Permaculture Community Building: Observe and Interact
Part 1 of 12 in a series exploring how the principles of permaculture can be applied to resilient community building in virtual diasporas.
As a community builder we’re often tempted to use engagement farming or GMO community building techniques in order to get results fast knowing we are compromising the quality and longevity of your community.
Borrowing from Permaculture, which offers a design system for creating resilient ecosystem, we can create a framework and tool set to build sustainable and long standing regenerative online communities.
This series of articles will explore the twelve principles as articulated by David Holgrem and how it can be applied to community building.
Principles of Permaculture
Observe and interact
Catch and store energy
Obtain a yield
Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
Use and value renewable resources and services
Produce no waste
Design from patterns to details
Integrate rather than segregate
Use small and slow solutions
Use and value diversity
Use edges and value the marginal
Creatively use and respond to change
Principle 1: Observe and Interact
The first principle of Permaculture from Holgrem is:
Observe and interact: Before designing a system, it's important to spend time observing and interacting with the natural and social systems that make up that system.
TO OBSERVE
Spend time simply observing the natural and social systems that make up the community you are working with to uncover the patterns, behaviours and needs of the inhabitants.
TO INTERACT
Taking a leaf from the methodology used by anthropologist - participant observation is the process through which the researcher immerses themselves in the community or culture in order to understand it from an embedded rather than outsider perspective.
Meaningful interaction and 1:1 relationship building can uncover the needs and desires of the community that is critical to serving them.
Through your observations you will uncover all the key points for interaction and engagement to immerse yourself in a community and their way of being.
Observations - Points for interaction
What is their mission?: To change or preserve apart of their world
What are their problems?: Common pain points in daily life or barriers to seeing their mission through
What do they value?: Material, social or spiritual stores of value
What do they believe?: Philosophical, cultural or religious figures, texts and references
What are their traditions?: Existing rituals and traditions they embrace and practise together and/ or individually
Where do they get their information?: Media sources and information sources along with their biases
Who are their leaders?: Media personalities, official or unofficial community leaders
Who are the followers?: The devout members that show up to observe and participate
What is the vibe?: The social dynamics of the community and members when together
What is their language?: Identifying dialect, turns of phrase, memes, slang or jargon that signal their alignment with a subculture or movement
Where do they hang?: Map the terrain that connects them across social networks, closed servers and IRL
What is their calendar?: The most significant moments and events in their calendar
What are their tools?: Tools for connection connected and tools for coordination amongst themselves
What factors affect their survival?: Conditions that are optimal to their operation along with the factors that push them to extinction; environmental, financial, cultural, technical and political
Principle 2: Catch and store energy
The second principle of permaculture explores methods for capturing and storing renewable energy, such as solar panels, wind turbines, and rainwater harvesting systems.
The next article in the series will explores the 2nd principle and how to capture and store the value generated by communities.
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