#MetaCAugs is an informal and international group experimenting with peer-based learning and production. We try out various tools and develop methods and patterns to enhance peer learning and peer production. We are active on various platforms. The best way to contact us is to introduce yourself on our main Telegram channel. (Some of the items listed below need access permissions to be granted) You can then take part in our activities: take part in a weekly meeting on Zoom (Tuesday, starting at 3PM ET) get access to our online whiteboard Miro participate in a curation group on Diigo engage in topical, in-depth, asynchronous discussions on Discourse

Dear co-learners, Dear Co-learners, Suggested activities for the session on Tuesday July 28 at Noon Pacific on Zoom: FIRST HOUR Signal Sharing (Check-in) Brief Wikidojo discussion: How frequently shall we do these? How to pick topics?

Zoom link for meeting: https://zoom.us/j/903709439 What is the status of our YouTube videos? Listed, unlisted, license? Do we want our conversations to be open content? [initial 30-45 minutes if possible] WikiDojo (proposed: second hour) In How many ways we (can) use Diigo to bookmark, share, retrival articles... [content curation]

(Can we explain why joining MetaCAugs is a good idea in one paragraph?) MetaCAugs is an open community of practice that wants to learn about new tools and methods for various types of online collaboration and learning. We meet weekly on Tuesdays at Noon Pacific on Zoom. Want to participate? Go to ... (Link to Telegram?) (Link to YouTube - but ask first the participants?)

Suggested activities Hour #1 (Noon Pacific time): participants tell what they found noteworthy on the planet and beyond since we met last Tuesday. Can be events, things you watched, read or listened to. Simple demonstration of how Roland uses RoamResearch for building a collection of future signals. We can play a game combining and contrasting signals in order to build new future scenario's. Wikidojo, Hour #2 (1pm Pacific time) - Pete Forsyth proposes a one hour session: composing a wiki page using the Wikidojo method. Last week, we composed an article on metacognition. This week, let's explore how this method works for a different kind of composition. Two suggestions: Write a short story together, with illustrations Create a planning page for how we want to use the Wikidojo sessions in general

PROPOSED ACTIVITY Pete would like to host a WikiDojo session. We can write a Wikipedia article together (I suggest we do it in "draft" space). If the group enjoys this and finds it a useful way to learn about wiki, we could do this every week. We could continue to explore Wikipedia, or use the WikiDojo format on any number of collaborative websites. PROPOSED ACTIVITY Roland would like to present a course (kind of) in foresight analysis. This project would be very interactive and we'd use a number of foresight tools, applying them on MetaCAugs, CICOLAB or Peeragogy. Of course, we could also apply the tools on other similar groups. The course would be modular, so you can pick and choose. The objective of the presentation on July 7 is to determine whether there is any interest at all for this.

Dear Co-Learners, PROPOSED ACTIVITY Lauren and Charles would like to do a group excercise in which we go around the circle and each of us expresses why we are attracted to the group and what we hope - and / or see as feasible - to accomplish together. This could take up to 60 minutes, depending upon how many people show up. This is to complement the appreciation circle/ deep profiles activity we did last week. Our aim is to complete a Deep Profile (V1) of MetaCAugs, comprising individual and group profiles. We are developing and refining this process within a number of groups in order to build up a clearer picture of who is in our network and what everyone is working on, in order to better discover and harness new and powerful connections.

Dear Co-Learners, PROPOSED ACTIVITY (Charles will add activity for second hour MetaCAugs meeting) PROPOSED ACTIVITY Lauren Nignon proposes to facilitate an "Appreciation Circle," an easy, low-tech technique for generating deep profiles where we just go around the circle with each person and say what we appreciate about him or her. I then cut up the videos and post them individually on Youtube (listed and unlisted, according to preference) and generate a word cloud and a 2 or 3 word role description. Each person has full control over their profile and gets to choose what is on it. The purpose of this is for group onboarding: with this technique, new people can jump in and get a good sense of everyone's role in the group. It also feels good to get positive feedback. It will be identical to what I did with the GCC Saturday Barnraising group: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_ksF-a44=/

Dear Co-Learners, Jane McGonigal (Institute for the Future) invites folks to join a virtual team to help people imagine surprising ripple effects of the pandemic and possible long-term positive impacts of how we respond today. "We have 120 volunteers from 50+ countries so far, and our goal is to generate at least 1000 surprising potential long-term consequences of how we respond to the pandemic today, with a focus on futures we want. All you'll need to do is post a question on Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, etc" You'll find more information on this Google Doc. I (Roland) told them I'd love to have conversations about peer-to-peer learning. I hope other MetaCAugs-people will join in this public conversation, we would at least discuss this at our next Tuesday meeting.

