I recently came across this really inspirational video via the worldbridgerdesign blog. I have to get in all this collaborative communities… I love this initiatives.
Collaborative Consumption Groundswell Video from rachel botsman on Vimeo.
20th century = Hyper Consumtion.
21st century = Collaborative Consumption.
Today, we shared our results on the KLM assignment with a variety of people from KLM. Most Knowmads were also present and brought some additional ‘knowmadic energy’ to the place. To have an inspiring environment (and to get the KLM-ers out of their natural habitat) we decided to host the event at Mix Academy, a place where creativity can flourish. An empty space, filled with artwork, flowers, candles, home made brownies and banana bread would hopefully do enough to let them feel at home.
After the check-in, with many curious statements from KLM’s site, it was time for some art, to be specific, an I DO ARRT. It was meant to structure the meeting and to let the KLM-ers feel comfortable. We figured that they appreciate structure over chaos. We, Knowmads, sometimes forget that check-ins and chaos are not everyday business for most. So, a little bit of structure in an art environment is a good compromise I would say.
After that, Marianne presented the results and process of the assignment. She did a great job in telling the story by visualizations only. I think the process itself, the way Knowmads and KLM work together, is even more valuable than the results we presented.
To let the KLM-ers feel ownership of the ideas and to get them into a co-creation process we hosted a World Cafe, or in this case, a Knowmadic KLM Cafe! It was used to deepen the conversation about the different ideas and also included a question (what makes a travel experience memorable?) to tap more into their emotions and the emotions of the customer. Ideas were cross-pollinated and the energy in the room was rising. According to me, everyone was very enthusiastic and it seemed like they were having fun. At the end of the workshop, the different ideas were harvested and drawn on a big sheet of paper. Hopefully we succeeded in getting them energized for Extended Office and made the first steps to bring the ideas alive.
We ended the morning with handing over a written report to all KLM-ers- a bit different than the ones they receive normally. An empty booklet with a paint brush, it symbolizes that they are the ones who should continue working on it and have the ownership of the project. We do not believe in telling people what to do, but instead enable them and energize them to do what they are alredy good at. Hopefully we succeeded in that, and according to Joris: “we kept surprising KLM until the very end.” That’s what they asked us for, isn’t it?
Finally, I would like to share some personal take-outs of working together with KLM:
- doing things differently requires guts
- boundaries restrict creativity
- so does fear
- being rebellious can be fun
- leadership can come in many forms
- I should be proud more often. And f*ck I am!
Here are some photos from the event:
If I look back at the last week three main things come to my mind:
Firstly two new students entered Knowmads. Welcome Home Ditte and Roy! I remember them stating in the check out on Friday that they will need the whole weekend to process the learnings, experiences and impressions of the first week. I guess they will never feel bored during the whole Knowmads year 
I also invited them to blog, so our followers will soon have an extended and even more diverse ‘direct insight into Knowmads activities’.
The second thing was that the NOS, national television and radio, visited us last Monday. Have a look at the video they made:
We also added subtitles (English) to the video, watch it here on Vimeo (thx to Sebastiaan who translated it!)
The radio interview and reactions can be found on the NOS page: http://headlines.nos.nl/forum.php/list_messages/21484
Pieter giving the interview for the NOS
The third thing was the KLM-final presentation. The project got rounded off by presenting the ideas and the results of the journey Knowmads and KLM had together to executives. Pictures haven’t reached me yet but I am sure that one of the other students who was more involved in this project will blog about it in time.
May the new week be with you!
Remember that Seth Godin visited Knowmads back in April? We introduced the ‘Check-In’ / ‘Check-Out’ team tool to him… Now he seems to pic it up on his blog, Quote:
One way to start every morning with your team is to have them check in. Go around in a circle and let people update and contribute. It’s not a silly exercise, in that it helps people speak up and it communicates forward motion.
Already in the Check-In with us he questioned if we should not call it ‘Chicken’, and to share what we are afraid of (to probably discover a couple days later that it was not a big deal at all…) Read here the full post of Seth and his opinion on Check-In/ Chicken.
