It’s late at night. You have been working since the early morning. You’ve tried to save some dedicated time to write your daily article. You’ve committed to writing daily. And today you didn’t write it yet. So now you’re tired. You feel guilty. You have no inspiration. And the only thing that you want is to have this article already written and published. Because you need to sleep. Instead of starting it, you waste precious minutes on an insipid TV show. You cannot concentrate. You go back and forth between thinking about the article still to be written and the comfortable refresh waiting for you in your bed. You’re in limbo. You cannot move. You cannot sleep. You cannot get rest. But you cannot write as well. No energy. No free-flowing creativity spitting from your fingertips. You start to feel the taste of the letdown. So many days working to keep the pace. So many struggles. So many ideas. Many good. Many bad. Many so-and-sos. But you made it. You wrote articles for ten, twenty, forty, eighty, and then ninety days. And now, at the number 99, you’re risking not making it. Of course, you have a great excuse. Of course, work comes first. Of course, you are tired. Of course, nobody will die because of that. Of course, nobody will blame you. Of course. Of course!
And then, you realize, that, once again, you made it.
A Brain Trust is a facilitated workshop in which the participants share, in a one hour-turn, their challenges, and the others are giving structured feedback. The presented challenge can be about anything. In our case, it was a professional challenge. Everything started from the Knowledge Entrepreneurs community founded by Achim Rothe, who organized more than 10 Online Salons. Many people aggregated and talked about how to be involved in knowledge Entrepreneurship.
A knowledge entrepreneur is a person who gains an income by sharing his expertise. All participants were coming from that background. There were similar traits and similar aspirations.
In a total time of about 9 hours, we had six different sessions. Each of us presented their challenge and received an intense avalanche of feedback.
The Brain Trust Session’s structure
About 10 minutes: the presenter introduces their challenge. Spoken, no visual aids used besides few exceptions. Screen sharing helps to support your idea.
About 10 minutes: Silent feedback, the Brain Trusters write their feedback in a shared collaborative document. (we did not repeat this step for all presenters, we went directly to the live discussion
About 40 minutes (with the flexibility of going beyond the time limit), Live discussion. The presenter listens to each of the Brain Trusters’ feedback. Usually, a conversation starts. There is a lot of note-takinggoing on during this phase.
The benefits of the Brain Trust Sessions
I was the last one to present. Thanks to my peers’ diversity in age, cultural background, professional field, and attitude, I gathered an astounding amount of valuable feedback.
When you are called to give suggestions and comments to a stranger’s challenge, you might find some obstacles and risks.
We declared the rules at the beginning:
Radical Candor, no authority involved.
Permission to be direct
On the one hand, this is a strategic advantage that allows the feedback givers to compress in that relatively short individual session the best of their knowledge to be put at the presenter’s service.
On the other hand, you risk not having time to give enough human touch to your communication, and you could come out on the harsh side of the spectrum.
I made full use of this opportunity to be direct. I compressed many crucial and foundational topics in my feedback and role-played the Contrarian, trying to provide alternate perspectives to the group.
Both extremes have been touched due to my experimentation: not all participants accepted the radical candor comfortably, while others were enthusiastically grateful for the direct and transparent approach.
The Challenges
A Brain Trust is a place where you can propose a different type of challenges:
You are stuck in your career.
You need to make a difficult decision in life.
You want to change your job role.
You don’t know how to leverage your experience.
You see things not working in your professional approach, and you have no clue how to improve them.
You want to explore a different way of earning a living, and you need a starting point.
You have a creative idea you want to transform into a business.
You want to express yourself creatively or artistically, but you don’t know how to leverage that.
None of the content of our session will become public in any way, so I am generalizing to give you a sense of what kind of challenges could be brought on the Brain Trusters’ table.
Suffice to say, in our case, and they shared a common creative and entrepreneurial trait while coming from very diverse professional and cultural backgrounds.
Diversity in a Brain Trust is a powerful asset as it is in Collective Intelligence. Although it might sound weird to the inexperienced, putting yourself in the middle of people diverse from your field promotes the emergence of blindspots, original points of view, and the uncovering of exciting ideas you didn’t think about.
