Okay. We were doing introductions, and we introduced Nettedau because it was their first time. And if anyone else wants to introduce themselves, we have a moment here for folks to come off and introduce, but most are familiar faces here. I don't know, David or a, if either of you want to unmute and introduce yourselves, you're welcome to, or else type your intro in chat.

Awesome. Are you ready for me?

Awesome. It is a a delight to be here with this community. Brian's given me a little bit of a sense of it. And, you know, I see I've seen, like, this thread, from, you know, back in the day, of people trying to figure out communes and and co ops and things like that to, leaping to occupy where people were really trying to figure out some different ways to, look at how we be with each other, in, I would say, righteous relationship, but also shared power and in a in a multi gender, multi ethnic, multi economic, reality that we live in. And so, I just wanna first say thank you for Brian, and thank you for Senti, allowing me to, put put a log on this fire, as it were. And, to talk a little bit about how I've been thinking about this work really for, I probably my entire life, in a sense. I'm a black kid who grew up in a white suburb outside of Philly, living in Baltimore now. And so I've experienced, you know, this kind of, this tension of, of dominance versus, maybe, synergy and maybe, emergence, throughout my whole life. So I'm gonna jump into some slides, and we're also gonna, do some some interactivity. I you may see in the in the corner of my screen, there's the head of a guitar. I am a jazz musician in addition to the other things that I do. And so we're gonna be doing a little jamming. It has some structure, as as all music does, but it also it also has some fluidity and flexibility and hope you guys are willing to do some playing in in a variety of different forms. So let me see if I can share my screen and bring up bring up a little little presentation for us. Can everyone see that? Yes. Beautiful. Awesome. And now let me go to full screen. Okay. So, this is the Colorado and Medigiv moment. And I'll just give you a little bit of background on me. I've spent thirty plus years as an entrepreneur. Twenty of those years have been in community organizing, largely here in Baltimore, but supporting community organizing and systems evolution through throughout the country in a variety of spaces from, from small community organizations to Chase Bank, helping them figure some stuff out. So in very, very broad amount of spaces in government, etcetera. And in the last tier ten years, I guess I realized doing this work and seeing these economic wealth gaps that in a capitalist culture and as a black man, my, my eyes have seen the disparity, and it's so visible now in front of us, what's going on. And I guess I would say my my goal became to get as many people there, 40 acres and a mule, as I could in a space that is, is, very difficult to do that given the current structure of things. And so I moved really into entrepreneurial support and and ecosystem building about ten years ago, working with young people to help them, figure out how to how to bring their ideas, which were plentiful, into reality, and then moved into working with adults and now work nationally with folks like the Startup Champions Network, Right to Start, Forward Cities, and a number of folks are in this space with the motivation of, in a capitalist culture, which I think we need to evolve beyond, that moving to ownership of our own is is kind of the last stop on the underground railroad, for folks who have been owned. So that gives you a little bit of my personal connectivity to this. And I'm gonna jump right in and see if we can figure, figure out how to do this. This is, this is where the jamming starts. So, a lot of my work is anchored in the Zulu culture. I have no idea why. I've never been to the continent. I've never been to South Africa, where the Zulu culture was Indigenous. And, but I learned from a whole bunch of different sources, a lot of things that relate to, relate to this culture and a paradigm. We'll talk a little bit more about it. But as we're beginning this process, I will teach you a Zulu greeting. And the Zulu greeting is Sawubona. Sawubona. Can we say that? Sawubona.

Sawubona. And Sawubona does not have a real English translation translation as a word, which is interesting. But it means I see you. And it's not like I see you like, hey, how you doing? It's literally, I see who you are. And the, the response, generally for when somebody says, greet you in this way, is, which means, I am here. And these two these two this exchange, to me, is the two keys to getting anything done as humans. We have to see each other and really open to who the others are that we are with. And we have to be present in order to do that. I think it's asking me to okay the recording, but I think I did that. We'll see. So so if we can be present and we can see the others, then we can get a lot of stuff done that we have not been able to get done. And there's structures that prevent us from seeing each other. So we're gonna move right into a practice. So who's in control of the breakouts?

