Loomio
Sun 27 May 2018 12:41PM

The Human Networks Festival

MH Manel Heredero Public Seen by 167

Dear community,

The time has come to share here what is going on with the Human Networks Festival.

What is the HNF about?
Last Jan/Feb, In a couple of sessions with the community in Barcelona we decided to call the upcoming fest The Human Networks Festival and the claim is "In face of growing complexity and global challenges, we humans are innovating about how we come together to work on the answers". It's about communities, it's about ecosystems, it's about networks, it's about purpose and the new power.

Here are some hashtags to give you a flavour:
Human networks, systems thinking, collaboration, stigmergy, emergence, collective intelligence, purpose-driven entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, communities, networked organisations, decentralised trust, decentralised power, new power, open source, shared governance, open government. You get the drift.

Basic data

Human Networks Summit
Barcelona Oct 3rd to 5th
60 humans

Human Networks Festival
Barcelona, Spring 2019
700 humans, plus Juho
Queen's English

This is, of course, also an experiment
Many of us thought that the Fest BCN needed a shake up. Our environment still places us very much in the sharing economy and the 'Ouishare Fest' (and often, just 'the Ouishare') is seen as THE event of the collaborative economy. In order to move on from it, we have two main novelties:

  1. We are taking up (together with Alt Shift) the international space left this year by the Ouishare Fest in Paris. This means that our content is entirely in English (or at least over 90%) and that we want to involve ALL Ouishare members and communities, which perhaps felt a bit left out in previous editions due to the language barrier.

  2. We are co-creating the HNF with a number of friend networks and innovative organisations. We have two rythms going on. The first one is a more executive, more compact team (Ouishare BCN) dealing with production, venue, volunteers, comms, etc and the second rythm is a group of enthusiastic indivduals from other networks, looking into programme and funding.

HNF Organisation Team
We have the core team up and running, looking into venues, production, organisation, et cetera. Cesar Brunetto is a new member from last year who has been showing great leadership at bringing an enthusiastic young group together.

The challenge
The experiment above is also our main challenge and our raison-d'etre. Since the HNF is about networks, emergence and the new power, we HAVE to build it as a network of networks. It is hard though, we are all far apart and busy with a thousand projects. Emergence is slow at first.

Why we changed the name
Since we are co-creating this Fest with a growing number of friend networks, we thought it was a good idea to remove 'Ouishare' from the title, so as to create a more inviting space. Aren't we all just part of the Virgo Supercluster, a network of networks?

What is the Human Networks SUMMIT
Between January 2018 and the summit in Croatia in May 2018 we have been nurturing a team of people who live for and by the networks. Most of them got really excited about the HNF and decided to become Network Partners (basically, a person from another network who engages with the HNF and commits to make it happen). However, we have also learned that it is hard for them to figure out how to contribute. Most communications have been between each one of them and Ouishare, rather than between themselves. In technical terms, there is little closure.

As a consequence, in conversations during the summit in Croatia we agreed that we needed to focus on building stronger connections between the different networks (informality, trust and reputation). Additionally, we have also learned from the Networks Convergence organised by Greaterthan, Enspiral and Pandora Hub. The driving force behind this gathering is Kate Beecroft enspiral member and cofounder of Greaterthan together with Francesca. Kate recently moved to Barcelona and started organising this Networks Convergence, which will be happening in late June and will be attended by 45 people. Spots sold out extremely quickly and even today there are many people who want to join.

Based on those two learnings (lack of closure in the HNF network partners and the high demand for the Network Convergence), the HNF team has decided to host a Human Networks Summit for 60 people in October, as a necessary step to build trust and ramp up to the Fest in Spring 2019.

Come join us
This is an event about networks and communities and we want to build it as such. You, dear Ouisharer, are warmly invited to be part of this project. We want you to join the conversation, to own as much of this Fest as you see fit.

