I share notes below from a long conversation today with Suresh Fernando of Open Kollab http://wiki.openkollab.com http://groups.google.com/group/openkollab I'm very encouraged by Suresh's work to create a Pooled Fund Initiative. http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dc4gbgsj_12528qqs9xcj http://wiki.openkollab.com/wagn/Pooled_Fund_Project My understanding is that this will be a $2,000,000 investment fund that provides capital for an ecosystem of dozens of social ventures who are interested in making sure they all succeed and can pay back loans so they can all access such capital further as needed. Perhaps we can think of it as a credit line for an ecosystem of social ventures that they all work together to make best use of. Suresh's leadership is key because he has experience and contacts in the investment world and has thought a lot about community and collaboration. He's asking: * How do I get organizations that have high level of convergence and values to work together in ways that allow them to keep their independence and autonomy and find points of contact for collaboration? * How do we get 100,000,000 people to work on an issue such as global poverty? What does he want to achieve? Build an organization and institutional culture and way of thinking and community formation that will make it possible to have a global community - a real time interaction space - that could tackle global issues such as not having war. His dream is to build a highly scalable open collaboration environment, a standing infrastructure, so that 100,000,000 people could work on issues like global poverty. I'm looking for paid work for myself and my lab, Minciu Sodas http://www.ms.lt I think that the connections that Suresh is making and uncovering are very helpful for finding such work. It makes sense for me and us to join efforts with Suresh Fernando, Sam Rose http://forwardfound.org, Steve Bosserman, Michel Bauwens http://www.p2pfoundation.net and others who care. I note Tiffany Von Emmel's http://www.dreamfish.com recent letter http://groups.google.com/group/dreamfish about helping Dreamfish win Investor's Circle funding http://www.investorscircle.net Ashoka Fellowship Award http://www.ashoka.org/support Social Venture Network Innovation Awards http://www.svn.org/index.cfm?pageId=727 Program for the Future tools for collective intelligence $5,000 http://www.thetech.org/program_future/ and other opportunities. I am organizing an Economy of Dreams and I want to do this in parallel with the Pooled Fund Initiative and also Dreamfish projects. I am asking us to write about our dreams-in-life and then working to create an internal economy where we support each other's dreams. For example, my own dream to have a 24 hour help room (currently, our chat room http://www.worknets.org/chat/) as a place to help anybody with any problem, large or small, is very much related to Suresh's dream of a real time interaction space for tackling issues such as global poverty. So we can help each other even as we're trying to find paid work. Suresh asks for help to build support for a Pooled Fund Initiative and certainly I can help find and map potential participants, social ventures for his ecosystems. My thought is to write a survey that includes personal questions (deepest value, investigatory question, endeavor, dream-in-life) and social venture questions (such as these: http://wiki.openkollab.com/new/Pooled%20Fund%20Project%20Profile ) And I will also ask each of us, who else would we want to be sure to include in such an ecosystem. That will make for a useful map of our social network. It will also suggest what we can do without money, what endeavors are most strategic in that they catalyze all of our endeavors. (Here's a map of endeavors at Minciu Sodas http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Endeavors ) I can further think and write about economic models that can leverage our dreams . I can look for metrics or systems that point to our accountability and how we can restore that. For example, Samwel Kongere in Kenya is a key person at Minciu Sodas (has written about 1,000 letters) but this summer I sent him 1,500 USD to hold and distribute upon my request, and he's not been able to explain what he did with a significant part of that money. I assume he invested it (perhaps in the cereal trade) but I don't know and so it's destroyed our relationship until that's resolved. I write this as an example of what we need to be able to make transparent and resolve if we want to benefit from accountability to each other. How do we pose such questions to each other and hold each other accountable? Not simply regarding money, but being true to our missions, or at least, our values, which can be our strong points and our weak points. I'm especially interested in paid work, although a shared credit line would be helpful for refinancing credit card loans and a good way to practice looking out for each other and being sure to give each other work where we can. As I work on the map above I'd also like to look for independent thinkers and other supportive people in the corporate world who might some day help us get work. Who might like to work together with me? Andrius Andrius Kulikauskas Minciu Sodas http://www.ms.lt This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it +370 699 30003