Intention

Ultimate Collaboration is a digital encyclopedia, a kind of "Synergypedia", a collection of links which, in their totality, can offer a less compartmentalized view on movements, communities, ideas and theories which all go along with the abstract societal vision we're having, which, as a working title, I call "the regenerative societal transformation towards holistic well-being" (super catchy, I know) or shorter "holistic regenerative transformation". Inspired by the Encyclopédie, the "Wikipedia of the Enlightenment" which, back in its days, allowed interdisciplinary research like never before, but also counterculture projects like the Whole Earth Catalog, Ultimate Collaboration aims to collect, but most importantly interconnect the communities which all work on their piece towards our shared vision of a flourishing world. And instead of publishing books, we do this in the digital and leverage all the magical technological capabilities this new medium gives us.

Ultimate Collaboration is a call to work on overcoming differences. All of what's listed here might be slightly different from each other, some maybe a bit more decentralized, some a bit less, some very generalist, some very specialist, some more technical, some more nature-focused, some with a more formalized approach, some with a more intuitive approach, some more pragmatic, some more idealistic. But somehow, we all want the same. Never forget this: We are not working against each other. Additionally, note that I don't endorse all the ideas and organizations listed here. But it should become pretty clear from the context which ones make sense, which ones just give a certain new perspective and which ones are counterexamples.

Ultimate Collaboration is an "interconnection forum", i.e. an invitation


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to participate and actively interconnect. After all, absolutely none of the ideas that make up what I call "holistic regenerative transformation" are new. We're not painting a new picture, we're just assembling a glorious puzzle. Maybe you already are or feel like you want to be part of one of the following projects or just learn more about the ideas behind them? Maybe you have already heard one of the ideas listed here, and maybe you're already completely onboard, or you're still doubtful? In any case: interconnect knowledge, interconnect people, interconnect yourself. If you've been in similar social circles all your life, look beyond! We all live in one street, and your neighbors, both physically and intellectually, can (and should!) actually be really nice and inclusive. And if you discover any new neighbors or desire clarifications or other changes, please raise an issue on GitHub or contact [email protected].

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to translate. If you're feeling adventurous, try to conceptualize for yourself what all these ideas have in common. Don't just translate across languages, but also across social circles, cultures, ideologies, belief systems and schools of thinking. Not only rationalists and emotionalists, but also a populist, dogmatist, sexist, racist, and even someone who still very consciously hates themselves will eventually benefit of mutual empathy just like everyone else, because connecting to what we stand for emotionally and from a cultural perspective is not only fundamentally regenerative and empowering, but also deeply nurturing.

Ultimate Collaboration is a community of the next generation of librarians. Others have already perfected the art of knowledge retrieval, whether through physical books or in the digital. But we take this a step further: We want to become able to tell people with absolutely good faith and conscience: "hey, look, maybe this is something you want more of in your life right now!". We just point people towards where they can look, in case they want to drive both the development of themselves as humans, the development of the world or anything in between. Metaphorically speaking, we are not mapmakers, but instead we distribute the tools for every individual to make their own map and plan their own journey, so we are always in service to the autodidacts.

Ultimate Collaboration is a safe space with certain cultural standards. We agree that we want to treat each other well and want to be actively inclusive to everyone, while still upholding our standards of communication of having the intention to communicate in a way that feels embracing, no matter how justified the criticism. Acts of destructive aggression, both physically, structurally and emotionally, and no matter how big or small, will not be tolerated. Apart from being visionary, joyful, pragmatic, logical and emotionally intelligent, we are also pretty damn cozy. Express your boundaries and they will be law to us. Following best practices of consent, conflict resolution and non-violent communication is always a priority for us.

Proposed improvements for this page

All project management happens on GitHub at https://github.com/hermesloom/ultimatecollaboration, according to usual co-creative open-source governance conventions. If you're unsure what that means but you simply want to contribute, just open an issue on GitHub with what's on your mind and we'll welcome you with open arms.

First of all, of course please suggest the addition of any further links you see fit! Beyond that, more structural improvements which will be added over time include the following.

Collecting events

So many communities have certain virtual or physical meetups and events with all kinds of intentions, such as:

  • chill hangouts for everyone to visit
  • educational presentations for a more structured way to convey knowledge
  • exhibitions of creative works of any medium
  • co-working in any domain of work (incl. hackathons, makerspaces etc.)
  • community support groups
  • larger events such as summits, conferences, etc.
  • celebrations
  • and so many more

Let's collect these events, so that people can more easily find events which they might like, but which they might not have previously heard about! Of course published in a hyperpersonalized way using open standards, such as RSS, iCalendar/ICS, hCalendar, etc. On a more generalized scale, this could later evolve into an LLM-based system which ingests the public newsletters from all the listed organizations and then each individual could receive a fully personalized "best of" with only those chunks of information which they previously marked as "this is what I'm interested in" or "this is what is relevant to me".