Opportunities for improvement
That experience made me reflect deeply about the rules of the games and how they can lead to force, maybe too much, the capacity of those participants who are not willing or equipped to sustain an intense, heavy, compressed session of radical feedback on their ideas.
Facilitators of Brain Trust-types of workshop need to be aware of this feature’s potential and the risks it brings to the group.
Achim has been excellent in all aspects: calm, empathic, measured, balanced. He orchestrated our long hours together in such a light way that I felt them passing by in an eye-blink. He was able to integrate such a diverse group of people by including them in a meaningful way and carefully respecting each person’s diversity. That is an excellent example of facilitating Collective Intelligence. We need more people like Achim in the World.
The outcomes and the implications
Meeting bright and motivated people like those I had the honor to meet never ends in just a meeting. At the end of the workshop, I could feel the bonding and the trust created.
Each of us collected pages and pages of ideas, notes, comments, resources, critiques, references, and whatnot.
Each of us committed with the group to tangible goals on which we will call to be accountable.
Achim proposed the “3; 3; 3;” activity in which each participant states their:
Three days goal
Three weeks goal
Three months goal
That made our one day and a half work during our precious weekend not only a fantastic way to grow as a person and as a professional but also the beginning of a personalized project and a small, connected community.
We will remain in touch to check on each other’s goals at the time we have planned. Spontaneous collaborations started, to get help on each project. It will allow creating even more tangible opportunities in the future.
I subscribed to the Brain Trust with doubts and fears, and I’ve ended up getting unstack on my projects while finding a close circle of trusted people.
“Nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations. The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”
Experts in diverse fields convene to provide structured feedback to each participant’s challenge in a reciprocal way.
I will present my challenge tomorrow, but today, providing my thoughts to the first two presenters, I have learned so much already!
I realized that when you face the challenges of other people’s lives, in their professional ambition, you look at them from your point of view and translate your context to theirs. This projection makes you focus better on hints, resources, and suggestions in a way that seems to be impossible if you had to apply them to your challenges.
Even if the presenters’ topic does not match your directions, you put a lot of your feelings, fears, and experience into your contribution to the group.
At the end of an intense, rich, transforming session, well organized by our facilitator Achim Rothe, I feel I have already collected valid suggestions for my challenge.
I am thankful and excited for the more extended session planned for tomorrow.
I am developing my custom Personal Knowledge Management System. I am focusing on the phase of capturing information into my Knowledge Base. I am questioning my habits to be more conscious about my biases and limitations, and I’ve discovered a better way to feed my Zettelkasten. Keep on reading to discover what I’ve learned this time in my Learning Out Loud experience.
When you save articles to read later without ever reading them, you fall into the Collector’s Fallacy. It happens when it’s easier to click a button to save a web page instead of making an effort to read what’s included in it. Things get worse due to the Mere Exposure Bias. It’s when you acquire familiarity with the name of things without going deep into their meaning. Just by being exposed to the many articles you browse and save, you build the illusion of knowledge.
That’s a problem!
In my old and dead Evernote account, I stacked 10’000 notes in 10 years. Great! You might say. What did I do with it? Zero, nisba, nicht, nada, niente.
I can’t stand it anymore. We, collectors anonymous, will always find other means to hoard useless information. So, now, I am collecting into Notion. The only advantage is that it is free.
Stop, describe your actions, reflect
For the nth time, I fell into this toxic loop and, like under a cold shower, I realized I was about to do it again for another time. With an enormous willpower application, I’ve decided that I would not have proceeded with the crime. I opened a blank document, and I started to “write aloud” the process of capturing information.
I introduced friction in the “save-it-for-later” process and intentional reasoning about why I found that resource engaging.
I applied the famous approach: “go slower to go faster.”
Instead of clicking a button, I’ve forced myself to:
Copy and paste Title and URL
Read the actual thing!
Highlighting, copying, and pasting the resonating quotes.
Restating the concept found interesting with my own words.
Further research for links and connection within the same article
Identification of common themes or meaningful connections with other notes or resources saved in the document.
