Last Wednesday, we finished the first Changemaker Bootcamp! I can’t believe how quickly four weeks went by, and I am very grateful to Marie Haller and Anna Castro for being wonderful, inaugural participants.

This first round was meant to be an experiment. My goal was to test the model and to explore possible answers to some of my strategic questions about this project. I intentionally kept it small and was selective with my first participants, and I learned a ton from the process.

In particular, I got to test the basic premise — that a focus on practice with feedback rather than “imparting knowledge” is valuable and much needed — and some specific exercises in a safe space. This was my own opportunity to practice, and it helped tremendously. It also helped me flesh out my overall conceptual framework, which will help me be more intentional in designing future workouts and assessments.

Some key takeaways:

• Place to practice and process. In conceiving this, I originally focused on creating a place to practice. What I realized from this first session was that bootcamp is a great place for people to process — to reflect on their everyday work, to integrate their learnings, and to be more strategic in the moment. That’s different from doing a retrospective or going on a retreat after your project is over, because it allows you to learn and adapt more quickly.
• Practice matters. That said, the original premise still stands. I was delighted to see the impact that even small amounts of practice had, and I was even more delighted to see the participants become very aware of this.
• The homework worked really well. It forced participants to think about how they were going to put what they practiced in bootcamp into practice immediately in their own projects. It also kept the work very grounded in their real lives.

Some decisions and open questions moving forward:

• I’m definitely going to do another round. For this next round, I’m going to target six-to-eight participants instead of two. I’ll be increasing the length of the sessions from 90 minutes to two hours in order to accommodate the larger camp size. Finally, I’m going to extend the cycle from four to six weeks.
• It will stay once a week. I went back and forth on this the entire four weeks. On the one hand, an extra session per week would have made a big difference in terms of integrating some of this work, and it’s more in line with a real bootcamp in terms of building habits. On the other hand, homework would not be realistic for a twice-a-week session, and as I stated above, the homework turned out to be a really valuable part of the experience. I like the balance of practicing with each other, then practicing at work once a week.
• Face-to-face only. I originally thought that I’d experiment with a remote version of this after I tried a few face-to-face versions. I realize I have no interest in this. A remote version is definitely doable (and I’d be happy to help design it if others are interested in pursuing this), I’m just not motivated to do it. There are plenty of changemakers in San Francisco who need something like this, so I’m going to focus my energy there. That said, I’d like to create something that scales, and so I’ll continue to put energy into sharing what I learn and fostering a larger community, so that this model has the potential to spread and replicate without me in the center.
• Integrating technology into the process. Not doing a remote version doesn’t mean that I won’t be addressing technology-mediated collaboration. I think this blog worked well, and I’m going to introduce a chat-like function for participants to encourage more asynchronous interaction during the week. I’ll also likely create practice opportunities for technology-mediated collaboration: from teleconferences to far more sophisticated types of engagement. Again, all of the fundamental principles and exercises apply regardless of what tools people use to collaborate.
• Should I charge for the next round? I am definitely looking to charge for this. I strongly believe this format — even in my early explorations with it — is far more useful than traditional trainings and content. I’m in the process of doing some research to figure out what the right pricing is. The question is whether I should figure this out first before doing another round, whether I should just do another round for free again, or whether I should do something in-between and charge something nominal. Thoughts? And again, to be clear, I fully plan to continue to do this work in a completely open source way, meaning all of the content will be available for people to steal and replicate.

If you have questions or comments, please post below. If you’d like to be notified about what happens next, subscribe to our newsletter!

Last week Marie and I teamed up to develop a framework for effective collaboration. The exercise that led to our draft framework consisted of two basic but super important questions: 1) What was your best experience collaborating with others? 2) Why was it so great? The exercise allowed me to practice my active listening skills and work with my fellow bootcamper to generate questions and find points of divergence and convergence in our answers. More importantly, we charted questions to help us think through and analyze our framework. The process of writing our ideas down, wrestling with them together and receiving supportive coaching along the way really helped. It also reminded me that this really is bootcamp. I actually felt mentally sore and achy afterward.

We came to consensus on a number of elements for our “working” framework:

• The ability to co-create and/or participate in the creation of something (like an idea or plan)
• The opportunity to contribute without regard to position or expertise
• Structures that are flexible and fluid
• Working toward a meaningful result

After interviewing a number of my colleagues, I’d like to consider adding the following:

• Shared values 
• Sense of mission

Having to come up with generative questions as part of this exercise was really instructive and a few things clicked for me. I realized that my active listening skills could use some work and that while I pride myself in being a better than average listener, I am not always as present as I should be in certain settings. I believe that active listening requires a person to use all their senses and be fully present to what’s being said and what’s not being said. I think active listening is enhanced when a listener is able to pose strategic questions that work to open up conversations to more opportunities or possibilities. I am clearer about the importance and usefulness of asking strategic questions that aren’t skewed toward your biases or peppered with your assumptions. When I reviewed my list of questions generated during our first bootcamp workout, I realized that many of my questions have a lot of assumptions built into them and that those assumptions can be quite limiting. One of them was “How do staff feel about the opportunities to work collaboratively?” I now see that this is not necessarily an effective question. I reworked it and came up with “What will it take for us to work together as a team?” and “How do we want to work together?”

