The Systems Change Project

Lately I've seen a lot of "mapping" efforts (like Murmurations) and a lot of new social networking efforts (like Hylo) and none of them seem to have gotten us anywhere nearer to actually having the connectivity tissue we need among our project. Personally, I'm having trouble conceptualizing what that might look like or to figure out how to start creating that. Right now we are all plagued by multiple networks and threads rather than one "newsfeed" that would give us our most relevant stuff. Even LinkedIn generally sucks at finding the right people for your venture. We still have placement and headhunting firms, because this puzzle is so difficult to solve. It's a wicked problem and I'd like to host a series of discussions of what the solution would look like because right now it feels to me that we are not making progress in that direction.

Strongly agree. pretty important to make it easy for these projects to talk to each other, share learning, collaborate on things they need in common. this is rather rare at the moment - which imho means that it takes too much time/effort for busy project builders, for too little reward. Finding ways to tilt that balance w'out trying to convert everyone to some new platform is a thing that needs doing.The people that make things which look good on paper are often in the majority in community/collaborative platforms.

Creditcommonssociety.org wants to start doing it in the UK, but is still thinking about how.

My personal preference is for immediate experimentation, not lots more thinking. Over the past 2-3 years I"ve seen a tremendous amount of thinking about and talking about, and over the last 6 months more is moving into implementation. IMNVHO the most important thing we can be doing right now is experimenting with new models at local and regional levels before any type of ranking as to their value. Anything that people are able to fund and deploy and publish results about is better than something that sounds good on paper.

Hi Matthew,

There is a fairly detailed doc available on the website.

As Joseph correctly identifies, I'm using Wordpress + BuddyPress for the core functionality. The ecosystem, movement and place-based aspects become possible through enabling Networks within Wordpress and then using Multisite. The configuration is only for horizontal blogging networks if you only think in one direction. Change how you think about it and it then enables a multi-dimensional network of networks to be possible.

Hope that's helpful.

Cheers,

Wes can you share something a bit more technical?

I built it back in 2015. It's all widely used open source (so it works) but in a unique configuration.

Having looked a little further I can see that the existing website is running WordPress with BuddyPress plugins.

Thanks for the further info. I have similar Big Ideas and feel your pain in being able to communicate them when there are so many different but important ingredients baked in.

I built it back in 2015. It's all widely used open source (so it works) but in a unique configuration.

Nobody was listening back in 2015. So I went into local government to learn exactly how communities, civil society, the state and businesses can work together. After leaving local gov. in 2019 I took all my learning and applied it to developing the strategy which is also unique.

Since then I've been applying for grants and programmes and getting absolutely nowhere. It isn't an idea which immediately shows its potential and it helps if you've got quite broad knowledge over a number of domains. It's a big idea and a lot of programmes and funders opt for much simpler and easily understandable concepts.

But if you want to shift the system you have to understand how it all fits together, how you might bring it together and how you might influence changes in actions and behaviours. It's much easier to understand a Taxi App.

I've avoided Venture Capital as, as you can imagine, I'm an anti-capitalist who dislikes the monetary system we have and wouldn't be able to work with non-ethical sources of finance. But at least they understand the value of platforms and big ideas and are willing to invest.

It isn't just place-based, it's also movements, networks and ecosystems. The place-based element allows me to connect the communities and also the public sector. As a social enterprise I need a source of income and providing a place-based aspect of the platform to the public sector should create this as this is what major modern projects such as Integrated Care Systems require to support their work.

The video and link I provided earlier are useful for understanding the core idea.

I also expand much more broadly and creatively on Medium.

• https://weshinckes.medium.com/connecting-places-global-exchange-and-value-creation-b7d5d0f10cad

• https://weshinckes.medium.com/dynamic-systems-spiralling-out-of-and-into-control-4c8e9f83847f

I've also attached a response to RSA recent Design for Life. It was just a response, it wasn't by invitation. But it helps put a structure around my writing and their initiative.

Cheers,

Hi @Wes Hinckes I like the vision of empowering loads more place-based action, but do you actually already have a platform with running code to help people do this, or is this still just an idea stage?

Hi Ollie, Graham,

I've been working for several years on a cooperative platform concept which is easiest explained as - A platform for Community Development and Place-based Cross-sector Collaboration which also enables Social, Economic and Environmental transition.

The idea is to connect the system (society + the economy) to itself and then shift the system through learning, collaboration and action.

It's called Socially Enterprising - https://sociallyenterprising.org

Here are some outputs from the 1st Platform Coops Now! programme - https://weshinckes.medium.com/outputs-from-platform-coops-now-2020-3622f7c844d6

Here's an intro video - https://youtu.be/-YnGkLa6Nkg

Cheers,

Wes

Doh! October. I'll be in touch with more.