Many people write me to ask what’s the current status of CIRI — the Collective Intelligence Research Institute — we created and announced 18 months ago. It is true that we haven’t communicated much since this time, as most of our work has been dedicated to building contexts, develop many research projects and meet many many people in different parts of the world. This was mostly invisible work.

Most of people who write me ask how they can contribute to building CIRI and support TheTransitioner community. Well, let me share a quick overview of what the long term vision is, so I can then speak about what short term actions are.

Long term vision

CIRI’s role is to serve as an embassy, a base in the conventional world. The kind of research we do takes us far far away in unknown spaces, where our belief systems (doxa) don’t exist anymore. Take the metaphor of a new planet. Physics, shapes, laws are different there. In the universe we explore, new ground breaking paradigms show up, human experience is mostly inexistant, technology is evolving every day, amazing visions emerge and open new understanding of reality, and then new ways to conduct our life.

A new universe can only be accessed with a vessel and a crew of pioneers on board, in the litteral or metaphorical sense. It’s a small team of people who have undertaken the challenge to explore the unknown. They know the risks, and they are trained to evolve in these contexts. Some members of the crew are experts about the vessel: they know how to navigate it and how to fix it. Other members are experts about the destination: they already have studied as much as they can what it may look like over there, and have prepared themselves for this. Think Apollo missions or the future inhabited missions to Mars. Astronauts onboard have a very peculiar life style with very different social codes, language, rules… and they are on their own. As much as it can the Earth base is providing guidance and intelligence, but basically the crew is really are on its own. No one else can live the experience they have.

No one can build a vessel alone. It has to be a collective project supported by people and organizations in the conventional world. For collective intelligence pioneers, this home base is CIRI.

Oh, by the way, how should we name this new universe these pioneers are exploring? We call it holomidal collective intelligence, that is the next form of collective intelligence that succeeds, and supersedes, pyramidal collective intelligence. As I said: this means a whole new social fabric, a new way to live, new values, new technologies, new paradigms, new cultures, new social codes, new economy, even new ways to perceive ourselves as individuals, and the list goes on. Indeed, it’s not just about an external evolution, this journey touches the deepest structures of the being.

Back to CIRI. This organization is composed of people willing to accompany the emergence of holomidal collective intelligence. These men and women don’t need to be pioneers in every aspects of their life, indeed they can contribute in the journey by providing their expertise, wealth, actions in such or such domain.

So, many ways to do it. Concretely? Here’s a short list:

• Technology: geeks of all kinds (those who love organic vegan low fat raw gluten free pizzas are even accepted), software architects, sys admins, open source software developers, UI experts, mobile platforms experts, game designers, webmasters, graphic designers…
• Science: researchers on sociology, complex systems, biomimicry & biology, biocomputing, anthropology, theory of social choice, theory of games, computer science, economics, artificial intelligence (specially on multi agent systems), ergonomics, communication…
• Community gardening: social media experts, space holders, seeders, writers… (this leads mostly to TheTransitioner website)
• Training: inspirers, trainers, coaches, gurus, you name it…
• Communication: writers, film makers, lecturers, multimedia experts…
• Public relationships: with the press, with the online world, with politics, with the corporate world and so on
• Arts: artists of all kinds, from music to photography, from digital arts to dance, from cartoons to graphic design…

And now?

First, a website where all the progress, the R&D and the discoveries we made these past years are made available to everyone. In my public keynotes and conferences, I am just sharing 5% of the whole picture, maybe not even so. This is normal as these events are confined inside limited spaces and most people are completely new to these ideas and concepts. Even seminars that last for days cannot cover more than a tiny portion of the CI field and experience. Therefore an online space that shares the whole vision in a coherent construct is the first thing to accomplish.

This breaks down to different steps to be made asap:

• A functional server: right now our server is a mess. After years of good services it requires a complete thinking and redesign. A talented visionary sys admin is required, not just someone who will ‘admin’, but someone who will do this accordingly to the vision and practice we are holding. A key player who provides the team with the capacity to implement and try out new web apps, and makes everyday life easier in the online world.
• Creating the containers: in other words, functional websites. CSS experts and graphic designers are the most wanted 🙂
  • CIRI website: we are working on it at this present moment. It relies on wagn technology. A functional v1.0 website is expected by Sept. 2012.
  • TheTransitioner website: works on a Ning platform. So far so good, I am not a Ning fan, but this was a turnkey solution. It needs graphic design, lot’s of reorganization, and people willing to do community gardening.
  • This present blog: it’s an important space where I can speak from the I perspective, both in objective and subjective ways. This blog that has never received any piece of design. This is all home made with my little hands and I would greatly appreciate now to bring it to the next level. Again, some graphic design, css implementation, and a little bit of WordPress expertise.
• Writing the content: at this present moment this is clearly my role, and the only thing I should really do. This is not the case yet as there are many other things to organize.

Once these early conditions are met, we can then move to the next stage: invite and support a global constellation of motivated and talented people who want to build the next post-monetary society and support the emergence of holomidal collective intelligence. We are not that far from it, believe me.

If you are interested in playing, please let me know! If you want to involve yourself more deeply, it would also require that someday you attend (or even organize) a collective intelligence bootcamp. Bootcamp? More about it soon!