Alpha is a social architect who has been experimenting with different types of social, cultural, economic, and political systems. He is particularly interested in emergent, participatory, non-hierarchical, open, gift culture systems. He is interested in the how systems theory, higher consciousness and facilitation techniques intersect in these systems. He is co-author of “Open Collaboration” (www.pioneerimprints.com) which is about such systems. He has organized gatherings where the participants themselves become the organizers of the gatherings.
There are two major intertwined themes in this blog. One is on open collaboration, and the other is to follow the progress and evolution of a gift circle we started in our local community.
A video on our gift circle
Another video on the gift circle idea http://www.vimeo.com/12883085
Alpha has helped put together “The gift circle book“
To reach me type alplo followed by @ followed by yahoo.com
I’m loving what I’m seeing here, is there a gift circle that’s open/meeting? Or is it all by web?
We have a physical location where we meet weekly. Its open and new people constantly come by and become part of it. See our video of it here http://bit.ly/aF7QhQ
Just wanted to say that I purchased the Open Collaboration Encyclopedia! – amazing book.
I am a co founder of http://openkollab.com. This is an open space where we are driving various open collaboration related projects. You can join the listserv at: http://groups.google.com/group/openkollab/
You might also want to check out a couple of presentations that describe what we are working on:
OpenKollab: http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dc4gbgsj_1035dhrdb2d7
OpmnKollab Pooled Fund:http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dc4gbgsj_1151f4834gck
Hi Christine,
The gift circle is a physical one, it meets offline. We have one going in the San Francisco Bay area.
Hi Alpha,
I’m wanting to fully honor you for all of the work/play that you put into the Gift Circle, Open Collaboration and all you do. I’m very inspired and uplifted by reading through your blog posts.
Jack
thanks jack
Hi. Really nice to see this happening! Keep it up and keep me posted!
hi Alpha’ how can i send you an email?
i translated the The gift circle book to Hebrew
thats great it is in hebrew now… my email is alplo (at ) yahoo.com
Wow! Alpha, thank you for offering this vision to the world. Thank you also for taking my call yesterday. Watching the video helped me to further refine my idea about how to do this gift circle next month. I am still nervous about facilitating the circle and would love your support but am feeling more confidence in going in this direction overall after watching the video and reading more of your blog. Thanks again for holding the space for this concept to evolve!
glad to see u taking the gift circle into the world…
Hey Alpha, much gratitude for your work here. I was quite inspired by participating in my first gift circle in Pittsburgh awhile back and have been in the process of deepening my inquiry into many of the topics and processes you have developed here: the gift economy, inclusive facilitation, self-organization and collective intelligence in social systems, threshold effects and social value systems, etc.
I’m currently doing an MA in Economics for Transition at Schumacher College in the UK and have brought some of these processes to Occupy London over the last couple months, as well as to the learning community here at Schumacher. I’d love to connect more with you at some point as my exploration of these processes and dynamics continue to evolve.
Muchlove