Convening the New Cycle
In the conference call of March 15, 2007 we started exploring the possibility to shift our focus from convening the field of CI to a concept of CI Convergence as a living laboratory, a platform for:
1. Supporting social innovations at increasing scale, by boosting the collective IQ of their ecosystem
2. Advancing CI research and practice, by facilitating co-creative work on the edge that involves exchange among researchers and practitioners of various CI arts, theories, practices and sensibilities.
The primary way to facilitate that exchange is through publishing a series of generative interviews with CI luminaries, complete with harvesting interesting patterns that connect their driving questions and key insights.
In addition to access to that interview series and news of the CI movement, registered members will also have the possibility to comment on them, and participate in self-organizing forum conversations.
Finally, to fulfill the second function of the CI Convergence as platform, we also seek collaboration with the "We Are Smarter Than Me" project, the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and other CI research initiatives.
What is a "living laboratory"?
The now-forming Presencing Institute, of which I am on the co-initiation team, wants to grow "a global network of living examples that prototype innovations for major institutions and systems (schools, companies, farms, healthcare systems, communities, governments) through 'presencing' — connecting to the highest possible future for their social field."
The highest possible future of CI Convergence that I can fathom is to become a laboratory of CI-augmentation for such prototypes.
The functions of CIC as a lab can include:
