Finding the Tools — Creating Space for a Disciplined Dialogue
by Rachel Hentsch for Bill’s Blog
Since 17th April 2018, I am founder and host of the MIT Bootcamp Alumni Association (MBA²), a bespoke and private online network that holds space for the MITx Entrepreneurship Bootcamp Alumni: “An exclusive Mighty Network, built by MIT Bootcamp Alumni, for the MIT Bootcamp Alumni.” Its description reads:
“Our mission is to connect, support, encourage and learn from each other, so that we can each reach our highest potential through continuing to harness the “power of our pack”. We believe this can best be done through co-creation and a stretch-collaboration mindset. #OnwardsTogether!”
Curating the platform entails hours of on-the-side work, mostly late into the night — hours subtracted from sleep. There is no shortage of so-called thankless tasks. And there is no money to be made — at least, not for now. The energy, the joy and the ideas that come from the network are hard to quantify and convey: they are not measurable, they are a tapestry of experiences and feelings (what Nora Bateson calls warm data), perhaps best shared in a narrative. Many people, including fellow Alumni, have often asked me: “Why are you doing this?” and the only authentic answer I can come up with is: “I don’t know, I just feel that this needs to happen, and that I can help it to happen.”
The MBA² Ecosystem — as it is today
Mapping is by definition selective, subjective and reductive, but it has helped me gain clarity on how the MBA² (MIT Bootcamp Alumni Association) is showing up (at this given point in time), how many of us there are in the picture, how we may be relating to one another, and where we may possibly be headed, tomorrow, next year or over the course of the next decade.
As I write, the MBA² network has grown over the last 16 months from a 5-person group (remotely brainstorming together in various online interstitial spaces), to what (in my previous article) I called a “reasonably sustainable model of space-holding.”
Continue reading here.
Originally published at https://www.d-eship.com on October 2, 2019.
