The explosion of interest around what is possible with the emerging technologies of Web 3 and beyond is both well founded, and well intentioned. So many of the builders and developers and evangelists aren’t solely focused on money, but believe we can both make money and do social good simultaneously. That’s a huge shift to watch unfold over 20 years.
This past week has accelerated my learning 10x, with dozens of conversations with friends and colleagues, learning about their passions and projects that are now defining the emergent experience of this new world. So may great stories of success which make me proud of my friends, and those who share my values and beliefs of what could be.
But just like the first Web we created together in the mid 1990’s, there is so much going on, one can’t possibly keep up with it all. Just like the first Web, the tech is easy enough to learn and integrate by someone who is computer literate (even me), especially now after a few years of the picks and shovels business booming.
Also as with the first web, it’s so easy that many of the best and brightest are off creating their own companies and movements, and competing to become ‘the source’, ‘the global currency’, ‘the new rock star’, ‘the platform of choice’. Perhaps unlike those early days, more people are working together and building real ecosystems that aren’t just transactional, but are truly communities.
This gives me hope, but I still see too many concepts/approaches/ideas competing for the attention of a mass market that does not yet exist. Thankfully most aren’t competing for a slice of the same pie, many are trying to bake bigger and bigger pies, which is our focus.
Sadly, each is competing for attention, energy, and resources. Sadly, each are competing for the top talent in a market where not enough people know how to do their A, B, C’s yet.
Thankfully, we have new paradigms for enabling more collaborative ecosystems, where individuals are able to receive their fair gain share for contributing their unique gifts. Over the past 6 months with Michael Moon and the #Waymakers series we’ve produced, we’ve been talking about empowering more people to play “moneyball” with their skills. How to negotiate a more equitable compensation package for the value an employee is delivering to their employer. How to establish partnerships with income share agreements, as well as corporate partnerships with revenue sharing.
In fact, we intend to make our unconference one such vehicle to demonstrate the art of the possible in sharing value with our co-creators of this event. To create a real version of us instead of merely advancing me. And to share from what will surely be numerous mistakes and failures we create along the way.
So having everyone off doing their own things in this exploding Web 3 market, with so many different sectors interconnecting like VR and NFT’s (Spatial) and NFT Collections in the Physical World (Lagoframe), is a good thing.
Yet we still need to bring the various doers and leaders together, particularly with a more diverse group of people who are the beneficiaries of the technology. I still see an all important need to foster more cross-industry collaboration, which is one of the key areas of focus for Web 3.1. To not merely create another organization competing for attention and energy, but to connect, advance, and celebrate those who have discovered the secret sauce, who have aligned the hearts, minds, and digital wallets of a committed group of people to work together in support of common beliefs. To put the spotlight on those people in the arena, deserving of more support, deserving of our collective energy and investment.
As Social Media Club taught me, this doesn’t need to be everyone, it needs to be the right people, with the right ‘heartset’ as John Hagel would say.
This is our purpose, to create a space to bring the doers and leaders together, to discover new opportunities to join hands and connect ecosystems, to avoid the mistakes of our past which created monolithic organizations which crushed innovation.
To ensure the trustworthy are able to know who can and can not be trusted, to facilitate business and social good development opportunities.
To facilitate high fidelity signal exchanges in an increasingly noisy, busy, and “wickedly complex” world.
To figure out how to create a path for more people around the world to replicate what we are doing in all sectors, and all corners of the globe.
To connect those on similar paths for their benefit and ours, to not only learn from each other, but to standardize together where possible, to integrate together, and to benefit together.
This is why we aren’t doing a regular conference.
This is why we aren’t building a new organization, but instead facilitating a gathering, a space, a community to support the coming together of “like-hearted” communities in pursuit of better outcomes for more people, and a better world for all.
This is why we are launching Web31.dao as a governance organization to oversee the distribution of any profits we are able to create - to those who volunteer/contribute to make it happen, to the participants at the core of it all, to the sponsors/patrons/underwriters who provide cash and in-kind services, and ultimately to the good we can create, when we are united, by shared values in co-creating value to share.
But I need your help. Who else should I be speaking to now? What companies, leaders, and doers are aligned with these principles?
Will you please take a moment now and introduce us? If it’s you, will you please get involved and contribute, however you can?
Hard to believe this journey began over 2 months ago, and now we are a week away from actually hosting the event online... I love it when a plan comes together :)