P2P and Landscape of Change December 31, 2011

(snip) Your work and Landscape of Change

As well as your influence on my thinking, I'm enormously grateful to be able to refer to your clear explanations of various changes and trends as backup to the ideas I'm sharing in a project I'm calling Landscape of Change. I started work on it last year in response to a Panorama programme called "Finished at Fifity" - but although that was the catalyst the Landscape of Change project has much wider vision and relevance than a single target group of people over fifty who are looking for work.

Landscape of Change is about reflecting on (and responding to) change as it is impacting on people's lives, making sense of those changes in the wider context, and then applying those insights in a practical way. From our changed perceptions and insights in the workshop group we look at an approach of "stronger together" - and what that means in practice. The ideas I'm sharing make a lot more sense - and carry more weight - if I can refer to background information such as your P2P work (including the recent talks).  Your work does a lot to give me more confidence - the way I see things is not just me being crazy.

Background to Landscape of Change

I started Landscape of Change because I was outraged by advice that was given in The Finished at Fifty programme to four people who had been made redundant and were trying to reposition themselves in the world of work. I thought they were being very wrongly advised (unhelpfully and potentially destructively), and so I decided to develop something more "realistic".  (NB I do have credentials on the topic of being out of work and what it does to people.)

As I see it, for some people (who are losing their jobs now or not able to get a first one), it is as if a tsunami has hit their "usual world of work" situation and they find themselves suddenly washed up on an island somewhere. These people get into "writing CVs mode" - they send off a succession of letters in bottles in the hope of reconnecting with their old "world of work" - not understanding the way that world more or less vanished in the waves that washed them to the island. However some of the other people washed up on the island take a different approach and decide to forget the old "world of work" place, explore the new land, and make what they can of it. How this story ends of course depends on who is on the island, what resources they can lay their hands on, and how well they collaborate. I want to encourage people to explore the new land rather than keep on putting letters in bottles. I get angry with "powers that be" who keep pushing people to try harder to make their way back to the traditional world of work as if no real deep changes are happening.

Landscape and overlaps
Obviously I can't explain all the Landscape of Change details here. I just want you to know enough about it so it can be included in your P2P thinking as appropriate. It may even overlap in some way what you are planning do soon or in the future (I have no idea what that is). At the moment I'm in pre-launch mode. I've developed some materials for workshops, and tried them out with various people - although not with my real target groups yet. The basic workshop is designed to shift people from old ideas about work etc and get them to see some of the key patterns of change - so they are more ready to live with uncertainty. and react in new ways, in what you might describe as a P2P world - and what I describe with words like "collaboration".

Need for follow up

I decided that my preparations couldn't just stop at creating workshops - there needs to be something to follow on - and that could take a lot of time and effort to nurture properly. Having sowed the seeds related to new approaches and collaboration during the workshops - and knowing how important it is that people are not left in isolation looking for jobs that don't exist - I want make it easy for people to join "collaboration groups" after the workshops (or create their own new ones).  I've now got ideas for how these groups might develop and what they might do. Even if I can't offer local groups I need to at least offer some kind of online group for people to connect with - I'd like to offer more if I have some resources.

More about collaboration groups

Another reason I want people to be able to take part in collaboration groups is because others will benefit as a result of what the collaboration groups achieve. People who are not spending all their time as wage slaves are a great resource, and there is much to be done in building our shared future. We can't afford to waste people. However I want people to take part in collaboration groups because they want to. The last thing I'd want is for collaboration groups to become some kind of compulsory government scheme for anyone who is claiming any kind of unemployment benefit. I would want to avoid that kind of image and compulsion. (If necessary I'd rather promote a collaboration group model at the opposite extreme - quite elitist - something people might even try to join in during their spare time despite still having a traditional regular job.) These are purposeful collaboration groups.

Obviously I don't want to impose any ideas, and it's best for people to come up with their own, but it's a kind of "safely blanket" feeling for me to know that if people did want some ideas - even if just as a starting point for discussion - I'd have something to hand. Also if there are not enough people at the end of a workshop to make a collaboration group happen without support then I need to have at least something to point people to.

First steps

The Dadamac meetup group that I started recently  http://www.meetup.com/Dadamac/ could now serve as a first contact point for anyone who's been to a workshop and wants to connect with some kind of collaboration group. The people in that group are mostly people who have helped me with feedback on the workshop materials - so they are familiar with the Landscape of Change basics.

Given there is at least that starting point for anyone who wants to connect with a collaboration group after a workshop I could start to run workshops properly in the New Year - and hope to get other people running them too.

I'm not sure if I'll look for funding to help launch the Landscape of Change (workshops and collaboration groups). External resources could accelerate its uptake and development. Or maybe I'll just let it emerge. I've got various thoughts and am meeting with some of my collaborators on Friday to explore some options.

Rewards

The "rewards" for people investing time and effort in collaboration groups seem fairly obvious to me - but that's because I'm thinking from a P2P kind of viewpoint. I also look at many kinds of reward that people get, other than money, through being part of collaboration groups - build up of new networks of trust, evidence of collaboration with others, skill continuation and development, social and intellectual benefits, possibility of making things happen locally that you've not had the time or team to make happen previously, etc.

This may be done while working on projects purely for social good and for no financial reward, or on projects that are being paid for at a commercial rate, or some kind of hybrid.

Despite recognising all kinds of rewards and value benefits beside money it remains true that  we all do need to cover our material needs, and that is a challenge given the way things are at present. It's okay to look forward to how things may play out in a P2P world, but for now getting access to all we need for our material needs tends to require "a mix of new and traditional approaches" - which is one reason why I really appreciated the way you explained new approaches to work in London recently - especially the relationship with people/organisations who would be expected to contribute financially. 

Sharing

As time goes by I hope to make all the Landscape of Change workshop resources available online for others to use (but ideally some benefit should come back if the resources are used commercially). I'd want to put up explanatory notes as well for people running workshops, not just give the diagrams that we have.

 I'm not sure how it will work out, but I feel I need to share as much as I possibly can, and yet there are financiaI hurdles to overcome. Just creating the resources and setting up the meetup group has involved financial costs - and of course lots of time invested as well. I guess it is all part of the practical experiment of building the kind of collaborative future we believe in - as usual I'm learning by doing.

Progress reports

I don't know how much time I'll find to share how things are progressing - so if anyone is interested it might be a good idea to join the Dadamac meetup group - http://www.meetup.com/Dadamac/ - even if it is just to lurk there. That is where workshop follow-up collaboration groups news should gather as things start to happen.

Pam