A Meaningful Share From Ishan

My good friend, comrade, and collaborator Ishan Shapiro shared something pretty awesome to our Metamaps Google Plus community today. It's about why he chooses this work that we choose. Basically what it says is that today, now more than ever, Ishan is all in for this work. And I am too. Read on to know what work I mean. The following are his words.
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This is a personal share with this community. Today I got offered a job. To take the reins as CEO of an already funded and growing tech company based in Vancouver. 

The founder/funder went on and on about the merits of their technology, what they had built, why it was a recipe for success - also how any millions they were going to raise in their series B round of financing, what reputable PR company they are entering into a $100k contract with. I don't make any judgement on their vision - they're trying to build a powerful and secure collaboration platform for groups to work together. 

I asked him, why me. I'm not proven CEO talent. I've got no huge notches in my belt, successful companies run and revenue generated. He said, because he wanted creativity, and vision - someone young who could lead the company and navigate over the next 5-10 years.

It didn't take long for me to tell him that I wasn't the right person for the job, and wished him the best of luck in his team's endeavors.

Why did I say no? Is it because I couldn't bring success to the company? No. I feel I'm capable enough to lead a team to building technology and 'bring it to market'. But that's not what drives me, what inspires me. I'm in this for a different reason than the money, that bringing a product to market and exploiting a customer base and come up with an exit strategy isn't what this is about. I said no because I am not willing to align myself with a vision which calls their users customers. Not willing to engage in a broken VC model that is fundamentally not aligned with the evolution of value exchange in our society and culture. I told him no because there's no way that he could wrap his head around an open value network, distributed p2p protocols and no centralized control.

The Metamaps project is not about a bottom line. Its about changing the nature of our relationship with ourselves and our communities, through technology. Its about increasing our collective capacity to self-organize and address the wicked challenges we face today and into the future - individually and collectively.

I am so grateful to be doing this work with all of you on Metamaps, with this slowly and steadily growing community, a nascent value network. And I'm thankful to all of you for participating and involving yourself in this diverse and evolving vision - which I am honored to be a part of.

Onwards!
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Feeling magnificently grateful for my friends and collaborators Robert Best, and Ishan Shapiro.

Robert, Ishan, and I at Emerging Leader Labs, August 2013

Reflections on April & Working in the Commons Sector: Day 1

Mothers hands in the fertile soil of a fallen tree.

Earlier in April I wrote that I was dedicating the remainder of the month to relaxation+reflection+future planning. I'm both pleased and disappointed to report the results. Similar to the passing of 2012, or of university flying by, I'm wondering: Where did April go?

Relaxation: I think I was quite successful here. With my partner in crime, Alexandra, we spent 4 days truly revelling on my farm in the absence of work and school, enjoying the animals, the woods, the sunshine, and the river. We even took a trip up to the Scandinave Spa up by Collingwood, which I highly recommend. Having her around helped force me into a state of much needed non-productivity. Over the month, walks through the forest and time spent outdoors doing chores helped refresh my body and mind. Building physical things with my hands certainly has its very distinctive sense of reward versus the digital artifacts I'm used to producing that you can never hold on to, they're just code. Also the critical factor of reconnecting with my family. My mom, superwoman, handling the stress of my older brothers mental health challenges, and younger sisters physical disability, while managing the 100 acre farm is always an inspiration. Not to mention my sister who, despite her disability, is set on becoming a motivational speaker. They're both a lot of fun and its a blessing to be able to spend time with them again.

The blog posts I had hoped to write covering my stories, learnings and experiences from Knowledge Integration, Emerging Leader Labs, the Commons Seminars, and the Household As Ecology didn't emerge. I think it's important to acknowledge and learn from failures, so I guess what I'm taking away is that in order to truly reflect on past experiences I have to let go of my obsession with the future.

That said, I was successful in doing a decent amount of future planning including planning to attend the Emerging Leader Labs collaboration that will be from June 17th - Aug 8th. Going as a participant, you receive all kinds of support for a project of your choice that you want to incubate, so of course it is the perfect place for me to go and work on Metamaps, while embodying a practice of commoning and growing the gift economy. That brings me to Metamaps.

Today is my first day in a new job. Metamaps. Making the fledgling platform truly usable and useful is, as of right now, my full time endeavor. Metamaps is not a business persay, but is being produced by a value network (http://p2pfoundation.net/Value_Network) of which I am a key part. Please keep this in mind as you think of me, as most of my time will be dedicated to the ongoing creation of the platform, and will require of me a structure and self-discipline in my life. By choosing to create value in the world through the value network model, rather than choosing to work at a job just created for a jobs sake, I'm withdrawing to the extent that I can my participation from our highly dysfunctional job market/economic system and thus using my 'voting' power to begin the creation of a more functional one, in which everyone creates value in the world doing the work that fulfills them. For me, I work on metamaps so that communities can better manage their knowledge, and humanity as a whole can improve our knowledge management in service of tackling the many wicked problems we face. Check out this blog post for our current position, trajectory, and what we're looking for in collaborations: http://blog.metamaps.cc/?p=569

So there you have it, the next phase of my life and journey into what some are calling the Creative Economy. I call it the Commons Sector, where we grow and protect the global commons, all kinds of commons: Social, Cultural, Intellectual, Solar, Natural, Genetic, and Material.

Listen to the beat

Recently I can't get the intro song from the Children's show Arthur out of my head. As is written in the song 'it's a simple message, but it comes from the heart." I encourage anyone to read these words, and take time to let the wisdom sink in. If you agree with the statements being made, take some time to reflect on the question 'if others were observing my actions, would they see them in alignment with the wisdom in the Arthur song?'

It brings me joy to feel my actions here at the Emerging Leader labs, and more consistently in my life, in alignment with that wisdom. In fact, I would say a lot of the wisdom in the ELL is wisdom in the simplicity of this message, but being brave enough to live by the message.

Everyday when you're walking down the street, everybody that you meet
Has an original point of view

And I say HEY! what a wonderful kind of day.
Where you can learn to work and play
And get along with each other

You got to listen to your heart
Listen to the beat
Listen to the rhythm, the rhythm of the street

Open up your eyes, open up your ears
Get together and make things better by working together

It's a simple message and it comes from the heart
Believe in yourself (believe in yourself)
Well thats the place to start (to start)

And I say HEY! what a wonderful kind of day
Where you learn to work and play
And get along with each other