In my opinion the ‘Chicken’ can be a nice tool, as an alternative or a weekly exercise but not as a substitute to the Check-In/ Check-Out. The uniqueness of the ‘Check-In’ is that everybody has the full freedom without any regulations to share what is in his or her mind. It is a kind of internal weather report and stands fore safe-space, togetherness and sharing.
Check In / Check Out at Knowmads
We also practice the Check-In/ Check-Out with most of our clients and partners – and they seem to value the sharing more and more. Nice to see this.
About two weeks ago I could not sleep after a very busy week. Somehow I started writing and what came out of it was an essay, which I now chose to share. The experiences shared are – however – somehow already outdated. This means that already now, two weeks later, a lot has changed.
Everything is temporary. Nothing is definite.
Hi everybody!
I’m not a very frequent blogger. In fact, I hate blogging and I said that I would never do it again. But then, there was the butter incident.
Let me explain: last week I was quite busy. One day, during lunch, I decided to fry one egg. I spilled some butter on the floor and totally forgot to clean it up. Manuel stepped on it and as a punishment, I have to write this blog post. 
So, here I am, blogging.
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Here at knowmads we all have different self-appointed positions. Some are Pilgrims, others are Bridgebuilders, and I am a Random creator. Why am I a random creator? Well, basically because I try to make all my ideas come true. And they are usually pretty random. Here’s a few of them.
The Backpackers Race
It’s a global competition of paper backpackers.
Did you say turtle?
It’s a collection of movies with the subject “Did you say turtle?”.
Chair fight
With Manuel, we created a chair fight. It will be improved soon.
Why do I do it? First of all, because I think it’s quite fun. Second, to show everyone that all ideas can be made, no matter how silly they are.
So, do you have any random ideas? Bring them into the world! Maybe they are not silly at all!
By the way, I don’t think it was mentioned yet – after the holydays we decided for 2 project or output days and 3 education or input days instead of 1 and 4. Also looking at the amount of projects we are involved in – double as much as there are students at the moment of writing, and rising quickly – we have come to a point where focus is shifting to shipping. The idea of the Knowmads program is exactly like this;
At Knowmads, an entrepreneurial school in Amsterdam, students aren’t exactly taught anything in the traditional sense of the world. Instead, they’re asked to form a company and get to work. The school offers a helping hand, obviously, bringing in customers, expertise and infrastructure. And perhaps most importantly, they’re injected with a healthy dose of entrepreneurial spirit and a belief that they can make a difference in the world.
as further explained by Pieter Spinder in this in depth article it’s about getting us ready to play a pro-active role and pioneer in the market and society.
One of the critical success factors for getting there is having the basics right. We’re working on that for six months now. Consider though we started from scratch. One of these basic needs is internet. As of last week we have our own access subscription provided by the dear people at XS4ALL. Officially on tuesday we switched to Zimbra, an online collaboration platform for managing email, agenda, notes, files, tasks, editing text and spreadsheet documents, and more. Features are promising but will need group attention next week to get it going. Also we are working to get our non-European members embedded in the company and country – a story that will be continued.
Friday Marcel Kampman was there in the morning, elaborating on where we can help to set up and/or run Picnic. Later more famous people joined to talk about Dreamschool – a school from scratch for students between the age of 12 and 18 who have to fulfil there mandatory school time. It is supposed to open januari 2013 and facilitate 300 teachers … let alone the amount of students. The building process starts at the architect next januari, and the question was ‘what are the critical success factors this dreamschool needs?’ ‘You have 45 minutes to present in about 3 minutes what you come up with..’
The week started of with a workshop on identity marketing, and on tuesday Pieter’k and Jord made us aware of our weaknesses, what’s non-professional about us. not a crowd pleaser but basicly an initiative to have a session where it’s oke to criticise and be criticised – something that is easily forgotten.. Wednesday and Saturday there was Knowmadic Learning Lab, and furthermore there were meetings with KLM, Nadav, and Brick-Blocks. Last but not least time was spend on movie making; we want to publish the workshops/lectures we get for the sake of open education, and to have a nice promotion video. Teaser (Thanks to Natasha):
The detailed review of the week 34! This was (for now) the last time that me and Natasha wrote down more or less exactly what we did in the week. We did that for a month to give who ever is interested an insight into what a month looks like at Knowmads. I did not do a summary yet, but what I can say is that there are not a lot of repeating patterns happening. If you look at this week’s summary and the one from week 33, 32 and 31 you will understand that for no individual Knowmads is the same and that what ever we present will always be inconsistent. However, you get an impression how it can look like!
