Join me in supporting Symbionomics, a terrific project, telling the story of the shift from the industrial economy to the relational economy.
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Tiffany von Emmel
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Tiffany von Emmel
Building community with Tech Entrepreneurs in Nairobi
In past weeks, I’ve had the honor of working at the iHub as a guest. Founded by Ushahidi folks, iHub is a technology innovation coworking community in Nairobi.
iHub fuels innovation by enabling a community of coworkers and providing coworking space and reliable internet to a bevy of creative smart technologists. As Tosh, iHub community manager, can tell you, I came with a bit of skepticism about the three tier iHub membership model, the design to filter the flood of applications for membership. I wondered whether “community”, a messy peer-to-peer thing, could form well with a centralized organization that filters access to resources. But, Tosh was kind enough to give me a guest pass anyway
.The proof is in the experience, sawa, sawa…
Messy Serendipity
My first day at iHub, surprise. As I am sipping an excellent cup of cappucino, made by Pete, iHub Barrista, here comes the first sign of serendipity. Beth Kanter, a colleague from California, arrives to give a presentation on her terrific book on social media, The Networked Nonprofit, co-authored with Allison Fine. Beth and I had been virtually waving with the intent to get together while in Kenya, after Nancy White had connectively nudged us. And here, she arrives on the doorstep. This led to our fun outing of classic Nairobi experiences with orphan elephants and kissing giraffes the next day.Leaders as connectors is an excellent sign of community.
Relational practices as work are typically not perceived as work and are “disappeared” in engineering organizations that values monetary transactions more than relationships. So, I notice well when I see leaders that do the work of relationship-building. Erik Hersman, co-founder of iHub, exercised some relational skills on multiple levels. At a social level, socially constructing new narratives about African tech innovation , and at an interprersonal level, taking the time to explore with me what might align with my goals and connect me with Akirachix, a group of women technology entrepreneurs who work out of iHub. Over the weeks I was at iHub, I saw many similar acts of people weaving people together. Community leaders modeling relational practices makes a difference.Mutual value creation emerging
So, I met up with dynamic tech entrepreneurs, Jamila Abass and Susaneve Oguya. They are both co-founders of Akirachix and M-Farm, the mobile application for rural farmers. Their mission is to empower women at the margins. Akirachix gives technology training to women in Kenya. They invited me to their next meeting of Akirachix. I offered to connect Akirachix with Dreamfisher Java developers in Silicon Valley that want to give free Java training to women.
with Susaneve Oguya, Jamila Abass, and Shams Amin
And, YOU are welcome to join our jam of mutual value production. Susaneve is coordinating technology trainings. Jamila is starting up two new Dreamfish projects to empower rural women in North East Kenya — a coaching group for young women and an essential oils business startup. If you want to get involved, please do connect Susaneve and Jamila.
Dancing networks
Since at iHub, a number of iHub folks have joined Dreamfish. A big welcome to Jamila, Susaneve, Linda Kamau, PHP developer, James Muendo, community tech support, Bernard Owuor, a C++ developer, OD consultant Mel Mbugua, Huston Malande, WordPress developer, Ahmed Mohamed Maawy, and Evelien of Narobits.
When a community fosters growth for its entrepreneurial members, networks dance with the networks. Dances of interactions between networks are not like tightly choreographed ballet but rather like improvisational dance-theater. There are too many unknowns for grand plans up front. Networks of networks are built with acts of minimal structuring, frequent connection, fearless experimentation, with constant tweaking to follow patterns of aliveness.
While physically mostly in California celebrating New Years, I am at this moment grateful to also be community-building in Nairobi with tech entrepreneurs. Thanks to networks of networks – iHub, Akirachix and Dreamfish.
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Tiffany von Emmel
The Future of Money video
The turn of the year is a great time to open the window to the future and take a deep breath of fresh air!
The Future of Money from KS12 on Vimeo.
What do youth envision as the way of value and the economy in the future? Digital Natives bring inter-netted minds to bear on transforming the economy. This video is a riff on what the world might look like when networks form the foundation of our economy.