Less data, more knowledge
I spent about one hour in this detailed, documented information capturing process. I could save only 5 or 6 notes compared to the 50 or 60 I would have done in the mindless old-school way.
But I compiled about ten pages of commented quotes, images, links, reflections, and connections.
That document would be a better material to be split into notes added to my Personal Knowledge Base.
I’ve actually learned something!
In the end, I’ve tried to unlearn the bad habit of saving bookmarks and articles mindlessly with the outcome of hoarding without any productive result. And I’ve started to reeducate myself to a more thoughtful and focused reading of first-hand information sources to be elaborated into better quality material to become well structured and well-connected notes for my PKB.
Lesson learned: when you want to escape from a useless habit, try to document each step you are executing by continuously asking yourself the reasons for your actions. Stop and drop any stage that is not providing meaningful value. Repeat this process until you’ve built a healthy habit of deep critical reading, interpretation, rewriting, and connection. Your Personal Knowledge Management System will improve, a lot.
Capturing meaningful information requires reflection and method.
I’ve looked under chairs I’ve looked under tables I’ve tried to find the key To fifty million fables
They call me The Seeker I’ve been searching low and high I won’t get to get what I’m after Till the day I die
[…]
Focusing on nowhere Investigating miles I’m a seeker I’m a really desperate man
[…]
I learned how to raise my voice in anger Yeah, but look at my face, ain’t this a smile? I’m happy when life’s good And when it’s bad I cry I’ve got values but I don’t know how or why
I’m looking for me You’re looking for you We’re looking in at other And we don’t know what to do
I’ve found the best place in the world. It’s called The Internet.
Achim Rothe insisted and persisted in creating a growing community of interesting, diverse, committed people to explore the possibility of knowledge entrepreneurship.
It’s incredible to believe the possibility of meeting like-minded people with similar aspirations while comfortably seated at home. And these kind of well-organized online events with clear goals and excellent facilitation are a joy and rare jewels in the overcrowded zoom-landscape.
Of course, I’ve found my way to contribute and propose even more interactive and connective way of being together. I’ve created and promoted an online collaborative document where all participants were invited to share their contact info and their bios.
I will copy here, the best of that document just to give you the essence of the richness of these online encounters.
Everyone is qualified to start a community (your audience is part of your community)
4 Whys
Community is a recipient of your message (write as if to a friend)
Accountability
Rewards (compliments for example)
Feedback (with audience nodding, questions, etc)
Some assurance that what you create will get some attention and feedback
Writing is broadcast (newsletters/blogs). It isn’t necessarily the same thing as building/partaking in a community.
How?
A.
Start with the community you’re already are(such as NessLabs), then transmit your message, some people will follow you
B.
Write content, listen to whom listens to what you have to say, tell about that comment on other people communities/summits/courses
Trevor Lohrbeer:
Geoffrey Moore Crossing the Chasm: People who share the same problems, but also see the blindsights. — People who talk to one another is critical to the definition of a market (and also a community).
Community members add value by contributing.
Talking (to your community) clarifies your thinking
Don’t stop because the community needs you=)
Responsibility vs accountability. Paid service = more/stronger responsibility
Frazer:
Responsibility to put something every week: Quality vs Quantity – does quality suffer because you MUST put the product every week.
Shay:
By being consistent with your accountability/responsibility you become a new person. The kind of person who always delivers.
Community can refine what you write about.
Have no idea what to write about – find a community, fill the gap that is of your competence.
Have a clear idea what to write about, keep writing, build community around it.
Achim: even if you are 2, joining a community will help you refine.
Ziga:
Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. For ex, Ziga discovered his audience doesn’t need external links so he has been spending time on something most of his audience didn’t need.
Deal with the feeling that what you write might not get the reach you want – at least with the start. Be ok with just writing. Play the long term game.
Having marketing experience is a huge advantage.
Starting with a community can backfire. It highly depends what you want to do in the long vs. short term.
(Ziga’s comment: I noticed that it’s more important to write a simple newsletter each week consistently, then try to push a lot each week. Too much content/daily writing is excellent for building up the craft, but too much for most of your audience.)
