Being Your Own First Customer; How it Was Born

It was 2003 and I was isolated, having recently moved to the industrial part of Germany. I had just been on the 2003 Pioneers Of Change Summer School. I came back and sorely missed being with others who sparked me. I missed that kind of community – of others who were experimenting and searching.

Evolution Lounge 2003

I also wanted to find a way to get insights about my life more quickly, using the very sources of stress rather than having to go to a desert island or a retreat. An idea began forming in my head.

I brainstormed with my then business partner Helga Brueggemann. We came up with the idea of peer-coaching with a very special twist. What’s more, it was to be carried out in places of high stress; rush-hour chaos. Yes! We wanted to jump into the eye of the volcano, as these kinds of places reflect the state of mind and reality that people experience on a daily basis. And it is in these spaces that The Evolution Lounge comes to life and can give you answers

We even had to import noises into one of them so as to try to create a realistic amount of chaos. On one occasion a bunch of Hells Angels passed and I wished they had stayed – they would be the perfect oral backdrop.

It has since been run in some wacky places and we have demonstrated it at conferences. We even had to import noises into one of them so as to try to create a realistic amount of chaos. On one occasion a bunch of Hells Angels passed and I wished they had stayed – they would have been the perfect oral backdrop.

We ran it weekly for on year in Dusseldorf Airport. Helga has continued to run it in Germany and is writing a book on her experiences with it since then.

The Twist, and The Blessing of the Elders

I am also very heartened that some of my own ‘elders’ have given it their blessing.

Helga shared with Otto Scharmer, one of the creators of the U-Process how we had been implementing a form of presencing in the Evolution Lounge without realising it. She reported that he was duly impressed. You see, in the Evolution Lounge we actually demonstrate and guide the collective into presencing together. Many processes indicate that you need to cultivate intutition but this process actually shows you how. The twist is that we do it collectively in a very direct and explicit manner. From a state of ‘presence’, you experience your environment and each other in a different and magical way.

The beauty of this collective presencing experience is that the collective can now realistically be coach-facilitator. Direct perception and signalling of energetic states during the exercise means that the group is tuned in to itself and can more accurately pinpoint where and how to intervene in each person’s case.

We actually demonstrate and guide the collective into ‘presencing’ together. From a state of ‘presence’, you experience your environment and each other in a different and magical way.

I invited George Por to try it out as he was in the process of leading an inquiry into the similarities of The World Cafe and the U-Process. We ran it in the Tate Modern in London and after his experience he encouraged me to think about cultivating a community of practitioners of this method, along the lines of the World Cafecommunity. He offered to be one of the stewards of this process and I had one of those moments when it seems like I am being called to somethign deeper. I was not ready to do it then but 1 year later, it feels right to engage others in seeing where this can go!

Filming and Capturing it.

I have had offers of support to capture the process as we run it. I really look forward to this as it is quite difficult to explain a process like this in words! By documenting it, the Cookbook of Social Technologies starts to come into being.

Open-Source Toolbox — the Emergence of a Social Technology Cookbook

Which brings me to the next point. I will be writing about this a whole lot more but essentially I believe that we need to help each other to become better at moving forward in face-to-face situations – together. And so we need to share more of the tools that can help us with that. I have been in an open conversation with a number of individuals such asJeff Archambeault, tav, Mamading Ceesay and Servane Mouzane about enabling more people to have these kinds of tools. The ideas is that people have tangible experiences and then share how it worked and the tools that they used. This way, our common set of tools evolves. The evolution lounge is one tool that is being thrown in to the toolbox. Let us evolve it and create different forms so that the open-source toolbox grows, and there is a mass increase in capacity to collaborate better with each other.

To book, go to the available dates and bookings.