This post is one in a series of 5<5 posts that document pilot/prototype projects with the format 5 things that I wish someone had told me before I started in <5% of the time spent on the project.   

Cereal conversations was a 5 week pilot project to convene legal practitioners and strategy consultants at the intersection of law and business in the social enterprise sector.   

Background

In March 2011, I ran a HubLab on "For Profit or Not-for-Profit" with Inder Comer, Esq. at HubSOMA.  Intended for social entrepreneurs, the HubLab was also attended by lawyers, who often advised clients through this decision nexus.  Intrigued by this "unexpected" participant group, I kickstarted a "pilot" of breakfast conversations.  "Cereal conversations" gave legal practitioners at this nexus of law and enterprise for social impact a forum to discuss practice experiences and concerns.  Social enterprise law is largely unchartered legal terrain- full of "open" legal issues, which means that a court has not yet 'ruled' to decide the "law" on many issues that are emerging from social innovation.  Legal questions about liability and tax implications in the sharing economy, regulation of food production for microenterprise, employment status and compensation for passion equity, etc.  Typically, good legal advice steers a client away from uncertainty in favor of what is known, what is certain, and what is "settled" in the law.  Uncertainty is risky and potentially very expensive.  However, until people- clients and lawyers- push the edges of "certainty" into these open, untested areas- the status quo in business will not change.  

Cereal conversations brought practitioners together for peer learning and aimed to build a community of legal practitioners who want to push the edges of the law.  Drawing on a model from clinical medicine where clinicians make decisions even amidst uncertain outcomes based upon a bioethical, principled justification, I opined that perhaps a similar values-driven approach to decision making could govern and guide legal practitioners, provided that the involved parties gave fully informed consent to the risks.  My assumption was that if we built a community and developed a shared knowledge base, it would be sufficient to support legal practitioners ready to take this risky step to shift the status quo in how business operates.  My hope was to identify the key 'ingredients' necessary to seed a local legal community pf practice, to design a DIY 'cookbook' that other communities could use to kickstart local chapters globally, and to build a 'recipe' braintrust to which local practice groups could contribute that would inspire innovation in legal practices at the intersection of business for social impact. 

5 Things I Wish I Knew About Community Building Before I Started:

• 8am is too early for a meeting in San Francisco
• Building a community takes time.  5 times just gets things started.
• Meetings need to take place regularly.  To get work done- weekly is effective, to build community- monthly is sufficient. 
• Get a small group to share the organizing responsibility (2-3 is enough)
• For niche communities, keep the audience focused in order to maximize value to early participants. Here, it was more productive to have a majority of lawyers with only legally savvy strategy consultants, rather than a meeting with social entrepreneurs who seek information for their specific venture. 

Ultimately, cereal conversations was a prototype of a potential model.  It was a pilot test of assumptions.  The Bay Area group was the inaugural "Lucky Charms" group who pioneered the (ad)venture.  We learned a lot and we hope that the fruits of that learning shared here will strengthen the global community of legal practitioners active in this area. 

Why did we do it?

• To develop a community of practice to strengthen practice in the legal grey areas of this sector.
• To develop a format that provided value to satisfy the depth needed by legal eagles and practicality for social entrepreneurs
  
• To strengthen the social enterprise community's access to new paradigm approaches by engaging the legal community in conversations with social entrepreneurs, impact investors and business consultants.
• To kickstart a grassroots community generated knowledge commons on these emerging legal issues.
• To create a forum for collaboration and knowledge sharing among legal practitioners

Methods

What did we do?
A breakfast club to "Map the Terrain" and build an initial community of legal practitioners. In this 5 week pilot, we met over cereal for conversations to map the legal landscape at the intersection of business and social impact.  The topics that we covered included: the business judgment rule, new CA corporate forms, mapping issues, social enterprise partnerships, and alternative dispute resolution and conflict management in the socent sector.

Our short term aim was to have one concrete, practical project from each pilot.  Proposed projects included:  

• a model "founders/partnership agreement" for social entrepreneurs 
• a map/quick guide to identify how/when social impact focus may generate new/different legal issues
• a tactical considerations guide for the varying corporate forms
  
• an article on the role of ADR in social enterprise

Our long term aim was two-fold:
1. To develop a cookbook "how to start a SocEntStrategy community of practice in __(your area)__" 
2. To develop a grassroots, knowledge commons on these issues at the intersection of law, business and social impact

Our core commitment that all resources developed will be provided open access under a creative commons: attribution/non-commercial/share alike.  Any revenue generated from this initiative would be reinvested in the initiative's educational mission.

