Humanize the Earth!

Chicago Planetwork

I’ve been reading Kaliya Hamlin’s blog for a while now and met her face to face in Portland at RecentChangesCamp. She suggested that we start a Planetwork chapter in Chicago. Planetwork hosts some conferences, but more importantly, monthly gatherings. Some of us had a lunch last week to talk about this and brainstormed co-branding the omidyar.net members conference we’re hosting in Chicago on July 14-16 with Planetwork. It was just a fun idea to play with, more than a concrete plan. Someone who’s been to both sent me a message afterwards contrasting the Omidyar Network and Planetwork. Besides both ending in “work”, I sent this response:

We believe every individual
has the power to make a difference.

We exist for one single purpose:
So that more and more people discover their own
power to make good things happen.

We are actively building a network of participants,
because we know we can’t do this alone.

We invite you to learn more about us
and some of the people we’re working with.

And your experience of both the o/net conference and o/net itself it totally different from mine. Yes, I totally agree wtih you that there is a ton of “just talk” on the network, but Christina and Life in Africa, Lars and Peace Tiles, Mark and all of his various initiatives with the food chain, Evonne with Ammoration, there are tons and tons of real-world collaborations happening as a result of o/net, or greatly strengthened becasue of o/net and even more so beacuse of face to face gatherings. The Chiacgo conf was one of these. About 20 people got together in San Diego last fall from the food chain. There were at least 20 o/net people at RecentChangesCamp that Brandon and I initiated and helped organized in Portland, OR.
why am I interested in planetwork? because I’ve been reading Kaliya’s blog for a long time and swapping emails (met her at o/net, incidently) and finally met her at RecentChangesCamp. she suggested Micheal Herman and I get hooked up with you (didn’t tell us your name at the time) so start in Chicago, can’t remember what the context was, but it seemed another network that was very similar to what we’re (the big we of people I’m connected with in some way) already doing that would benefit by being further connected.

anyway - forget about the conference for a bit - that was really just a crazy brainstorm and not at all the focus of our lunch conversation last week - the focus was on getting the chicago planetwork website up so that we’d have the tools necessary to have chicago planetwork gatherings - the group of us that drove the chicago o/net conference into being are the sorts that are interested in getting the most done with the least amount of work - hence the way we organize chicago lunches - anyone issues an invitation at any time - if there are 2 or more other people that respond positively, then it happens - we can do the same thing for chicago planetwork, with a higher number of responses, perhaps, though even that might not be necesary

anyway, however we organize gatherings, havnig the web presence will be a way to get further connected with people that find planetwork a good way to connect - that’s my interest

Does this interest you?