A radical experiment in designing a collaborative society
Right after OuiShare Fest, an annual congres of 1000 visionaries gathering to share the newest insights on an innovative and more collaborative and sharing society, with a focus on collaborative consumption and production as well as trust, behavior and spirit, the second edition of CollabCamp takes place. A radical experiment on collaboration through different backgrounds and cultures, ready to hack a collaborative future.
Want to participate? Please let us know by filling these forms (participants and projects to work on).
Surprises from the first edition
In October 2014 the first edition was held in Knowmads Business School in Sharing City Amsterdam. The idea is a mix of techies and regular companies, government officials, social entrepreneurs, students and anyone with an interest in a shared future working together on urgent issues. That can either be a societal question or a personal project.
Of course for the organizers it was somewhat unknown who would show up at an open experiment. And we were surprised! As the range of working topics varied from poverty reduction and a better public mobility in rural regions to tech issues like creating a map of maps and digital tools for grassroots radio making and support for monitoring and curating tech companies.
But not only typical working topics were an item, because of the open space others were attracted to really do what they wish to do, like an artist that created a dragon of wood as an image of boundless creativity and freedom to act according to Bhuddist principles. And an entrepreneur having a coworking space and residential art center specialized in tarot readings explaining the path of the hero.
The first edition of CollabCamp turned out to be a melting pot of different cultures, talents and insights in the safe bedding of Knowmads, an alternative business school working with international students and a focus on the balance between work and living already. As Knowmads had just consulted Shambhala Amsterdam, the entire bhuddist community showed up at the burning of the dragon. On Sunday an alternative church community showed up and on Monday we had a quiet international open breakfast with people from all over the world. Which was strenghtened by the attendees of CollabCamp from all over Europe.
Learning process
Most appealing is probably the learning part of an open space community gathering. Sharing leadership over the event from day one. All information, the making of the event, the hangouts in advance till the practical organization itself are shared. At times this can be confrontational. Especially in the organizing team. Nothing is certain and all is being accomplished by making our goals or dreams manifest, asking for possibilities to help us creating this for real.
For example; our fourth day of the event: the 26th of June is without a location yet. Still we are pushing forward to be in the event four days and create this reality together. And during the process we keep reminding each other to keep thinking in possibilities only as well as speaking our own minds and taking credits for whatever is your own idea or statement. In the process this has become a very empowering journey for us as organizers as for our collaborating group as well. Standing up for what you need, trusting in others, learning to bear responsibility and share the joy together as well as an individual. It’s completely awesome to share all that is needed to be done from such an early stage in the process.
Actually it was quiet a big compliment to hear that from an ‘open space’ like CollabCamp, similar like in a creative process, things can emerge, come into existence and creativity can arise.
What to expect in Paris?
In Paris we are connecting communities of different locations for the first time! Simplon.co and NUMA are our hosts providing the venues to work in. That means we are connecting the coding community of Simplon.co for the first two days “In code we trust” is their motto and they are the ‘Fabrique social de codeurs’.
On Monday the 25th of May we are located at NUMA which is a large coworking space that is awesome in creating events, traffic and accelerating start-ups.
CollabCamp is a social hacking experiment as well as a community of techies. With the connection to the coding community as well as to social entrepreneurs and creative minds, we are at the heart of our mission!
Just like in the first edition we will collect talents and collaboration topics with the group of people that is present. Depending on what’s needed a session follow-up can take place which can be either practical (for instance coding or creating something) of more like an ideation or brainstorm session. Using our facilitation skills. So all skills present are being used for the collaborative result.
Subjects
Of course topics to work on are limitless. Some highlights for this edition and raised topics last time in Amsterdam:
- www.represent.cc A collaboration on governance and giving people a voice about nearly everything. Ed Dowding will be there in Paris to help us around and to forward his project as well as projects of others.
- Dhargyal-Sebastian van Oorschot building a high-tech community house for people to live in tribes. Prototyping his project with a team, he’s joining us on the subject of crowd collaboration and needing help on this to forward his project.
- Shaimala Panday will be there for the second time, now asking for help creating a health platform that is pushing forward ownership of health data with people, creating direct links between research, open data and a better health.
- Willem den Engen is there for the second time too, totally amazed with the fact that people were coming towards Amsterdam, starting by giving and fascinated with the subject of shared leadership.
- Government officials asked us for help escaping software licenses last time (yes this was an official statement of one of the massive innovation municipalities). Next to the costs, they prevent civil servants from open communication with citizens and entrepreneurs. Instead of keeping the world imprisoned in old systems, let’s find new ways to liberate everyone, including workers in corporates as well.
- Giant coop: how to create a cooperation of 1 bilion self-empowered people making a government obsolete by collaborative governance?
- Map of maps: creating an overview of grassrootscommunities.
- Mobility on demand: how to create a lower carbon footprint, mobility on demand without becoming Uber? Creating better mobility for target groups and public transport in general.
All our docs are transparant and accessible in Google docs! So we continue working on the issues that matter.
Why would you sponsor or co-host?
Anyone can become a co-host of the event by adding your organization to the Facebook event when you support our mission. CollabCamp is a ‘brandless brand’ uniting people, skills and talents from different backgrounds. By becoming a co-host you are supporting collaboration on societal topics and collaborative entrepreneurship.
For the next CollabCamps (planned in London and Amsterdam already), providing the venue can be fun! Hosting an international team of experts in the field of tech, social entrepreneurship and innovation. And you could bring in your own topic and connect your community. Imagine we could solve one of your most urgent problems collaboratively. The long term effect is the connection of communities involved, able and willing to collaborate on issues that matter.
We are fond of the open character of CollabCamp. That means we love our collaboration to be without becoming a legal entity right now, but we do except sponsoring of our events in the form of a venue, making the event more accessible by providing catering and such.
When you want more information, please contact Amanda Jansen or Daniel Harris.