Who participated?
An open invitation was made to colleagues in this sector. We were generously hosted by HubSOMA. The SocEntStrategy Founding Alliance included:
Kate Michi Ettinger, Chef Converger of Cereal Conversations
Natalia Thurston, Social Venture Law Group 
Tony Lai, Law Gives
Inder Comar, Comar Law
Lina Constantinovici, President, Biomimicry Incubator


How? 
Doors open 7:45 (security can take awhile)
8 - 9 Legal Eagles Hour
30 min: in depth on legal topic + case presentation
20 min: discussion
10 min: map discussion and networking

9 - 9:30 Law for SocEnts
15 min: legal topic presented for Social Entrepreneurs
15 min: discussion

Results

• Of open invitation to 10 people directly and 10 people indirectly, we had a founding group of 5 people.  
  
• We met consistently for 5 weeks.  
  
• We shared knowledge, practice experience and developed a shared understanding of open issues within the sector.
  
• We identified opportunities for collaboration within the group; those collaborations continue to manifest.
  
• We experimented with and learned about technology that could support the group's work.  
• For details: Weekly Posts: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5  (currently in publication)

Learnings & Opportunities

1. There is a need for a community of practice among legal practitioners in this area.
2. The social enterprise ecosystem will benefit from having the legal community that serves it strengthened.
3. Building a community of practice takes time. Consistency is critical.  
4. Critical mass generates movement.  Self organization may be overrated. 
5. Engage one community at a time.  Clarity of purpose helps to respond to the diverse needs of why people show up.  If targeting lawyers, stick with lawyers to keep the focus on issues that yield value to attendees. 
6. Use the work products of the primary community to engage secondary communities.  
7. Choose technology that you can manage or have access to tech resources to administer the technology you want. 
8. 8am is too early for many people and does not accomodate the geographic diversity of SF Bay Area, where traffic prohibits participation by practitioners not in the specific location. 
9. Ideas take awhile to seed: People are ready now for an idea from 2 years ago that was prototyped 1 year ago.  
10. Business law and corporate structures are domestic/state law issues.  This invites a creative glocal solution to building this grassroots community. 
11. The effort to bring Cereal Conversations to Berlin resulted in identifying of a different doorway into the legal issues: case studies of pioneering social enterprises.  These case studies provide a simple framework through which to identify the open issues and to respond with how each could be addressed within one's jurisdiction.  These "Cases" become a common ground of understanding between geographic regions governed by different laws.  We are working to inspire the passion of the university students in law to explore social enterprise and business for social impact. 
12. The effort to bring Cereal Conversations to London/UK resulted in the idea of a legal "briefhack," by the brilliant Polina Hristova. The IDEA: One weekend at Hubs around the world. Gather local law students, attorneys and social entrepreneurs.  Have students interview social entrepreneurs to identify legal issues at the edges.  Students confer with social enterprise attorneys who review the cases collectively in a panel format.  The law students then "brief" the legal issues raised by the social enterprises.  The net result is law students have the "brief" as a work product to show future employers.  The social entrepreneurs have an understanding of the issues they need to address.  The attorneys deepen their practice around these open issues and contribute to building a the glocal knowledge base.   

Long Term Outcomes 

• Impact Law Forum, co-founded by Natalia Thurston of Social Venture Law Group and Zoe Hunton of Hunton Law, hosts a monthly meeting with speakers to strengthen the community of legal practitioners who work at the intersection of law and social enterprise. ILF rotates around the Bay Area.  

While I was traveling in Southern Africa in February,  I experienced ubuntu ... a beautiful ethic/humanist concept of people coming together to help each other out... Read more about ubuntu philosophy (Wikipedia). 

Recently, I experienced ubuntu personally while preparing for my first TEDx talk for TEDxBarcelonaChange: Positive Disruption in Global Health, part of TEDxChange sponsored by the Gates Foundation.  

I received incredible insight, wisdom, and tips from from my community.  Under the attentive eye of the magnificent event organizer and social innovation catalyst Aurelie Salvarie among other dedicated readers, 20 drafts of the script and many practice sessions later, I had a masters-level crash course in storytelling and public speaking.  

