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d:2023-04-30

The CHOICE of ReGenMatch: RegenCHOICE

2023-04-30

I've not been writing many dated entries this month — instead I've been mostly working on RegenCHOICE. There were two main stimuli for this: first, the re:build online event where Robert and I volunteered to try a bit of matching, with the invaluable and irreplaceable encouragement and help from Lauren, who I appreciate as the major anchor of Regeneration Pollination. Robert named this “ReGenMatch” and we imagined growing this by starting small, on events like re:build, and extending it gradually to grow into the full potential of what was first just CHOICE, as “RegenCHOICE”.

The second stimulus was the Blissness Regen Retreat which I mentioned last, on 2023-04-21. After having noticed the growing interest from many quarters around what some see as the “matching” problem – which I prefer to see as a mutual finding challenge – I felt encouraged to take my 30-year-old CHOICE concept and see what potential there is through the Blissness lens, because for me, seeing RegenCHOICE in action would give me nothing less than the feeling of a life's work accomplished. It's that important to me.

There have been other really useful stimuli as well. One most worthy of mention is Dan, who recently suggested that I defocus on technical details and present first the requirements, and let the techie geeks work out the best way to implement. Recognising that my accreted writings about RegenCHOICE over several years, on my plain web site, contained far too much speculative technical detail, late in March I started to rewrite the material on my wiki, making it (slightly?) more accessible, and leaving out as much technical speculation as I could. Hence the material you can see here on my wiki at the RegenCHOICE index. It's still a work in progress, but I hope it has enough there to express my intentions, without too much offputting detail. (I find it a hard balance to strike.)

So now, at the end of April 2023, the end of the Celtic winter and the eve of the Celtic summer, I wanted to write out where I find myself.

At the Blissness retreat, Xavier, independently of Robert's ideas, suggested that I could try to prototype a CHOICE service, even without any technical implementation, on the challenge of trying to fit together technical people into regenerative communities. Where the retreat happened, at Les 4 Sources, a lovely intentional community in Wallonia, already have technically skilled people, but there are many co-living places (intentional communities; co-housing; ecovillages; communes; regenerative places; whatever you call them) which have taken a path away from information technology, not recognising the value that can add. At the same time, there are many technically skilled people who have had enough of the mainstream economy and life, and want to be in a more regenerative place. However, they may find it hard to find one another. The idea of a service to bring these two sides together could be a first step towards a RegenCHOICE concept, expanding to serve people who think of themselves as into “regenerative” this, that or the other — hard to define precisely but in my mind allied to terms or labels such as “alternative”, “sustainable”, “collaborative”, “collective”, “commons”, “open”, etc.

One way of getting into this would be to ask many people around these communities to explain, as best they could, the characteristics, qualities, attributes, knowledge, skills, expertise, etc. (yet another place where the terminology is far from definitive) of people, and groups of people / communities, have or may have, that make a difference to how well people fit with each other or with a group / project / place / collective / organisation. These could be developed through open collaborative processes and practices into a common living ontology commons by which to characterise people, places and opportunities. This ontology, in turn, can be used in several ways:

  • as the basis for developing a realistic demo of how the RegenCHOICE concept works
  • as inspiration for creating quick and fun tools for matching and assessing compatibility
  • for people and places to characterise themselves, their human-related offers and needs, in their own publicity

So what to do first? This is where I have trouble, though Hanna, who beautifully embodies Blissness, has already been so much help, and promises more. Is it possible to do these in parallel:

  • find creative writing partners write the stories that appeal to and draw in the technical folk to build the toy demonstrations or prototypes?
  • reach out to organisations, networks, associations, wider communities, to find out what matters to them, and their members in particular, in terms of these characteristics above?
  • actually propose and organise some gatherings / events / hackathons / hackalongs where people can support each other's creativity and enjoyment in developing tools, techniques, practices?

I'm hoping that Roberto and others relating to Liminal Village might be interested.

Oh, and completely by the way, I've used LinkedIn links to make it easy to identify the people I'm talking about, but one day I would love to see and take part in a massive project to replace and improve on LinkedIn, initially for the kinds of people I've been mentioning above, but ultimately for everyone, to be of maximal service without being a company obliged to maximise profits for shareholders.

see also

d/2023-04-30.txt · Last modified: 2024-08-20 20:19 by simongrant