I would like to spend the first few minutes recapping last week's session regarding crap detection: how collectively intelligent was that discussion? We had some exceptionally brilliant minds around the table: did our methodologies tap them to the fullest extent? Some people felt disgruntled afterwards because they felt like their voices were being shut down: was that simply a reaction to good moderation that kept the group focused and prevented people from dominating the conversation, or are we actually becoming our own echo chamber? Is there a way we can handle discussions when there is high emotion and major disagreement so that everybody feels heard, and everybody has a chance to talk? Is that even possible? What specific practices could we adopt to make our conversations deeper?

Dear Co-Learners, Our friends at CICOLAB will have a conversation around #crapdetection and rapid sensemaking, this time through the lens of #coronawisdom. We'll have a very special guest: Howard Rheingold. Most of us know Howard from his fabulous online courses and his texts and videos about virtual communities and crap detection. This will be part of the second round of conversations at CICOLAB since they launched cicolab.org in January with "Love Bombs". This next cycle (starting this week) is titled "Rapid Sensemaking and the Pandemic". MetaCAugs was asked by Charles Blass and Lauren Nignon to open our virtual doors for this event, and of course we do so with great joy. Here you find a repository about collective intelligence and CICOLAB.

Summary items from last week: What is it we want to achieve, as individuals and as a group? The participants of last week's gathering left recordings on our Telegram group. Here are some soundbytes: "How can we create practices that can hep people recognize when they go around in circles instead of growing, and how to catalyze growth from there. How to do this in groups?" "Create an epistemic architecture based on human dialogue. On Earth Day 2021 we woud bring together worldwide communities from academia, citizen-scientists, open source (think Wikipedia), arts communities would meet. A smaller scale version is planned for July 26. Subjects mentioned are covid-19 and climate change." "Round table discussion about different aspects of collective intelligence and meme-ifying that to smaller and smaller units, chunks of wisdom." "Having a group collect signals and drivers allowing to build possible futures (not necessarily preferred futures), and having socratic discussions about our presuppositions in order to be more open and creative and to engage into actions for a better future." "Organizing webinars where people would do something together in new ways." "Organizing an open learning commons for people engaging in emerging ways of learning and co-working so they can learn from each other."

# MetaCAugs newsletter 2020-04-28 [working]

Agenda Ideas: Pattern Language groups emerging Pattern Language card games Federated Wiki Miro learning/play (try together?) how we can use Otter better together, shared account?

1968. Douglas Engelbart does The Mother of All Demos 1974. Vint Cef and Bob Kahn use the term "internet" as a shorthand for internetworking. 1977. Paradise Garage in NYC. 1977. DJ Frankie Knuckles goes from NYC to Chicago. 1978. The techno music group Cybotron is formed in Detroit. 1978. First public computer messaging system in Chicago. 1979. Sugar Hill Gang releases Rapper's Delight. 1979. CompuServe offers a dial-up information service to consumers. 1980. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari write A Thousand Plateaus.It is a "positive exercise" in nomadology and rhizomatic philosophy. 1982 - William Gibson coins "cyberspace".

Attendees: Robert Best, Charles Blass, Roland Legrand, Jim Whitescarver, Melanie Weir, Michael Linton, Graziano Maino, Joshua Bridge, Lauren Nignon Melanie: thinking about how art and food systems are connected. Roland: finally finishing up on his class. Charles: Re: HyphaDAO: Charles and Lauren talked to Franz Joseph earlier today. A friend of ours, Aaron Perlmutter, is starting a new project that has been bubbling for one year, around a mutual insurance fund, called ApocalypseDAO. Charles' biggest challenges are sleep deprivation and seasonal allergies. Michael: in a very bad mood. Has been watching Rebel Wisdom about the Cassandra situation. Jim Hunt was saying that there were potential shifts, into hippie medievalism (technology is bad and wrong, let's go in the woods), outright war, etc.