovation and social integration of special populations, autonomous motivation and wellbeing, systemic approach to business administration and innovation, human resource management in cultural/social organizations , positive organizational behavior and social impact. I am now under the development of company named CoCreate /shared growth and impact (cocreate.gr)
I really appreciate the way the team in Human labs approach social phenomena and cooperation in organizations and I will be very happy to develop together relevant tools (such these proposed already). Greece is now overwhelmed with managerial determinism (even in NGOs sector) since prior chaos in public management result to an approach that prioritize managerialism and competitiveness. The social frustration is mainly caused by the fact that each of the Greek citizens over emphasize on its individual salvation and we cannot recognize how “inviting people to inhabit the world of another person” as Theodore remarks in one of hi texts.. I have to admit that Story telling is underdeveloped in all kind of sciences here in Greece (..well probably with the exception of politics..). I used to work with career counseling and narrative approaches and I was astonished to notice that the wealth delivered by these approaches is vibrant.. You know ..Greek people are so willing to share stories (since we have all grown up with grandpas utilizing stories as practical wisdom) but no specific effort is made to utilize stories as means of personal and organizational awareness.
Most of the rational of HLs work/approach fits perfectly with my work so far in Athenian Institute of Anthropos (www.akma.gr) (the Greek word for Human Being, that is, the ‘’Whole Person’’) and can potentially be a basis for an open discussion.
Please note that I have two lovely dauhgters, Alexia and Zoe (greek name for Life)
Once again thanks a lot Theodore and my warm regards to all from Greece..

Konstantinos (kostas)

Hello - After a few fascinating chats with @theodoretaptiklis, here I am! My name is Anne-Marie Brook. I am an economist turned social entrepreneur, and one of the co-founders of the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), a global social enterprise start-up that aims to produce simple, accessible, credible metrics summarising the human rights performance of countries.

I'm doing this because my years of working as an economist (in the private sector, public sector and OECD) taught me about the importance of measurement, and what happens without it. Basically, what happens is that society ends up over-valuing the things we measure (like GDP) and undervaluing the things we don't measure - like human rights!

HRMI is hosted by Motu Economic and Public Policy Research, a non-profit research institute based in Wellington, NZ. But my co-founders and collaborators are spread around the global - mainly human rights academics at American Universities and human rights researchers working for NGOs (like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch). We are very clear that our purpose for creating better metrics is to inspire more ethical behaviour by states and other actors. We are currently in our pilot phase - and later this year will be testing our methodology for producing new measures of Civil and Political Rights in 12 countries around the world.

I am really interested in the work the Human Methods Lab is doing, and i'm keen to explore potential synergies and collaboration. I don't know what these might be, but Teddy invited me to hang out here for a bit so we I can learn more about what you are doing. Some of the questions I'm asking at the moment are these:
- how can the benefits of identifying difference, and working together in pursuit of a common purpose, be scaled beyond an "in the same room" group to global distributed networks?
- how can HRMI benefit from HML tools as we continue to grow our network, get to know one another, and figure out how we can best work together for impact?
- as we get closer to releasing our pilot data, how can we best combine that data (numbers) with stories to engage both hearts and minds?

If any of this sparks any thoughts or questions, please get in touch!