People shared their talent and time to assist in crafting an effective message.   From TED worth presentation guru Brooke Estin on visuals to Florian Mueck of the 7 Minute Talk as speaker coach, I was immersed in awesomeness with one single aim: to make a message that would touch and inspire people.  Less than 36 hours before, I had a raging fever and no voice.  Ironically, it was April Fools Day (April 1) and I thought if I call Aurelie to tell her, she will think it is a mean joke. It  was the participation of so many people in getting to that moment that buoyed my recovery.  When it was game time, I gave it my all. 

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept about perfection in imperfection.  This TEDx is raw rather than polished. I barely had my voice back and was desperately trying not to cough.  Wabi-sabi also underpins the idea.  Sometimes we have to step out, before we are fully prepared with all of the rehearsals that we need.  We have to experiment and improvise.  We go forward before perhaps things are perfect. Perhaps we don't feel ''ready.'  Yet we step out into life anyway, imperfect, unpolished. We are open to learning.  We are vulnerable and honest. it's that authenticity that makes the beauty that is wabi-sabi.  

We were standing on a bridge, not yet far enough out on it to be over the water. Below, straight down through the gaps in the wood, were the rooftops of small colorful floating houses that hugged the edge of the lake.

We’d been moving for months, spending a night or a week or a month in a town or a city or a country. Traveling in little circles: days like this one from guest house to Burmese border and back. Inside bigger circles: two weeks from Bangkok to countryside and back. Inside the  biggest circle: a year, tracing a path around the world before returning home again.

But at that moment on the bridge, we were standing very still.

“I just can’t,” he said. “It doesn’t look safe. It’s too high. It’s too long. I know I’m not being reasonable. But I can’t do it. I can’t walk across it. I’m sorry.”

I felt a rush of frustration. I looked across the bridge and felt it pulling at me. It was a familiar feeling, this tug to be somewhere other than where I was. That feeling was responsible for all of these circles, all of this traveling.

But his fear was real, and his apology was heartfelt. He was clearly miserable, unable to push through the force that kept his feet from taking another step.

I felt a rush of compassion. “It’s ok,” I said to comfort him. “Really, really, it’s ok. I’m happy to be right here, really I am. We don’t have to walk any further in order for me to be happy. I am happy to be right here, exactly here and no where else.”

These words were for him. At first. And then as I heard myself say these things I found myself opening to the possibility that they were true. And then with a jolt they were, and I felt a cracking open in the center of my chest where the need to be somewhere else had always been. Exploring that space I found only a sense of deep acceptance and peacefulness for where I was at that very moment.

What a tremendous gift, to know that sense for the first time. It was a moment of such joy.

I don’t know why it came then, and not during a thousand similar moments. Something to do with being satiated from all of that motion, and being ready to let go of my end of whatever had always been pulling at me. And certainly something to do with how much I loved him, how much I wanted to be where he was and not anywhere else.

What I do know is that having felt it once, I’ve been able to return to it again and again. Eyes open or closed, I can turn my attention to exactly where I am.

In this time.

In this place.

A moment of joy for simply being here.

Learn more about Christine Egger and follow her on Twitter @CDEgger

A Moment of Joy was originally published on joycampaign.org, September 2011. 

This series of posts introduce a 5*5 systematic approach to pilot/prototype projects.  

From Idea to Pilot: A 5x5 Approach

From Pilot to Reflection: A 5=5 Method

From Reflection to Report: A 5<5 Report


 Keep an eye out for the 5*5 icon to find posts on pilot/prototype projects on this blog.

Attribution: this approach reflects a mashup from brilliant mentoring, modeling, discussions with many people... including Bruce Ettinger, Nancy Dubler, E. Nathaniel Gates, David Karshmer, Rachel Remen, Edward Harran, Andrew Lyon, Ian Page, and many more.

Snapshot: Systematic Approach to Pilots
From Idea to Pilot: A 5x5 Approach [1 of 3]
From Reflection to Report: A 5<5 Report [3 of 3]

When a pilot reaches a juncture... for recommit, pivot or abandon.  Here is a method that I use for learning and reflection.

1. Brainstorm 

• Brainstorm 5 successes 
• Brainstorm 5 failures
  
• For each, what was one personal ingredient that contributed to that success/failure
  
• For each, what was one external variable that contributed to that success/failure
  
• For each, what is one thing to experiment with differently next time
  

2. What surprised me?
3. What touched me?
4. How is my understanding different?
5. Based on the experience, what question will I ask before I start next time?
 
I find that the list of successes/failures tends to be longer on one side than the other and that difference can help determine whether to recommit, pivot or abandon. 

The = symbol is a reminder that the reflection happens twice.  Once through the 5 questions related to the pilot/prototype project and a second time round for the personal/professional development.