The raw data after the “read more” click.
I can’t believe I’m still awake right now. Knowing I have the second day of a workshop I’ve developed through Knowmads in collaboration with the Hub Amsterdam, I am still buzzing. It’s amazing the amount of things I am able to do with an education as amazing as Knowmads. Going out into the city doing collaborations like The Knowmadic Learning Lab make me realize that there a lot of other “pop-up, start-up learning spaces” happening all across the world.
When I mention this phrase, my mind immediately goes to Frauke Godet of the Hub Berlin. An absolutely gracious presence to have attend our workshop this past Wednesday, she has a rather interesting education topic that suggests the world’s next best “dream school” may not even need a roof. Here are some details on the concept, Future at School:
Facing the global transformation process from moving from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge age. Schools need to educate different skills and competencies:
INDUSTRIAL AGE…………………………….KNOWLEDGE AGE
Interpreted data……………………………. Interpreted information
Hierarchical………………………………….. Personally-constructed meanings
Soloed jobs and roles…………………….. Network org. and Knowmads
Chaos and ambiguity are avoided…….. Chaos and ambiguity are embraced
Inspired by John Moravec, a Knowmads ambassador and initiator of Education Futures:
Accelerating complexity caused by human activity is challenging society and individuals. We need to develop people who are capable to create alternatives in the unknown, to make sense of ambiguity, and to take leadership in chaotic environments.
Vision
To develop young people world-wide who take responsibility to design and create their future!
Mission:
To create a space for cross-generational learning and collaboration to support ideas for a radically better world.
Learning goals:
– Learning: learn to learn
- Dialogue: dialogue and democratic skills
- Personal leadership skills
- Creation: design thinking and vision-building skills
Principles:
- To create meaning for yourself and others
- Learning to enjoy learning
- You are responsible for your learning, you donʼt receive it
- Let the students decide what they see as a burning topic
- Moving from problem-solving to creative participation
Participants/space members:
- School: teachers, students, parents, grandparents
- Local school environment: actors, local businesses, NGOs, charities, etc.
- Other members (external people working in the space): hosts, trainers,
sustainability educators, social innovators, entrepreneurs, university students, free desk for (unemployed, homeless, etc.)
Program:
- Based on the Hub programming concept: learning lunches, workshops, training’s, peer-to-peer sessions, OpenSpaces, community-building
- Art of Hosting training’s
- KaosPilot inspired modules
- The programme will be implemented based on a local trainer’s network
- The school and the students bring in topics into this learning framework
Frauke also wrote some great posts on her experiences with our workshop on the Hub Summer School Community. Thanks again, Frauke!
Also, a big thank you to all our other participants at the lab including Lex Hupe, currently involved with a related “dream school” project called 7 Days of Inspiration. As well as Valentine Giraud, head of harvesting and Hub Summer School initiator, Hortense Koster of trndmrkr, Ralph at Mix Academy, Betul Seckin, and Chantal Klaver, for her amazing photographs of the first event!
This is from one of the most amazing days of my life. Taken in Stockholm, it says: “Ideas to change the world:”
You may recognize one contribution…
Another great day at Knowmads, hosting a World Cafe for idea generation on our Picnic proposal in the morning:
and, in the afternoon, dreaming up…
I think both are very much connected to the photo from above as well as the theme for this year’s Picnic event:
“The world around us is changing fast, and not all the changes are positive. We’re facing the biggest natural, social and economic challenges our world has ever seen. We’ve addressed some of these issues in the past, but the days of just talking are over. It’s time to take action.
We’re focusing on Life, Cities, Media and Design — areas that provide real opportunities to make a difference. PICNIC ’10 brings you a platform to create new solutions for a better world.
For more information on the event, click on the picture above, or check out the blog of Marcel Kampman of happykamping. Both creative director of the festival as well as ambassador of Knowmads, his website is definitely worth a peek. Thanks again to all the great guests Knowmads was able to welcome home on this exciting day!