Okay. So who wants to who wants to take the role in this moment? It shouldn't be me.

So you wanna do that, Cindy?

Okay. Awesome. Don't click it yet. So so what we're gonna do is a very quick activity, and we're literally gonna have, I'm gonna say, one minute and thirty seconds in the space.

And and we're gonna, we're gonna be in pairs, so we'll put people in just randomized pairs. And so what I'm gonna ask you to do is is just be in the space with each other. Don't say a word. Just do your best to see the being in front of you in silence. Like, literally, not even one word. And be with that person. And then, we'll come back and we'll reenter the space, and we'll let you talk about that for a little bit. So so starting now, randomized pairs doesn't matter who's with who. And so what I and then we'll come back, and we'll we'll repeat that with a little bit more texture.

Okay. Since it's an odd number, you can leave me out if if I am one of those 17. Okay.

And you have okay. Brian wanted a little instruction. So all you're doing is going into this space and being each with each other and doing your best to whatever seeing that other being is in full silence, not interacting, not distracting, just be present for literally one minute.

Have we hit the, minute mark yet?

I think so.

Yep. And, And, I'd like to welcome Binko who is, is my partner in Kohado, and also a data scientist and, genius. So I thought he might connect with y'all.

so. He's at a conference right now, so I'm not sure if he's gonna be able to come on camera.

Well They got out of there real fast.

Yeah. Well, you

Well, this is, this is a lot easier in person.

We can we have a little bit more capacity to manage if somebody's standing alone. So apologies, Steve.

So are is everyone back in the space?

Okay. Awesome. So I'm not sure if the tech worked for everyone, but if you were paired and you were successful in just being with this other person without revealing anything about that person, but really talking about yourself. What was your experience in that space? And anyone can pipe in. And I recommend piping in quickly because we don't have a lot of time with each other.

What what you call failing is a great opportunity awkward.

Brian had a thought.

So that that's a really, you important question. Like, you know, why let's, you know, quickly jump into this. Why why is it socially awkward to just be with another human being?

I know for me, like, I get anxious about, like, what I'm what I am in relation to that person. It's like all these things start flooding in of, like, who, like, who are we to each other? Like, are we yeah. Like, you just kind of see yourself and the other person, and it's, like, trying to just settle into experiencing another life, like, another whole world and experience and life. And it's, like, kind of mind blowing to just experience that. So it feels like it's both, I think, like, calming or it's kind of a challenge of being calming, but it can feel really, like, whole and human, but also the, like, flood of anxiety of, like, what are we doing here staring at each other? Like, this is so weird. Are we falling in love? Are we, like, you know, just like like, and anything in between. You know? Are we just, like, colleagues on a work call right now? Are we trying to, you know, cocreate something together? Like, I just feel like all the possibilities are open, and therefore, like, it's also, yeah, overwhelming, but also, like, super kind

Yeah. And I would say, having done this activity with hundreds of people, that it's not limited to the digital context. That that need to be being something that need to be being Totally. Totally. Somebody somebody put in the chat.

Right. So I'm gonna there's somebody who wrote, it's not the silence in general. It's the silence with a person I don't know. I feel I need the first verbal connection. And that's a common that's a common experience. Daniel, did you have something I see a raised hand?

Wow. Well, I didn't expect it to go here, but, you know, hey. Here we are. So let me actually jump in because I know you are somewhat limited on time and I'll see if I can try sharing and if we actually get the get the motion. So, you see this slide, right?

And you still see this slide? Do you see this new slide now?

Okay. I'll just do it from, from the k. This space.