I’ve got bootcamp runner’s high. I am so excited about the next workout!

My favorite part of this week – getting to ask other people to tell me a story about their best collaborative experiences.  Sometimes I feel like this work can get jargon-y, so it’s nice to cut through that and listen to a story without all of the big words.  Not only did I get some more data for our “Effective Collaboration Framework” but I also got to learn some new things about my colleagues – from AJ’s fascinating Burning Man camp project (3D Printers and Scanners that made people miniatures of themselves!) to the incredible non-profit organization (about-face.org) that I had no idea my manager, Kathy, founded.

Their narratives definitely converged around similar themes we touched on during last week’s session:

• co-creating/creation
• no ego
• meaningful result (even if the intended result didn’t occur)
• open communication/equal participation

Two new ideas also emerged:

• energy/passion
• diverse skill-sets

All 3 of my colleagues said these two things were what made their collaborative efforts so great.  I remembered that Anna’s story also included a group with diverse skill-sets, so I thought these two factors were definitely worth inclusion in our framework.  The framework is still loose, but I’m excited to continue revising it throughout the bootcamp and as I continue in my career.  I’m sure I’ll hear about and experience many other collaborative experiences to add data and depth to this framework over time. 

Speaking of revision…..Eugene kindly prompted me to think about our discussion around generative questions last Wednesday in reference to one of my overarching questions for this experience.  Instead of asking whether you have to be in the same physical space to collaborate, I think my real question was the latter half of that sentence – “How can one support and spark collaboration and community virtually?”  Still working on the answer to that one….

At our first session, I had Anna and Marie brainstorm their questions about their projects. (Marie mentioned hers in a subsequent blog post.) I gave them five minutes to come up with many questions as they could, and then I had them repeat the exercise over and over again.

Why? Because I think that asking generative questions is one of the most fundamental skills that every changemaker should have. This first exercise was designed to force our participants to think in question form. I call it my “Jeopardy!” exercise for short, because everything needs to be in the form of the question.

This exercise is not about quality. It’s about coverage — making sure you think as comprehensively as possible about a problem. It’s good practice as an individual, and it works even better with a group, because you get a broader swath of questions, and get to see how others think about the same problem.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not just a trainer, I’m also a participant. When I started designing this bootcamp, I started with this very brainstorming exercise, and I continue to add, organize, and refine. You can read and add your comments to a live link to my questions. As always, feedback encouraged!

Anna and Marie interview people on the street for stories about effective collaboration.

Yesterday, we completed our second bootcamp session, and we are now halfway through this experiment! I’ve really enjoyed watching Marie and Anna practice, seeing what exercises work and what needs to be tweaked, but more importantly, watching their growth process. The point of bootcamp is not for me to teach. The point is to give participants an opportunity to tap into their own collective wisdom and to practice the skills they need to be successful. It’s fun and fulfilling watching this manifest itself.

As I mentioned before, I’m practicing too, and I’m learning a lot in the process. In this spirit, I’m now publishing the workout plans. These include the original plans as well as what actually happened (I do a fair bit of improvisation) and lessons learned. Feel free to steal them, use them, adapt them, and share them. I’d love to hear your questions, thoughts, compliments, and criticisms in the comments section!

Hello…Is this thing on? For some reason I feel like I’m at microphone standing in front of a podium about to give a speech. I get really nervous when I speak publicly. The one exception is when I’m in front of parents and young people – the audiences, population, the group of people I’ve spent the bulk of my non-profit career in front of, standing in solidarity with and usually working behind the scenes for. To a certain extent those are my people. It wasn’t until I worked for an amazing civil rights organization in Los Angeles did I truly get what it meant to support my people holistically and comprehensively. It wasn’t enough for me to work narrowly on education issues. I needed to think more broadly about the other factors that impacted teaching and learning. Working for a civil rights organization that employed multiple strategies to support communities of color allowed me to see the importance of also strengthening and fighting for voting rights, language rights, workers rights, access to high quality pro-bono legal services, immigrant integration services and leadership development. I learned that working for educational equity meant that I needed to support parents and young people with wrap around support services. While at this organization in Los Angeles, I also had the opportunity to work collaboratively with other external partners from different parts of the county that served different communities. It was one of the most difficult and rewarding experiences of my career.

