The Black Elephant circles back

You might remember a little piece I shared a few weeks ago about the idea of Black Elephants. Well, part of my re-ignited interest was in watching how some folk had taken the idea and the name and made a thing out of it. And now I’m going to work for them! First off, I … Continue reading The Black Elephant circles back →

“Elephant drinking water” from Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums on Flickr

You might remember a little piece I shared a few weeks ago about the idea of Black Elephants. Well, part of my re-ignited interest was in watching how some folk had taken the idea and the name and made a thing out of it.

And now I’m going to work for them!

First off, I should explain that we’re not creating any new Black Elephants (of the type I originally formulated…) it’s much more about creating communities where we can live better in a world that recognises Black Elephants abound.

So it’s not a straightforward thing to describe (which, as you can imagine, ws a big draw for me!) but it’s a kind of mix of social network and social movement. And the movement bit is the most important – I say that because I see so many people jumping on the “make a movement” bandwagon these days. And I’ve learned quite a lot about making them over the years and it makes be cross when I see people kind of “movement-washing” their essentially extractive and exploitative business. I’m glad to say that Black Elephant (the network/movement) is *not* like that. When they talk about the vision to embrace and encourage *true* diversity as well as to create spaces where people can be themselves and authentically (and safely!) use acts of vulnerability to help build real connection, I believe them – because that’s what I’ve experienced in their meetings.

Over the last year, I’ve been to a few of the meetings (called “parades”) which are gatherings of half-a-dozen or so people (mostly online, but sometimes off-) with a couple of questions set for each parade as the basic structure of the conversation. Turns are taken by passing a virtual baton to each other and there’s no feedback or discussion of what you say, just a place to reflect on something among different folk and hear other points of view. The most noticeable feature to me is that you really do get to meet people you wouldn’t in most other settings. It’s not just for worthy white-folks in Northern Europe or the USA! This piece from Rhyd Wildermuth is a really good summary of what’s going on – I’m not going to try to rewrite it, go and read the whole thing.

And so that’s why I’m going to work on this for a bit. Because I’m up for making spaces like this and I think we can do it well together, while also building something sustainable – a business-like movement, rather than a movement-like business.

So wipe down your RSS reader and look out for heavier elephant-related bloggage as I think aloud a bit more about what I’m doing with them. It isn’t all high-falutin. strategic hand-waving, there’ll be stuff about the practicalities and difficulties of building a new network like this, and scaling globally, without breaking the concept or the people involved. But I can already tell it’s going to be fun and very worthwhile.