Okay. So That works. So when we're when we're talking about building community, there's often a struggle around this and and and and the sense of feeling what that community is. And, you know, so what's the reason behind the reason? You know, what are you living within that makes it awkward to just be next to each other or with each other or to work together in a parallel rather than hierarchical space. And I would argue that, you know, this film tried to answer that, The Matrix, which is that there's a system that we are living living in that has a set of rules that are governing interaction and and and transaction and and economy and every aspect of it that's built on a very consistent, platform. And, back in the day, I was playing dominoes with a friend, who had who's highly I don't know if this is a word, but testosteroneated, super competitive. Everything that one says is an argument in the context with this guy. Sky is blue. No. Sky isn't blue. Like, it's just that kind of thing. And we were playing dominoes and talking about each other's mamas and cussing each other out for three straight hours over the game. And I said, it's the game that's keeping us in this space with in this relationship with each other, in this win lose. I don't know if I'm winning unless I know you're losing. And the the rules to Domino's is you win by making your opponents waste everything in their hands, and you win relative to their losing, which is way the way I would say that, the men have sort of organized the planet for the most part in that in that kind of structure. Very few winners and a lot of folks losing and a lot of folks struggling and suffering, and it's tough to build a community and an environment like that. And so just to look at two different archetypes that show up within this space, If one has power, one has resources, one has capital, etcetera, then one can organize a autocracy or a hierarchical structure, which we've all been a part of, whether that be in school or in in businesses or sometimes even in our for our families. And this structure, the one the one person or one set of people determine what gets done. And the others are there to fulfill that. And they don't really have much, authority to change that or to even interact with each other in a space like that. And so there's a lot of control and dominance in that kind of environment. And it's centralized leadership. It's always top down, but the resources are extracted to the top. So it's this power over dynamic. The other context is what I would call gatekeeping, which is where if you don't have a lot of resources and you don't have this sort of authorized power, then and you want to feel that sense of control, then you accumulate, access to these resources that are needed by the rest of the system. And in order to access those, people have to go through you. So it's, it's the same structure, but it's where you don't have the authority to actually dictate. So you can control and centralized control by being this gatekeeper. So and these are two very common forms I see in communities that don't have a lot of resources, this gatekeeping a lot. And in in system in other systems, you see this autocratic kind of hierarchical structure. So if we if we, look at some thinkers who have been working on this, Buckminster Fuller, an amazing designer. I was introduced to to his work at the age of six at that very building he's sitting in front of in Montreal, at the Montreal Expo sixty seven. And it blew my mind. I had never seen anything like a structure like that. And it was a building, and there was even a building inside the building. It just blew my mind about what the notion of building is. And Bucky says, you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. And I do think, you know, we spend a lot of time kind of fighting these, autocratic, dominant systems and not turning. And I think one of the beautiful things about what you all are doing is that you're trying to identify some alternative models that could make these existing, toxic, world shattering models obsolete. And so, that's what I'm engaged into. And if we look at the model that I'm trying to build out, it's an emergent model. And it's a distributed model where you still have individual resources, etcetera, but that you're connected to each other in such a way that the resources can be distributed around this web of connectivity. And the more connected the web is, the faster the resources can move from where they are to where they're needed. And it's decentralized as community power. And the key thing is that no one is left hanging, and everyone has access as long as they're in relationship to those who are adjacent. And so, you know, as we're looking at new models, it's very helpful to look back on the models that that we have. And that in the work I've done in all of these systems, the same, the same model keeps showing up. And so the word Sankofa means let's look backwards to move forward. So let's understand the the model that we're in, not to fight against it so that we don't replicate it unintentionally. So I'm gonna describe, the model as I've seen it in all of these different systems replicated. So the most stable form on the planet is a pyramid. It doesn't move. Egypt tells you that. And if we build our hierarchies in this structure, they become very stable. But in order to maintain power and dominance from the top, you have to divide the top from the bottom. And then you also have to put in a centralized region that distances the top from the bottom, be it because the bottom has way more beings in. And if it was, aggregated, it would threaten the top. And so these centralized structures are put between if you look in at the structure of of slavery, then you see the overseers are put between. They're promised the keys to the kingdom, but they can't really access those keys to use them for anything because their role is to distance the top from the bottom. And if you look at the bottom, there is also a similar kind of