I left Los Angeles and that organization over five years ago, moved (back) to the Bay Area, worked for two non-profits up here and found my way back to my beloved Los Angeles organization. However, I’m in a very different position and work with an additional three sister organizations. The Los Angeles organization along with organizations in Chicago, San Francisco and Washington D.C. have come together under a common name to be able to collaborate more effectively and build a stronger and more cohesive human and civil rights infrastructure on a local, regional and national level. I am responsible for fund development activities when all the affiliates work together jointly.

Writing the above actually flowed out of me but I’m starting to feel conscious of the mic again as I think about my project and sharing parts of what I’m up to and my work that I’m still thinking through. I’ll try to be a good student here and answer the questions I was assigned.

My goals over the next four weeks are:

• To identify tools that support effective collaboration (and are relevant and worth using in my current work) and to find grantmakers who would be interested in supporting the kind of collaboration we are engaged in
• To be able to point to concrete examples of effective collaboration and be well versed in the how and why of collaboration
• To enroll my colleagues in the idea that effective collaboration can help us accelerate and deepen our impact

The key questions I have about my project are:

• What policies, principles, agreements do effective collaboratives employ that are worth trying?
• How much of our work should be focused on building in opportunities to support the development of relationships, personally and professionally, across our affiliation?
• What role can or should I play to demonstrate the power of our affiliation?

I guess another key question is: How many do-overs do I get? I came up with these key questions and goals last Wednesday and confirmed the other night that these are in fact the key questions and goals of my project. But now that I’m looking at them formatted like that, I’m not so sure.

I think I’m done for now. How do I sign off?

I need to remind myself to breathe.

It was pretty amazing to put all of those nagging questions up on the wall and see them in physical form

The first thing you see on the HUB Bay Area website –

“We’re Humans Taking Collaborative Action For A Better World.”

The HUB is a co-working space for changemakers, and my role there is as the Host of the space.  I’m fairly new to the social enterprise world, so when I got referred to Eugene for his Changemaker Bootcamp it was a no-brainer for me.  Since starting the job, I’ve been thinking a lot about why community and collaboration is so important at the HUB and wondering what having an engaged community looks like in action.  I’m hoping this bootcamp will help me start to answer those big picture questions.  In the first week alone, I got to throw all my questions up on the wall (see above) – even questions I didn’t realize I’d had before – which was a pretty powerful sight.

We have recently convened a small group of members and staff at the HUB to try to answer these same questions about community and collaboration, so I am hoping to be able to directly apply the skills I’m learning through the workshop to enhance the work of our Community Building group.  I think the larger goal of both this HUB working group and my participation in this workshop is to learn how to more effectively support people in building a community that will help further collaborative initiatives.

Beyond the big picture question and goal I have set, one of my other key questions that I’d like to explore is whether you need to physically be in the same place to feel part of a community and join in a collaboration.  At the HUB, our membership base has grown to about 900 members in the Bay Area, so I think that understanding ways that I could help spark collaborations virtually would be a great asset to my work.

Through all of this, I’m hoping to use my empathy superpowers to connect with other people and understand their needs which will allow me to connect them with others.  At a basic level, I think this is how community building and collaboration can grow – through individuals connecting each other across a large web.  I hope to use the time in this bootcamp to really delve deeper into the larger questions that I have and learn tools I can use to help activate and support a web of people day to day.

Our inaugural Changemaker Bootcamp participants: Anna Castro and Marie Haller.

Last Wednesday, April 10, 2013, we kicked off the very first Changemaker Bootcamp at the offices of the Asian Law Caucus in downtown San Francisco! Changemaker Bootcamp is an experiment in providing a space for changemakers in organizations to:

• Get clear about the kinds of shifts they’d like to make in their organizations or networks
• Get clear about how to facilitate those shifts
• Practice the skills necessary to facilitate those shifts

(I wrote more about my motivations for trying this experiment on my personal blog.)

I’m thrilled to have Anna Castro of the Asian-American Center for Advancing Justice and Marie Haller of The Hub Bay Area as my inaugural participants. Over the next few weeks, they’ll blog about their projects and some of their takeaways from this little experiment here.

And so will I. I’m a changemaker too, and this bootcamp is itself a project of the bootcamp. (How meta is that?!) I’ll be blogging about the “workout” plans, explaining why I designed them the way I did, and what I learned from watching Marie and Anna do the work.

You can follow everything we do by following this blog or by subscribing to our mailing list. And I’d encourage you not only to follow, but to participate by posting comments and thoughts. Many thanks!