Jam on! at hashtag #futureofmoney
Creds
This video was part of Venessa Miemis’ presentation at the SIBOS Conference in Amsterdam, 25 October 2010. The interviews were conducted with participants in America, England, Sweden, Mexico, Germany and Thailand via video Skype calls from Berlin, Germany.
Written by Gabriel Shalom, Venessa Miemis and Jay Cousins
Directed and Edited by Gabriel Shalom
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Tiffany von Emmel
Douglas Rushkoff on Radical Abundance
Imagine if value was abundant, not scarce. When we reframe economic production as relational, rather than transactional, we start to change the game. We can create value by engaging the relationships around us. We can co-create, rather than suck value.
Douglas Rushkoff‘s talk on “Radical Abundance” provides a history of how we arrived at a scarcity model of economic production and proposes frameworks and mental models of abundance.
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Tiffany von Emmel
Transforming Work
What is work? What world are we making together?
Transformative learning about work is itself a kind of work, work on ourselves. It can be exciting work and hard work. As we explore “work”, the self can run the gamut of experience, from the passive child who says “you made me” work to the adult, who says “I create” my life’s work to a social entrepreneur who says, “what world do we want to make together?”
Does “work” mean economic production to you? Is “work” a dirty word? Is “work” your livelihood?
Transformative learning about work asks us to question what we do not yet see about ourselves, how our history and society has shaped our worldview. How do we internalize society’s stories about work? it requires us each to see our choices, the stories we tell ourselves about our identity, our self-worth, our motivations, our relationship to authority and external environment.
We each enact different stories about “work”, depending on who we are at any moment in time. For some, work is a paid job. Work is a thing in supply and demand. You can create work by hiring. You can “get work” by connecting with people who need your skills. For comparison, recently, I’ve been learning with a group of new Dreamfishers, Maasai women entrepreneurs in Kenya. Their work includes carrying water for hours, creating beadwork for sale, milking cows, and repairing huts. From the sale of one beadwork item, a family buys food for one month. Working is caring for one’s people. It is an age-old practice. As a third comparison, for some Dreamfishers, work is facilitating the empowerment of African girls to build self-worth and technology skills. Work is transformation.
These are dramatically different enactments of work – Work as a thing you get, work as a practice, work as transformation.
I’d like to offer another view by telling you a story from my history that shapes my worldview of work. In my early 20′s, after living a high life in a successful startup in NYC, I lived a year in an economically depressed rural mountain town, where I made my way into an abusive relationship. I was in a daily surround-sound of abuse, physical and psychological. Within months, I spiraled downward into being homeless, living out of a car for six months in winter.
Poverty was no longer a vicious cycle that other women knew. It was me, barely keeping my clothes clean enough and my body healthy enough to work two part-time jobs. As I lived out the patterns of economic and patriarchal oppression, I daily made choices that reinforced self-defeating narratives about the value of my work. I chose to work jobs, where I was constantly criticized and not at my best.
But, then, I did make my way out of this cycle. I found my way out by seeing that I could choose. I could work my life differently. Part of my work became building a new support system to create a new surround sound of care. I reached out and opened up to people, who believed I could create a new performance of my life. A new friend told me of an opportunity in a nearby town managing a college kitchen. Even though I had never managed a cafeteria or cooked for 250 youth 3x a day, I knew I could manage an operation, I could cook and teach cooking.
So, I took a leap into a new performance as a manager. Slowly, as I experienced my life anew, I continued to make new choices about work. As I served food to college kids in the cafeteria line, I realized I too could go to college. So, I made part of my life work “going to college”. And, when I became critical of institutional education, I made my life work to be building peer-to-peer transformative learning environments for adults.
I share this story, to say that transforming economic production or oppressive stories about work is a journey. Day by day, work was the journey of fishing my dream. A journey that I did not take alone. On days that I couldn’t see the way, I made a path with the many bits of kindnesses gifted to me.
Work is how we perform our life. Work is what puts the life in livelihood. Work is how we create the value we each want to manifest in the world. And we can create different performances.