recreation of this same structure in a fractalized way all the way down to sort of the particulate level, which means that this thing cannot move. It doesn't change. We see, we know what the resources are at the top. You know, you have capital, and you also have some sense of control. And you also have a clear view because you're at the top of the pyramid and you're not struggling for your day to day existence. But there are some things that you don't have some deficits. Now, if you look at the bottom, we read about what's going on at the bottom every day. You know, we know what the devastation is, but we never talk about the assets at the bottom and we never talk about the limitations of the top. And if you look at the assets at the bottom, if you don't have enough individually, then you connect up. And if you you know, women have been doing this for thousands and thousands and thousands of years by viewing the world from a community view because it was required for survival, but it was also required to keep the community moving. And if you look at the, at communities, you know, Bob Marley says, is not the music from the ghetto, Because you get this sense of creativity. If you don't have enough and you can't purchase what you need or acquire what you need, you start creating what you need. And so this incredible sense of creativity happens at the bottom. Often, that's extracted to create more wealth at the top, but the creativity is anchored in the bottom. And the third thing I would say is that there's a sense of connection to the creative, the creator. And it's a direct connection because if you, your community and your creativity still do not allow you to survive and thrive, then you reach beyond what yourself is and what your community is to find connectivity with something beyond that. Whether it's theoretical or if it's actually true, you know, we don't need to get into the theory of religion, but that is very present in these cultures. And those things are not found at the top of the pyramid. You don't find a sense of community. It's an individualistic perspective. You don't find the same level of creativity because you have to maintain a certain set of behaviors in order to remain in that space. And you don't you also don't get that sense of connectivity, direct connectivities to something beyond ourselves, because we're so individually focused at the top of the pyramid. Now if we, if we look at the new model, the new model where is really only steps away from the existing model. And this new model looks at this in a very different way. So if we look at this model, the the margin, the most intensified margins are only one step away. If we can bring them together, we create a well or a sense of wellness and connectivity. And if we distribute this model in a way that's lateral in that hierarchical, it means we can distribute the sense of connectivity, responsibility, but also distribute the resources in a very different way. And this creates the possibility for a whole new way of designing our communities and and what we what has been referred to as governance, but I really see it as stewardship. How do we steward this whole, planet in a way that creates this kind of model? And we call this model, cohado. So What is cohado? Fundamentally, it's a shift in our thinking. And it's it's just as each of those points that seem so divergent and far away, we're only literally one step from the middle. This thought to me is just a tipping point on the same idea. We view in this current, model that we're existing in, self as an individual idea. But if we can move the notion of self from being a small the small definition of one, meaning me, to the big definition of one, meaning oneness, that we are all one, that we are all connected beings in this singular ecosystem called planet Earth, then that shift in thinking can shift the way we behave within this system. And it's movement from ecosystem building to ecosystem building. How do we get out of this singular, it's about me and making myself feel good and measuring myself against how other people are doing to know that I am winning. And so this is all anchored in this philosophy that is from the Zulu people called Ubuntu. You guys might know the operating system. But this is, this is the, a global potential operating system. And there's no English translation for this word, which also makes you go. And this word literally means that we are responsible for each other's well-being. Now that feels like a heavy load. If I'm responsible for y'all, that's a lot of work. Right? But if you all are also responsible for me, it distributes that work into many hands making light work. And so that we can actually achieve anything if we shift to this new way of thinking. Some think thinkers that have talked about how to do this, Audre Lorde, one of my favorite thinkers, it's not our differences that divide us. It's our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. And we see this playing out certainly on the national scale and also the international scale, like, literally right now where difference is being rejected. And I would say that's the intensity of it now is the kind of death throes of the dinosaur of this old way of being. Or Bell Hooks, who said, beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference, but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world. And this is really about, you know, looking at the Venn diagram of of individuals, the most complex Venn diagram, and not saying let's focus on where we agree and where we can we where our viewpoints coincide, but really pushing out to the wings of the butterfly so that we can really understand each other's differences, which is really what gives rise to something something new. And so, you know, Cohato is this kind of structure. And I'm not gonna go through the levels of Cohato now to to from the there's a mythic story because I wanna honor our time, and I see where we are. But what I would say is critical is that if you the zero is the