Collaborations — A Life Journey.

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to participate in an event about collaboration. Collaboration seems to be a trendy term in these days of deep changes, where everybody is exploring new ways of doing business or settling relationships.

But the truth is that if we look behind any successful project, we’ll find a team collaborating, no matter if it’s a work project or a personal project. This is because of the social facilitation effect, which pushes people to do their best when others are involved.

When I started thinking about how to structure my talk around the three main collaborative projects that I’m leading now, at some point I realized my whole life — professional and personal — is completely riddled with collaborations. Suddenly, I was aware of when it all started, and how I came to this point; I realized collaborating is much more than sharing some of your time in projects with others. Collaborating implies giving a little bit of yourself, while learning on the way (from others, yes, but from yourself too), opening your mind to others’ ideas, to others’ ways of performing, and to others’ worlds. It’s exhausting at times, as there’s a lot of discussion, and a lot of giving too; but results balance out all troubles.

These are some of my collaboration experiences and what I’ve learned from them:

Language exchanges

I was still living in Madrid when I started going to some Irish pubs to exchange languages (mainly English to Spanish, and vice versa). At first, it was a way of meeting new people while practicing my English, but it soon turned out to be a way of enjoying my spare time. I met a lot of nice people, we all became friends, and we did a lot of things together. When you share what you know, it’s easy to find others who are willing to reciprocate.

eInnobar

It’s the classical networking event. It started 9 years ago when networking events were mushrooming everywhere. It was the beginning of the social web as well (as we know it today) and we wanted to devirtualize people we had just met on Facebook. It was the logical next step at that time. Some of us met once and decided to keep meeting every month. The second month’s meeting was packed, and we decided to invite a guest speaker, a local entrepreneur willing to share his or her ideas with a local audience. On the second and third anniversary of the event, we organized two congresses. But the aim of this event has always been clear: to bring together people that are already doing things and/or are interested in things others do. Many of the event assistants are already collaborating on some projects, and this makes us happy as organizers.

Unadocenade.com

When listicles were just starting to pop up back in 2011, I had the idea of adapting an American site to a Spanish audience. It was a blog, business-oriented, which posts lists of 12 items; easy to read, easy to share. I found some partners for the adventure and started writing as if there were no tomorrow. But this type of blog requires more than three writers and the idea was to recruit a troop of writers as collaborators, experts in their areas, people with a reputation, and anonymous people too. The blog soon became a great success and by the end of our first year, we had more than 100 collaborators and were awarded a Bitacoras, the most important award for blogs in Spanish.

Collaborators are the soul of unadocenade. I wouldn’t have conceived of this project without being part of a choir of many different voices on many different topics; from economy to parenting, from music to politics, from literature to software development. This diversity, by the way, is also the secret of unadocenade’s success. In the meantime, I’ve learned how to lead an online writing project, how to deal with potential collaborators, how to edit, and how to work with friends, which sometimes can be tougher than working with colleagues.

Toastmasters

Toastmasters is an international organization with clubs in many countries, whose objectives are empowering people to become confident public speakers and strong leaders. In fact, its motto is “where leaders are made.”

The method is quite simple: there are guided sessions where all club members play an important role, a communications manual and a leadership manual, with projects that we have to accomplish to improve our skills as speakers and as leaders at our own pace. It’s a learn-by-doing environment, more of a workshop than a class. The fee is affordable (10€ per three sessions a month, two in English and one in Spanish) and allows members to attend the meetings and to participate in the contests.

I’m a much more confident speaker in any context now than I was before joining the club, and more than that, I really enjoy helping others grow as well and accompanying them in their improvement process.

TEDxAlmendraMedieval

As is any other TEDx event, TEDxAlmendraMedieval is licensed by the TED Foundation, but independently organized. Organizers, fundraisers, designers, all of us are volunteering to provide our local audience with ideas that are worth spreading. That’s TED’s aim, that’s what we do. We all have learned a lot on our way, from leadership to anxiety control. More than that, TEDxers are a worldwide community. We share a hub where we can ask for help, or share knowledge and tips learned from our events. After a very successful inaugural event, which gathered an audience of a hundred people, and as a “veteran” licensee and organizer, I have been invited to Geneva for a TEDGlobal event in preparation for our upcoming talks, a projected 500-strong audience.

Pomqa / Wait, what? / Connections + Choices / Made Up Words /Pomqa in Spanish…

These are collaborations that are also emerging here on Medium. Ideas that lead to other ideas, that lead to… we don’t know yet, but we’re all learning on our way, while we engage with other writers at the same time. Because that’s what communities are for, and I believe the ‘Wait, what?’ logo by Ned Hoste really reflects what collaborations are. Like drops of water that form waves that collide with other waves, and get mixed. Like synapse, connecting cells, exploring the unknown, and never knowing where all this will end, or maybe it doesn’t need an end, but a continuation, a mutation, because that’s what ideas do — they transform into other things.

What else?

Once you start walking on the path of collaboration, you never know where it will lead you. It’s fun to see how collaborations evolve over time, as it’s fun to see how collaborations evolve amongst people you’ve met on your journey. It’s a life journey, and once you’ve started your trip, there’s no turning back. It’s exciting, it’s thrilling, and it’s a way of life — my way of life.