Attribution: this approach reflects a mashup from brilliant mentoring, modeling, discussions with many people... including Bruce Ettinger, Nancy Dubler, E. Nathaniel Gates, David Karshmer, Rachel Remen, Steve Rosenberg, Andrew Lyon, Edward Harran and many more.

What questions do you ask for reflective learning?

Over the past few years, I started many blogs.  Each had an unique focus, different purpose and varying communities. 

Key learnings: 

• Blogs are like gardens; they require tending if you want them to flourish.
• Generate short posts.  
• Post at consistent time intervals so that readers/visitors know what to expect.  Here is a rough guide: daily or at least one post every 4-6 days (build following), 2 weeks (create community), once a month (stay connected) or once in awhile (personal). 
• Be on the channel of your desired audience.  Share your blog post on Twitter/FB/G+ with an interest/location hashtags to reach new people. Requiring people to get out of their regular routine to engage decreases likelihood of engagement.  
• Engage others and build a community to coproduce a blog is ideal to keep content fresh, dynamic, diverse, frequent.
• If you want people to see your blog, you need to help them find you.  Include links to others blogs/people on your blog, share your posts on other channels (G+, FB, LinkedIn, etc) and make it easy for other people to share your posts.
• Invite guest bloggers.
• Link a post to G+ for comments can be an effective way  to enable comments on your post while concurrently extending its reach. (HT @ZenMoments)
• Blog writing is different. See post: Rapid Fire for details.
• Keep the interface clean and simple. Turn off the noise, let the reader focus.
• There are color schemes that make reading easier, use them. 
• Don't plan too much up front.  Let it emerge.  See how the traction goes with readers/public.
• Discussion of sensitive topics may be challenging given the text nature of the blogosphere, where nuance can be lost. 

Blog Technical Assessments:

• Blogger was easy when there were no alternatives.
• Squarespace features/tools were fantastic, but it is expensive per site.  Provided sophisticated entry for novice.  Not sure that tools/widgets are keeping up with the times and their customer service/support was dodgy considering how expensive it was/is. 
• Posterous is a simple, clean interface. 
• Tumblr makes blogging/posting fun, though navigating setting up themes/adding comment capability via disqus takes extra time/expertise.
• WordPress, tried three times to use this platform and find it a fail for my own sites.  However, I have participated on multiple projects that use WordPress effectively, and as a writer on those efforts, I have found it easy to use.  Getting over the set up, design/plugin process and maintenance is key barrier to entry.
• Weebly, use it to host both sites and blog and find it useful.  I fear the day that I ever try to leave, since it is all drag/drop widgets, I am not sure how portable it is, but for now, it'll work.
• Ning could have been great, but required people to be on it and if it's not already part of their work flow, it's not likely to gain traction and traffic.
• Google Sites is OK for projects, not flexible for website portal and not 'sticky' for community engagement.

This post is one in a series of posts that document pilot/prototype projects with the format 5 things that I wish someone had told me before I started in <5% of the time spent on the project.  This post also provides some context around the project, since it was a cornerstone project for me in the second half of 2011. 

In June 2011, Edward Harran and I embarkeded on a 6 month experiment. A deep dive collaboration across the Pacific Ocean. Eddie in Queensland. Kate in San Francisco.  Part mastermind for our personal projects and consulting gigs, part virtual praxis of a future of work digital innovation lab for a globally distributed team and part incubator of ideas. We set off to explore. 

Macroscope, coined by Eddie, reflects the "big picture" - multi/inter-disciplinary, systems perspective that we endeavored to sensemake in our lab.  Mindful. Playful. Creative. Engaged. Curious.  The aim was to make complex simple.  To bring big together with narrow in the sacred space of creative possibility between.  To transform the experience of chaos and mess into something sublime. Ultimately, we wanted to build a place to play with our creative potential and to hold a space that would allow the value of the spaces in between to emerge, unfold, expand...  with a macroscope perspective to unleash the potential for social impact.... and we wanted to live mindfully and productively working in a digitally-mediated global context.

In 6 months, we cogenerated amazing ideas that continue to live in us- expressed from time to time in posts and projects.  We honed a vision for Macroscope Labs* (mL) from future of work ideas, such as the world's first Center for the Emerging _____  and a research proposal to pilot and analyze the innovation value of an Ecosystem Diplomatic Corps (Ecosystem Diplomats explained)... to systems issues that we frame-worked* such as Macroscope Playhouse and Macroscope Compass... to finding a home base for our shared personal narratives as "context chameleons"* and knowmads.  