Collecting social conventions

Every community will have different slightly ways of "doing things", and not knowing those can quickly bring one into awkward situations. So let's make these unwritten, practical "rules" written, to avoid disappointments because of misunderstandings and find out together how to navigate walking between worlds!

As an example of social conventions, let's take the considerations regarding "entering" a community. For some communities it might simply be a video call with a certain person. But for some, such as the global Burning Man culture, due to their decentralized architecture, there might not be single people you can contact, so going to a physical burn in your country or anywhere else, getting to know people, sharing interests and just "immersing yourself" by working together on dreams is simply, by definition, "the" way to get into the Burner culture. After all, many communities love "doers", not just observers.

As further examples, some communities might have certain communication structures (e.g. what's communicated in which channels and when does who get which access to which channels?), decision structures, certain standards on the structure of conversations, certain conventions on group sizes, certain desires or boundaries regarding emotional closeness, certain expectations regarding time investment, etc. These might not be obvious from the outside, but having them stated will save a lot of time and energy for everyone involved.

This also includes the reflection of a community's intentions in its implicit and explicit power structures. For example for communities which also have a certain legal and economical structure: What are the concrete implications of these positions of "formalized power"? After all, all group dynamics always somehow imply power structures, and we want to aim for those to be communicated transparently.

Better structure and filtering

Maybe somehow inspired by UDC or the structure of the Encyclopédie, the Whole Earth Catalog or similar projects? But it's always important to consider: Our eventual goal is to allow filtering by many quantitative and qualitative/semantic dimensions and not just one, depending on a user's desires, such as:

  • type of link (e.g. community, event, concept, platform, blog, educational resource)
  • language
  • purpose and mission, i.e. what is being strived for?
  • semantic closeness to one's own knowledge, past experiences, interests, skills and visions
    • sometimes "closer is more desirable", but sometimes also "more distant is more desirable", for when someone wants to branch out into completely new subject matters or experiences
  • closeness to one's physical location (if applicable)
  • suggested time investment
  • compatibility with one's own desires (see "Collecting social conventions") and overall current life circumstances

Measuring effectiveness

For evaluating the effectiveness of all the possible ways to further structure this page, our main purely quantitiative metrics should include:

  • number of people that found amazing experiences through us, intellectually and/or emotionally
  • number of people that now say 'this is where I want to belong and where I feel good'

Due to the intentionally subjective phrasing of these metrics as well as the decentralized architecture of Ultimate Collaboration itself, this feedback can only be obtained in an inbound, self-reported form through methods which are yet to be set up (e.g. in the beginning something like Google Forms, later more advanced solutions).

These are the metrics that should always be considered when advancing the development of Ultimate Collaboration: We don't collect links for the sake of collecting links or for the sake of ordering them, but we collect links to help people. If people, who have never heard about Ultimate Collaboration so far, visit this site for the first time, and they feel like it's irrelevant, boring, overwhelming, chaotic etc., we have failed and must improve. Getting access and listening to user feedback is essential. After all, Ultimate Collaboration strives to be accessible to all humans, no matter their language, attention span, social and cultural background, technical proficiency, potential physical impairments or level of familiarity with the topics presented here.

Generalized frameworks

Mapping efforts

The following projects, as well as all other "mapping projects" we can find, need to be consolidated into Ultimate Collaboration. After all, we strive to go far beyond mapping.

Communities

Community building

Real communities

Organizations and leadership

Movements

Metamodernism, Second Renaissance, Game B, Effective Altruism, Modern Wisdom, Liminal Web

Commons

Secret societies

Monists

Unified science

Wikimedia

German "Kollektive"

Hackers

Educational resources

Mapping and measuring well-being

Policymaking

Changemakers

Orientation

Personal

Death

Health

Sexual health

Societal

Human rights

Children & Elderly

Economy

Alternative economic models

Alternative currencies

Land ownership

Alternative financing

Asset managers

Insurance

Corporate values

Food production

Psychology

Ecology

Philosophy

Architecture and design

Spirituality, religion, interfaith, cults

Politics

Transhumanism

Psychedelics

Language

Theatre, dance, music

Book publishers

Lawyers

Food

Technology

Journalism

Indigenous

Miscellaneous