The Serendipity of Connected Dreams
I ran my first ever workshop “Connected Dreams” earlier this year in the corner of a sunny field at The Happy Startup Summercamp. I then followed Sophie’s Dream to Namibia. The serendipity of these 2 events is mind blowing.
The Workshop Idea
Dreams are destinations we program into our personal sat-nav systems that will take us on a journey where we meet cool people, learn new stuff and have a good time. Working on our own dream is hard but when we combine our dreams and work on them together, they happen more quickly and are more fulfilling.
Connected dreams is about connecting with people we can share our dreams with and have fun making them happen together.
The Workshop
I introduced the idea and everyone wrote down their individual dream. We were to work in teams of four to design a single story that connected these four dreams. A story these four people could then act out in real life. I took four volunteers from the group to run the exercise and illustrate how to do this.
- Rich : Explore Africa
- Fi : Kinetic Energy Café
- Niketta : Lifestyle, 6 months Europe, 6 months Australia
- Jonathan : Wife Laurie to visit Summer Camp and experience the “happy is the new rich” philosophy
I drew them all on one piece of paper so we could look for the connections and write a connected dreams story they could all live out in reality. I started asking questions about these people and their dreams and we learned the following.
Inspiring adventurer Richard Browndson works with social enterprises, writes a blog, and is passionate about sustainable tourism and wildlife. We asked the audience if they had any Africa stuff going on. Natalie Jeffers had a huge amount to contribute. As did many others who passionately shared their contacts and ideas which gave us more to work with. Eiji is connected to the Nairobi Money Institute, Mark with Imagine Africa. Tribe Wanted was also mentioned. It appears the Happy Startup community shares an affinity with social entrepreneurship in Africa.
It is clear that Richard needs to work on social impact projects that will enable him to travel in Africa. While he is there he can tick off his wild life and landscape bucket list.
Fi’s Kinetic energy healthy fast food café idea has two angles. Teach children about energy through play, and educate children about the importance of nutrition. We explored the link to Richards dream and it Natalie confirmed that energy, play and children’s food are all big topics linked to social enterprise in Africa.
Niketta Postlethwaite really needs freedom to travel. Her family and friends are in Europe so she wants to be here but she also needs to spend extended periods of time traveling. She volunteered that Africa seems as good a place as Australia and her dad’s best mate lives in Johannesburg. At this point four other participants shouted about their connections and dreams in Africa.
Niketta is a foodie (me too). She loves eating out at restaurants and reviewing the experience. She has some ideas about a better way for reviewing restaurants as she already has a stack of data. Cape Town has a great food scene and we will obviously need to take dinner with various members of the social enterprise, startup and NGO community when we visit.
I happen to be in Cape Town right now mentoring on a startup accelerator project that is taking place at the world famous Silwood Kitchen School for professional chefs (our other venue cancelled at the last minute). Carianne Wilson is our host, who is a also one of the judges of the prestigious worlds 50 best restaurants awards. Hmmmmm.
Jonathan Smiths business Pobble is going from strength to strength by inspiring young writers. Jonathan wants to share with his wife the “happy is the new rich ” bug he caught at summer camp. Laurie however dislikes camping and would never come to summer camp, but she loves Safari and would definitely join a Happy Startup Safari. Particularly now that so many other dreams hinge on it. I think Jonathan and Laurie have a bigger role to play here. Literacy is the number one issue for improving status in the community and the single biggest challenge to sustainable development. How can Pobble apply their technological entrepreneurial social conscience muscles to inspire literacy in Namibia and across Africa?
Many of the wider workshop group then said they would be well up for coming on a happy startup safari. Many others including Natalie Jeffers are keen to be involved in a happy startups movement exploring social enterprise angle in Africa.
So Rich, Fi, Nikita, John, Laurie, Natalie, Laurence, Carlos and a bunch of happy startups are all off to Namibia next year for a happy startup social enterprise.
Anyone else wanna be a part of this wonderful connected dream?
What I’m Learning
- Working on dreams together is more fun and it turns out we all have similar dreams
- Pooling our contacts, resources, energy, ideas and skills means we can all go on a fun journey making our own and everyone else’s dreams come true.
- Going on a shared journey is infinitely better than ticking off the original dream that inspired that shared journey in the first place.
Could this be a methodology for conceiving and launching startups based on shared dreams. Could a system like Naveed’s Vestd platform enable such large scale collaborative working groups without the admin hassle. Could this be a whole new way of living and working. I certainly believe it is. My life has been a dream making experiment for the last 2 years and the results have been nothing short of miraculous.
The happy startups strap line is ‘helping people realise their dreams, one startup at a time’. What if we could work together to get the entire happy startup community to achieve all of their dreams, multiple startups at a time? What if the entire community became a giant dream making connected super organism startup? Could we build giant free range termite hills bigger than corporate sky scrapers?
#GiantDreamFreeRangeTermiteSuperStartupOrganismPower
And if you think I’m a little mental you should read what happened when i followed Sophie’s Dream to Namibia last week.
- Apply to join Happy Startup Safari Camp
- Learn more about Bucket List Business Planning
- Come to the Happy Startup Summer Camp
- Join the Home School Program
- Dream powered marketing Propellernet
- Dream with us in the French Alps
