Kaliya has an exceptional understanding of what makes events great. Beyond being a terrific and wise facilitator, she has been a close strategic partner in helping us think through every aspect of why we’re bringing people together and how to get the most out of it. She has often persuaded me to try things that I never would have tried, and I’ve always been amazed at how good her insights are. – Matt Prewitt, President of RadicalxChange
TL:DR
In 2024 RadicalxChange and its partners invited 120+ people from around the world to consider a big question in a short amount of time. I worked with them to design the overall event and facilitate a core element of the event.
The client:
RadicalxChange is an organization dedicated to democratic innovation and institutional design through operational partnerships and experimental projects between academia, government, art, technology, and beyond.
For this event RxC co-convend with Dark Matter Labs and a Research Lab led by Margaret Levi
The challenge:
- Creating a space to go beyond conventional thinking on the topic, What and How we Own? The Politics of Change
- Three partners with different ideas for event design.
- Multiple and potentially conflicting ideas about the desired outcomes for the events among stakeholders.
- Ensure that all event participants contribute their expertise, because of the quality of contributors and expense of bringing them all together.
- Objective to surface key developments and innovations around property and ownership, across multiple sectors.
The solution:
First I worked with the team to get very clear about the core goals for the event. Once these clear goals were established they served as a guide star for making all subsequent event design decisions. If a proposed activity didn’t actually further achieve the goal it was dropped because it was not essential.
At the beginning of the first day all three convening organizations were given a chance to welcome those gathered. Following this Jack Henderson, Director of R&D at RxC and Jee Kim, the event MC, shared intentions for the event. Then each of the conveners shared about Property and Alternatives (Margret Levi, Matt Prewitt, Indy Johar) The rest of the first morning we supported the emergence of shared understanding across contexts with a series of short crisp presentations about key themes about ownership structures and patterns across, Housing, Partial Common Ownership Art, Housing, Labor, Rights of Nature/Self-Ownership, Patents, and AI that were important to be shared with all participants.
The primary format for the event was Open Space Technology with the calling question: What can we do to fundamentally improve property relations in the 21st century? We had a total of 7 sessions, three on the first day’s afternoon and 4 on the second day. I, Kaliya Young, facilitated the opening circles each day where the agenda was co-created by participants. At the end of each day I facilitated the closing circle where sessions were summarized for the whole group and a community discussion was held.
On the second morning had several 10 min “flash talks” all on the theme Beyond Cultures of Ownership (Code of Capital w/ Katharina Pistor & Linda Shi/Nwamako Agbo). Then we shifted into a circular panel to hear reflections and responses from key contributors. After this we began our second day of Open Space Technology.
We extended the conference to a third day not for everyone but for a core group that did thematic sense-making. People where people were invited to cluster by their favorite thematic area (Land, IP, Labor, Finance), go over the notes that were generated in previous 2 days and distill outcomes and next steps. One of the co-conveners Margret Levi gave closing remarks.
Why they chose us:
- Experience with the team in producing previous events (2021 and 2022).
- Our experience in designing integrated events including Open Space as well as other elements.
- Strategic capabilities for high value convenings
The outcomes:
- The event created space for cross pollination amongst innovators to surface key developments and innovations around property and ownership, across multiple sectors.
- The three min video produced by RxC does a great job of sharing the key outcomes of the event.
- What & How We Own: The Politics of Change | Oakland 2024
- During her closing remarks on day three Margret Levi, one of the co-conveners said – Frankly I think the last two days have been incredible. I’ve learned a lot and changed my mind about a couple things or opened my mind with some new possibilities…I really did learn a lot.
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