Work is what I choose to do on this day with the precious life I have still. That is my work. Your work may be cooking for your children, gardening, building software, taking care of a sick friend, making art, teaching a group of children, or connecting people to resources.
We are all entrepreneurs, creating value together. When we recognize that we are intertwined with the systems around us, we create value by doing more of what we love to do and connecting to people around us who share our joy.
It is from this understanding that Dreamfish was founded as a global work cooperative. It is a place in which we can provide a mutual support system for each other in our journey of work. Success looks like bits of thriving, unfolding in creative ways for each of us.
Transforming economic production is not just about tranforming other people; it is about transforming ourselves. Unhealthy patterns that are internalized are subtle because they are often barely conscious to us. Yet, together, acting as support systems for each other, this work can transform ourselves and our world.
Beth Kanter 1:33 pm on December 31, 2010 Permalink |
Thanks for sharing this post. Love it. Are you still in Africa?
Tiffany von Emmel 11:10 am on January 2, 2011 Permalink |
Hey Beth, thanks! I am in Santa Barbara, will be in SF Jan 15-30. Hoping we can get together then?
Malcolm Arnold 6:42 am on February 28, 2011 Permalink |
Hello Tiffany,
Thanks for your post. I am presenting on Ruby Nuby at IHUB this Wed, Mar 2, 2011. If the below is inappropriate please let me know. I am happy to edit. My email is below. Your article comes up as one of the top results for tech groups in Nairobi. We are trying to establish our tech do-good, socio-economic program there. We won a grant from British Airways to see about bring our program to Kenya/Uganda. This attracted an anonymous donor to give 500kg free shipping to both cities for a total of 1000kg. We will ship in computers and set up a training lab. Thanks so much.
Malcolm Arnold
Ruby Nuby, Founder
Help Ruby Nuby and Agile Activism set up our community based tech and entrepreneurial training in Nairobi where we will train the next generation developers and fund companies they and you may start
Please RSVP at this link, Location is IHUB:
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1370620563
Please feel free to cross post to other lists and please invite leaders in: Education, Technology, Business, Philanthropy, NGO’s and Community Activism.
Ruby Nuby has won a grant from British Airways to see about bringing our program to Nairobi. Come learn about Ruby Nuby and how we plan to:
* Create an environment that allows all to to succeed in a collaborative, cooperative manner.
* Train the next generation of web developers and tech entrepreneurs in Nairobi,
* Train disadvantaged and at-risk youths and fund their training
* Fund startup companies and attract additional funding for your companies.
* Economically develop the arts.
* Change the educational system from a pay forward model where one incurs debt without a guarantee of a job to a payback model where one collaborates with and contributes to a community and is placed in a career.
* Empower women to succeed in technology and create incentives for men to help women do so.
A 25-minute presentation Ruby Nuby and it’s non-profit arm, Agile Activism, followed by a Question and Answer session. Afterwards, we will brainstorm on how we can best take advantage of the 500kg of sponsored shipping to Nairobi from New York that we have obtained. We will use this sponsorship to import the computer gear necessary to set up our program. We just need the community support to make it happen. By using VolunTourism, we will attract the world’s best developers and business leaders to come guest teach/lecture in Nairobi and then they will go on Safari which will economically develop the region’s tourism industry.
The mission of Ruby Nuby is to provide an environment that facilitates immersive learning by a Community of Contributors(TM) who contribute, learn and succeed by collaborating, cooperating and supporting each other. We work to promote a path to success where equal access, social justice, equability, diversity and sustainability are embraced.
I have 2 very recently released Ruby on Rails books and a new netbook that will be Ruby Nuby Nairobi Community owned to start a Ruby Nuby/Ruby on Rails/Tech study group here in Nairobi.
Map to IHUB:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=100420412648987917911.00047def651452cf80a23&ll=-1.296147,36.794243&spn=0.012871,0.021415&z=15&source=embed
Thank you:)
If you have questions, please email Malcolm Arnold at MalcolmArnoldNYC at gmail.com