Thoughts
* We (team in BCN) would love to hear about what you think. We have a generic HNF telegram channel, join for updates and to show your support.
* If you would like to be a Network Partner (network partners are individual people, often operating in numerous networks and communities), just get in touch at [email protected].
* And finally, if you would like to come to the Human Networks Summit in Barcelona, pre-register here.

Seguimos!

AL

Agathe Lehel Thu 7 Jun 2018 2:10AM

Thank you for sharing those news Manel.
I'll definitely come in October! We go ahead with éco2FEST following the process you've build but focusing on the local ecosystem in Québec. We will be ready to onboard for the HNF in 2019 :D

MW

Martin Werlen Thu 7 Jun 2018 7:06AM

Thank you very much Manel for this update on the HNF !
Thank you for this openness on the subject ! I see here a wonderful project which makes so much sense for Ouishare. I definitely will be there for the summit.
Do you already have dates in mind for the Fest in Spring ? We'll try to combine international events with potential dates for the next international summit. :-D
Thanks

J

Jef-b Thu 7 Jun 2018 9:37PM

Thanks for sharing @manel2017 : good vibes it seems ! I'll try to make it there.

RS

Radu Seserman Fri 8 Jun 2018 1:31AM

Wonderful initiative! Network by network let's hope to bring the (almost) whole world working together. Thank you very much for the post.

MH

Manel Heredero Sun 17 Jun 2018 2:05PM

Hello my lovely peers! Last week we had the Breakfast/Presentation of the Human Networks Festival. It was hosted in the beautifully corporative building of Alpha Telefonica and it was attended by 40 people. We shared the why of the new fest, the formats and what will happen between now and then. We had a participartory session of Impromptu Networking run by one of our friends at OpenIDEO. It all went great and loads of people now want to participate, as well as some potential sponsors. I would recommend you host one in your city, it is a great reason to gather the ecosystem.

If you would like to host one, we are happy to help (or even come)
Here you can find the deck we used and the eventbrite event.

MH

Manel Heredero Thu 12 Jul 2018 10:03AM

THE HNF IN OPEN SOURCE

The Human Networks Festival feeds from the Ouishare Fest legacy

During the first six months of 2018 we have been having many conversations within Ouishare and with our friend networks about the Human Networks Festival (HNF). We always refer to the HNF as a new take of the Ouishare Fest, an evolution if you like. It is undeniable that it feeds largely from the experience and reputation built over many editions of the Ouishare Fest. Everybody involved in the HNF benefits tremendously from the learnings of Paris and Barcelona OS communities, on how to organise the conference, how to build a narrative, how to involve partners, how to mobilise contributors, how to design an experience and how to source interesting and engaged speakers.

Contributing to the brand

During the Ouishare summit BCN in January we talked about the theme of the next fest and we decided to go for human networks tackling shared and complex challenges in innovative ways. We decided to make it a co-created event, together with all these fantastic communities and networks with which we share an ecosystem. In order to facilitate this co-creation process we decided to have a generic, non-branded title: the Human Networks Festival.

One of the downsides could be that it does not contribute to the Ouishare brand as the Ouishare Fest obviously does. We are convinced that the HNF nonetheless helps Ouishare purpose and reputation, albeit not as directly as it would if it was a Ouishare Fest. In the last few weeks, talking with other Ouishare connectors, it became apparent that there might be some confusion about what the HNF actually wants to achieve. It is for this that I wanted to write this Loomio post, to clarify things.

HNF brand in the commons

While the organisation of the HNF is mainly a Ouishare Barcelona project, we are trying to add as many OS communities as possible, as well as our friend networks. By doing the work we are doing we are building a new brand, the HNF, and I would like to state here what the vision is for this brand after the Fest.

While co-creating such a complex event is hard, we hope it will be very successful and that other communities in other cities will feel inspired to host another HNF. For this, we are sharing all the assets and all the knowledge we are developing to create the HNF and putting it in the open for anyone to use. We are publishing all these assets as we do them and can be found via our Open Source website. We do not intend to own this brand nor to make any use of it other than the upcoming Fest. The HNF brand and all its knowledge assets are made available so other communities can organise one.