Ask: Are you prioritizing your life? Are you doing work that you enjoy? How is your mental health? Direct message me where in your life are you struggling to take control of.
Massimo:
You learn more about yourself.
If you don’t have a specific commercial product you can explore, take your time.
It takes time and patience. You’re not gonna become an expert/thought leader in a month.
Are you aligned with the value you provide to your community?
Josie:
I didn’t feel like speaking much today – so I drew this instead. NEEDS POLISHING!
Having a community creates a sense of accountability
Human beings are fundamentally social animals. Behavioral economics and psychological research have taught us that we fundamentally crave a sense of connectedness, belonging, mission, and meaning, particularly when performing our work. […] Communities deliver these benefits, creating a sense of shared accountability and a set of values while preserving individual autonomy. https://hbr.org/2020/01/when-community-becomes-your-competitive-advantage
Angela G:
Thinking out loud, how to describe a community?
Size: 2 people, small, medium, large
Purpose: accountability, inspiration, sharing knowledge (can have more than 1)
Type: top-down (I share stuff about what I do), lateral (Ness Labs, encourage collaboration and leadership in others)
Longevity: one-time (like a march or a rally), time-bound (eg., 8 weeks or duration of course) or on-going (Ness Labs)
Engagement: participate, or lurk
Narayan
How do you start from scratch?
Don’t be afraid of joining the communities of your competitors.
Achim:
Don’t create content to the void.. Start always from a community.
Find communities aligned with your interests.
Provide value there and create a following.
There is no competition in the digital world.
Start small. Grow sustainably.
Trevor:
Ness labs started by the content she created. And then she built a community.
Kathryn:
It’s a chicken and egg situation! Content builds community which in turn shapes the content (through feedback) AND A community creates a safe or motivating place to create content, which strengthens and builds a community.
Just start. Don’t try to reach an end goal in one step. Create the smallest possible step. Don’t imagine how other people will think – imagine how good you’ll feel by starting (preaching to myself here). I’m currently paralysed by the decision of which newsletter platform to use (MailChimp vs ConvertKit vs Substack vs others…) – I’ve used MailChimp in professional settings so it’s an easy option for me but I have major FOMO with ConvertKit because all the cool kids seem to be using it! (But I’ve also noticed it mirroring MailChimp more and more!)
OPEN QUESTIONS
Do you develop yourself and then attract a community? Or do you attract a community and then you develop yourself?
When I’m not chasing new isotopes, I work on freedom business and write the Life experiment newsletter: https://zigabrencic.com/subscribe
Tweet at https://twitter.com/ziga_brencic
Shay
Writer, performer, teacher
@AuthenticRisk
Join our playful gym/make it up on the spot corner of Ness Labs at #improv
Jen Vermet
Hi everyone! I am new here living in Chicago, IL 🙂 I am a content manager and course manager. I have been writing a weekly letters from a learn-it-all here: https://learnitalletter.substack.com/
Servus everybody. I am Florian from Munich / Germany. My background is in Sales of Media and Broadcast gear. I am currently kicking around some ideas I’d like to publish around and make community a corner stone for the outlets. At the moment my outlets in Instagram, Twitter and my website are stalling and I am trying to rebuild / restart them. Especially my website needs a big update.
The ideas for now are based on photography, productivity and mindfullness / minimalism.
Observer of human behaviour • Te Reo Māori learner and Treaty partner • Mum of 3 • Wife of 1 • Author of no books but much writing (for other organisations and people) – still working up the courage to publish for myself and my own entity.
Occasional Tweeter at https://twitter.com/kathryn_ruge
I am an entrepreneur building QAonCloud, which is a mission based startup for bringing high paid remote jobs to rural India.
Before I started QAonCloud, I was a Software Developer and Engineering Manager & Product Manager in my past life. I am just starting out with my website and newsletter but they are nor published yet 🙂
Trevor Lohrbeer – Asheville, North Carolina & Berlin, Germany
Founder of Day Optimizer, a time management web app for solopreneurs
In the process of launching a YouTube channel to provide both tutorials around DO, as well as tips & techniques around mindful productivity & time management
The essence of Experiential Learning is about transforming experience into learning. Jake introduced John’Dewey’s Pattern of Inquiry and some areas of application:
Project-Based Learning
Service Learning
Place-Centered Learning
Adventure Learning.
