Synapses

During its first year of existence we built the online platform and, simultaneously, we evolved as a not for profit foundation with the help of an amazing team called Truthology, who helped us with the registration and gave us some tips into paypal business account settings. The platform allowed you to propose ideas that others would comment on and vote in agreement or disagreement. If and when passed, others could join to make it happen. We, as in each member, contributed to the whole system a sum of $100 a month and 80% of it was equally distributed amongst the ideas people where engaged and actively working in, that way, when the work was finished, the group that made it happen would establish the percentage of work contribution of each participant, and each would get back that percentage of the common fund created by the participants of the particular work. A lot of those features where developed but an inspiring team of the time named Bettermeans, a group of awesome people who had developed a platform I was in love with but that stopped development operations.

I had noticed a few things that the platform didn’t offered me to keep building that relationship with those I was establishing the connections. So I decided to approach them and make a proposal. What if they could update the platform code to add those things I was looking for and, thanks to contributors, we would actually buy them the code?? They accepted and it was then when we implemented the social media built-in, newsletters, library, open compensation/re-contribution structure and adapted the platform to give members the facility to work on their canvas and follow the Business Model generation process. The first members to join the body agreed to allocate the 80% of their monthly contributions to update the platform until the result was satisfactory. They had access to all that was happening about it because once they made the decision to join, they got an account to the platform and could witness and participate in the decision making process.

After getting Bettermeans on board, I had to keep finding people who were in a similar path. People who wanted to change the world through their work and were ready to take responsibility at different levels: to create our new cultural story, to embrace the inner journey that it took to change the world, to think outside the box, to embrace adversity as an opportunity for change. I was looking for people with deep feelings, people who understood me. Where were they?? For certain things, I was a bit of an introvert, especially for public speaking in my second language, which I balanced with writing and blogging,. I took it as a challenge and created a Business Gallery. It was made on office cubicle walls, and there I would glue and clip everything about the business, from values, to trends, barriers, possible location of other cells, passion related events, schedules, links, tasks…everything. A lot of stuff was very visual and colorful, I really enjoyed doing what I was doing, and since it wasn’t a usual business of the old culture, I didn’t have to worry about usual ways to present it.

Once a month I used to host a Business gallery walk. I either invited people, usually from within my social circles, over my “brain” or office, and let them take a walk around and have a chat regarding their feelings about the business, or took the gallery to public events and fairs and explore it with “outsiders”. At some point I developed an online version of the gallery and hosted online gallery walks. I started hosting for close friends, which brought a small group of active people together. People loved it, they shaped the business. These events strengthened my relationships with most of those who attended and created new relationships as well. Some of them decided to become involved in another connection strategy. We took the name from an initiative that started in the US, it was called “creative mornings”. Once a month we would invite a speaker that was embarking in a very inspiring journey to help the world change for the better. Every now and then we got well known speakers but our main intention was to serve as some sort of megaphone for recently initiated projects. With time, many of these speakers decided to join the body, and many others who had joined, decided to be speakers. 

It was kind of a celebration party, a time to catch up, to get inspired, to exchange experiences, to lose the fear, to support each other.