everythingness. Right? Everything is everything. And then there are these stages of one, two, three, four, five, six that are the everythingness revealed through through time and space. And if we look at the seven as the result of that, and the zero is question is, what am I? And the seven question the seven is the answer to that, which is the zero is the white light. The one through six is all of that being bounced through the prism or prison of time and space. And the answer is, this is what we are, which is this, spectacular, spectrum of all possibilities. And these are the essences of the game, Collado. This is what an endgame looks like, which is literally based on that pattern that I discovered in doing this diversity work. And it's all to it's it's dominoes. Excuse me. Two sided pieces, hexagonal pieces that each bear all of the possible, combinations of these seven symbols. And your work to play Kohado is that your goal is to connect pieces that you have, working as components, not opponents, bringing your pieces to the table, connecting them with like symbols, three or more connected creates an asset. It's not two, because you could take one piece and there's two. It means there has to be a bridge, this third thing, to create an asset. And if you leave something hanging, it counts as a negative number. So the rule set is create assets for the community as represented by the circle of players, and eliminate waste of any kind by not letting anyone or anything hang. And the best you can do that then results in a collective score that you share, what we call the COE or coefficient. How coefficient have we been with our resources? How connected have we been with each other? And and it's it we have used this in a regenerative cycle model, where zero is what's the question you're asking. The one is what are the individual's viewpoint of that question. The two is the dialogue to understand those differences in perspective. The three is what emerges out of bringing those two different spaces or multiple different spaces together. The four is the structure you're going to use to implement it. The five is actually getting there with your hands and doing the work. The six is then sharing and opening it to the community so that it can move in and out of the space. And the seven is the reflective process. But the real goal of this is this inner circle, which is that we lead with respect, which means I see you. And then we move into transparency, which means I am here. I am present. I am with you. And I am willing to be vulnerable and put my pieces into the into the table and into the work. You then move into reciprocity, which gets born out of the expressing and the sharing and understanding allows for these new things to emerge. And that results in trust, which means we are okay working because we know that we all belong to this beloved community that we're forming. And I wish we had more time, because I could share how we anchored this. But I'll just give you an image of so we created a network. And Vinko, who's on this call, was, was really instrumental in bringing the resources to Baltimore to execute this model. And we began with the stewardship council, folks who were from various aspects of the startup ecosystem that we were working in. And we brought them together, and we found out the connective tissue between them. And then we and that was really understanding who's connected and how they're connected. And then we went out into the community to to talk to businesses, literally, and find out what they needed. This is smack in the middle of COVID. Those folks were brought together in a cohort. Those cohorts met. We've taken six we've done four cohorts of 60 businesses, and they're all still connected. They their their six was doing a collective event after four years of working with each other to, bring called the Butterfly Rising, to bring the community into this space of this network that was functioning synergistically and beautifully. And the impact of this in the in when we started, 80% of black businesses in Baltimore failed within eighteen months. And after four years with these 60 businesses, only one moved out of the community and is not functioning anymore. And so we have 90 per 98% retention of these businesses in this during this four year period. And so that's really the work that we're trying to get done. How do we seed this collective culture? We're launching a, a Kohado challenge, an eight week program, which is actually be getting soon to train folks in this model and have them come together as a cohort and then apply it to their own communities. And we'll use the Kohado tool itself, physical tool. Each person that gets that will get one of these to bring to their community. And we'll also use the Cohato virtual tool, which we fully beta tested and have brought out. So I'm gonna I'm gonna end there with a animation that we created, which is how the black butterfly works. And it really is how Kohado works.

No. Well, I actually proposed, Sinta, we we do what we normally do, which is after the seminar, start a thread in the Medigap seminar channel to discuss. And I think there were some interesting questions. Paolo will find them interesting in the chat, and he probably didn't get a chance to see them. But, there were conversations about Russian oligarch communities in the chat. So, I would love to bring those questions over to Slack and continue the conversation there. And then yes to doing maybe a playtest of Kohado or, something else in, you know, a week or two. Like, we can schedule it and and then invite folks back into another space because, yeah, I really I think there's so much here, and I would love to have more time to kind of debrief and discuss as a community a lot of these ideas.

Awesome. And I don't, you know, I don't know if the I can I have some time to filter a little bit if there are a couple of folks that wanna stay on and chop it up, if that's possible? If not, then yes, in addition to all of the other things. So