Patterns of Inquiry in four steps
Jake guided us through a mental experiment. I like one of the quotes he mentioned:
“An experience is valuable only if it leads to another experience.”
From my memory of what Jake attributed to John Dewey.
To which I add some others I’ve found:
“To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry — these are the essentials of thinking.”
He then exposed the four steps of Patterns of Inquiry.
1. Experience
Choose the experience you want to reflect upon.
Example: “Choose the best, most interesting pastry you’ve ever had.”
2. Reflection
“Break down the experience” from an inedible raw experience to extracting its nutrients.
Think about taste, textures, sounds, environment, all the sensual experience.
Draw it. Or write about it.
Reflect is the fermentation process (in the metaphor of baking he used)
By reflecting, the experience unfolds. Anything can be unfolded. Otherwise, it remains raw.
3. Analysis
Start mixing.
Compare with others’ experiences.
Compare with your other experiences.
In the flour analogy, you’re starting to add eggs and sugar.
What was uniquely good? Uniquely special? What was experienced for the first time?
4. Onward!
Baking. Tell stories about these experiences.
Share. Publishing
Places for experiential education
1. Place-Based Learning
At home. or in special places.
“Oven in Costarica”. Centered around a place. It can be powerful.
2. Service Learning
Helping someone or volunteering.
Donating time, objects, work.
3. Project-Based Learning
It’s about a product. A museum exhibit. A piece of art. There is an artifact of learning.
4. Adventure Learning
Out in the woods with kids or adults.
You need to reflect or come up with stories.
Out of comfort zone.
Participants bond and reflect.
The fermentation starts
It was nice and sweet. I’ve learned some key concepts from one of the most influential educators of our times. I’ve also spent some time in conversations with Jake and the other participants to explore the Patterns of Inquiry application to my PKM Systems and my blogging practice.
I had fun and stimuli. It was an excellent learning event.
In his book, David Byrne, “How Music Works,” talks about Information Theory, among the various topics. While reading a book review about that book, I’ve realized the connection between music and information.
So I went on the Wikipedia article on Information Theory. I’ve learned that the world recognition of that discipline is dated back to 1948 when Claude Shannon published the famous paper: “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” I’ve decided to capture that paper.
The landmark event establishing the discipline of information theory and bringing it to immediate worldwide attention was the publication of Claude E. Shannon’s classic paper “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” in the Bell System Technical Journal in July and October 1948. Source: Wikipedia
Collecting and Organizing captured information
I noticed that some authors started a scientific thread of movements in different contexts by publishing memorable papers. (That’s how science works, Max!)
I recognized a prompt to find, research and collect the most important scientific papers, which profoundly impacted science and history. Claude Shannon’s writing is the initiator of a new collection that might be titled “The most important scientific papers.” It will work as a semi-empty bucket to stimulate my curiosity to search other papers, learn about them and add them to the list. When I have many of them, I will curate the collection by highlighting details, insights, implications, and other possible connections.
I am proud of this process because instead of mindlessly saving another PDF in my infinitely long list of things to be read, I’ve motivated my capturing, and I’ve created something out of it. It’s not novel and useful knowledge but a good research prompt to search for related items and curate a collection that could lead me to an article draft.
Sometimes knowledge management is made of simple steps. The secret is to accumulate any value you can extract out of the process. The annotation or the original piece of information is not always the goal to pursue if your PKM System shall support your creative process. Recognizing patterns, curating collections are as valuable in fueling your idea generation prompts.
I see a thread in my explorations and connections between each adventure. I feel I am charting a known territory while looking at it with my eyes through different lenses. I am quite satisfied with the idea of filling in the blanks in a map to be explored. And I feel even more stimulated by the idea of leaving traces and spaces to connect observations into more significant knowledge objects.
Thanks for your attention.
And don’t forget, there are also minimal, abstract, and sometimes surreal illustrations.
Capturing, Organizing, Developing and Sharing. Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom.
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