Eddie brought the knowmads idea fully to life from concept to a brilliant presentation delivered at TEDxBrisbane.  It was an epic achievement and an ideal culmination of our journey together in the Macroscope Labs experiment.

• No one will understand what you are doing.  (They'll think you are nuts.) You may not understand what you are doing. (You may wonder if you are crazy)  When it's over, no one, including yourself, will understand what you did or why it mattered. And yet, it is most important that you do it.  Experiments are our learning way into the future. You will learn and the people you work/play with will learn. However, don't expect anyone in the current world of work to understand and/or to value your skills from an experiment about the future of work- now that is nuts!  

          Take home: Don't let the present judge the future.  Let the future judge the past. 

• While the future is full of possibility, we still live in the present. A lot can happen with alternative, complementary and gift currencies/economies, yet one needs money to live in the present.  TimeBank, for example, still needs about 30% of the value they generate in dollars in order to fund their own operations.  Think about yourself as the TimeBank, make sure that you have enough to cover your basic survival needs in the present before embarking on the future.  Future-focused projects take time to build traction and attract the kind of funding that they need to sustain themselves on an ongoing basis.  Long enough for the present to catch up with that future horizon on which you are operating.  As with any new business, there is a period of time until you have a steady cash flow; likely wise, with a new technology, one has to be adequately prepared to "cross the chasm," the period of time between when an small pocket of early adopters discover and endorse the product until it grows to a steady early market of mainstream users. Think of future-focused projects as both a new business and a new technology and prepare accordingly. Bring extra reserves to cross the chasm between you and the Oasis, it may be like crossing the Sahara.... and that's fun as long as you are prepared!

          Take home: Feet in the present, eye on the future... and mind the Chasm!

• If you know that you want to leave signposts for others, be sure to have a documentation strategy.  If you want to make things beautiful, be sure to have a designer on your team.  If you want to do things quick and dirty, know how to explain the vision simply and to scaffold the context accessibly, because people may not 'get' the messy version.  If the goals that you have don't align with the skills that you have on the team, then shift the goals to play to the strengths of your team or get the skills. Alignment on this is mission critical. My hunch: skill set for the future worker will be radically different; people will need to know how to communicate simply and effectively in writing, code and drawing. 

          Take home: Know your audience and get the right team- diverse skills sets with varying pockets of depth, 
           what you don't know, you learn rapidly, and eager to do what needs to be done for the project's success. 
 

• Before you start and along the way, identify a means for you to demonstrate what you learned, what skills you developed, what learning you gained.  When a job/role does not fit in the present, it is hard for people in the present to understand how to interpret what was undertaken.  Some ideas on how to approach that are outlined in a 5*5 Systematic Approach to move from Idea to Pilot and from 5 years ago, I posted a seed {idea post} for the BeWell, WorkWell tool for soft skills development. More recently, a seed {idea post} for a learning journey tool, which would enable people to identify and demonstrate soft skill learning under emergent conditions. 

          Take home: Prepare to document what you are learning at the outset.  Remember to do it along the way! 

• On the journey to the future, other people will emerge around you who seem to be doing the same thing.  Celebrate that! Celebrate them!  Team up. When possible an open knowledge framework enables you to engage more people and grow more rapidly.  Share your learnings. If they don't want to play, then let it go and celebrate them anyway!  It will take many people trying, many times in order for one team to break through the wall of the present.  Be happy that you are one of those pushing the wall, and be confident that whether you are that one or not, your initiative contributes to launching a new direction.  Those who rise quickly, do so by standing on the shoulders of those who came before.  There are always those who came before.  Find them and learn from them.   Most 'lauded' inventors didn't actually invent what they are known for, they made an vital improvement that took the invention to a new level of market accessibility.  

          Take home: Celebrate others! Open source everything possible. Seek out those who preceded and learn from them.

• Never underestimate the power of in person

*We had all of these domain names.  My registrations glitched on the renew, and so they are released- all available. Go do something interesting and build on our ideas.  Give us a shout out when you do so that we can amplify your work! 

Thought contributors:  With immense gratitude to and for Eddie Harran,  my brilliant collaborator, awesome ideas instigator, cherished friend, mindful mate and hapatwin.  Thanks to David Hood and the Gathering '11 energy for pulling Eddie and me to Melbourne where we sealed the deal on mL. Never underestimate the power of in person.