Daily pages - February 22, 2022

My consulting practice is part of my larger creative practice. It all comes from the question that been on my mind for a long time: how are we going to change things in time, before it’s too late?

There are a lot of good people and a lot of good ideas, but we are not—or at least it seems that we’re not—moving fast enough. (It may be that we are on an exponential curve and are about to shoot upward, but part of why I’m doing this is that my efforts may be important to reach that explosive growth.) How can we move faster?

We need to mobilize both people and good ideas so we can make fast progress. For people, I encourage and support their creative practices; for ideas I encourage and support open artifacts.

Open artifacts are about scaling. In the corporate world, scaling is done by growing bigger, but I think nonprofits need to consider a different approach. How does a tree scale? Does it go from a single tree to a forest by growing into a giant multi-national tree that covers entire continents? No, it replicates itself.

Operations that want to extend their reach, increase their impact and do more good in the world need to send seeds out into the world so that more organizations like them can grow. An open artifacts project is like a seed. It contains everything needed to grow an entire organization.

A project that is constrained by copyright or patent will not spread as effectively. The open part of open artifacts is what allows it to find fertile soil. Closed artifacts can still grow and mature, but it’s harder because they’re kept away from the light. I’m working on an artifact for a client that is copyrighted and sold online. She gets feedback from her customers and has improved the design, but its not likely to be used all around the world until its public domain. The whole point of patents and copyrights is to limit the spread of ideas, at least for a time, so the creator can benefit from their creation. That’s fair enough, but there are other ways to achieve that goal, and different ways the creator can benefit.

It’s difficult to see how I could make an income from open artifacts. I think of the Grant Writing Unicorn training I considered taking. The goal of that training is to grow new grant writers and grant-writing businesses so it is kind of a seed as well.

I suppose it’s a bit like the seeds Monsanto makes that are designed to produce plants that don’t produce viable seeds. As a result, farmers have to purchase seeds from Monsanto every year. They can use part of the crop they grew to grow next years crop.

(I’m not sure that’s a fair assessment of the Grant Writing Unicorn model…)

Were I to do a similar training program, my goal would be to produce as many open artifacts creators as possible. Ideally, that would mean that each of them could offer a training to create more creators, and that would mean making my course an open artifacts project. Since anyone could easily access the course materials, that means that I can’t really charge for the course.

I suppose the money could come from coaching and consulting.

I guess I could still charge, but the files, videos and so on would still be available for free. The assumption would be that people will want to pay for the value they get. It reminds me of the concept of paying what you think it’s worth. Let people decide what they can afford and how much they’re willing to pay. I think there’s a viable method there. I think of Pat Flynn’s story of his original study guide website; when he started charging for the guides, people were grateful that they had a way to pay him for something that helped them so much.

So, my idea is that I would operate as a consultant for nonprofits, specializing in helping them set up open artifacts projects as a method of extending their reach, their impact and their effectiveness. It also opens up the possibility of increased innovation as new partners spring up, they’re going to come up with new tool, technologies and techniques that they would communicate back to the project so everyone can benefit from them. There is also the possibility of skilled volunteers providing innovation as outside contributors to the project.

I think I could still consider getting my foot in the door by offering to write a report or plan for how open artifacts can help them. It might be that the whole organization isn’t what needs to be opened up. Maybe it’s at the program level, and I could identify those programs. They probably already have other organizations they consider partners, so what kinds of programs could benefit them? Are there synergies that can be developed using the open artifacts approach?

It’s hard to know what that even looks like. Again, start with a website. What information , what services can be provided? What are the questions that remain unanswered? What are the ideas that not yet been implemented?

Remember that open artifacts are a way for skilled “world creator” volunteers to contribute. You can look for them in CatchAFire.org or you can put your help wanted notices on sites like OpenArtifacts.com. Work to establish your minimum viable artifact, then watch it develop before your eyes.

I can’t help by think the first benefits will come from the transparency that open artifacts bring to the organization’s operations and structures. There is always a difference between the ideal and the reality. As a web developer running all the websites for a billion-dollar company, I knew we could do things better than we were, but we didn’t have the resources.

Every open artifact is a work in progress. That’s largely the point—to breathe life into it so it can continue to grow and develop. An open artifacts project is always unfinished and it never stops asking “how can we improve?”

When I was looking at 350.org, they have a global website with its specific crew, and then there are satellite offices around the world.

It seems like the info on how to set up a field office would be a good open artifacts project. And I imagine it’s a challenge to provide resources that can be used to create campaigns that are adapted to local needs. Each campaign as an open artifacts project makes a lot of sense. I think that each organization will have opportunities like these.

I feel like nonprofits could be the trimtab for the whole creative practice/open artifacts idea. I’ve been trying to figure out what leverage point might get the ball rolling. At first, I thought the book might do it, but I think it’s going to take more than just telling people about them—we will need to help them build them. I could see a couple of smaller books being important. One about open artifacts and one about creative practices. By starting with nonprofits, we can tie into the organization’s existing audience of interested world creators looking for a way to contribute.