Kurios is Cirque du Soleil’s latest creation called the Carnival of Curiosities. Recently I had the chance to attend this delightful event in Montreal. From the storylines to costumes to sheer talent to showmanship, I watched the show with marvel and true inspiration. Every day since experiencing it I’ve been thinking about how we can share sustainable positive energy and beauty in our communities. As my sister calls it: joyful noise.
What if we reimagine how we build Digital and open communities with this key sentiment?
I’m at the airport on my way to Okfestival. This event includes all the amazing elements of global, cross-topic and multidisciplinary mayhem you can muster. Having attended OSCON for the past few years, I am really keen to meet many diverse open communities that are not all baked in open source software. (Miss you guys at OSCON already. (First love))
Join the circus
We are all in this big tent and want to expand the circle. While we focus on the actions, tasks, missions, outcomes, we should also practise like a trapeze artist, shine like the instigator clown, invite like the host, tantalize like the contortionists, but more of all: tie it together by inviting all the crazy items to flow and exist.
Often lately I am confounded by how to muster community spirt and connect all the diverse contact points into a thematic joyful space. While everyone has their niche thing that they love, we, as community leaders, want to have a light touch that brings everyone together. The undying passion of building that something important, special, needed often can be so strong that it might push people away or worse, burn out the very leaders that we want to nurture. Communities need an on ramp and need to be a welcoming place. Have you ever done the starfish as part of Pilates? It is beautiful but lopsided. This is the state of most communities I’ve seen lately. To grow, our jobs are cut out as we need to build spaces that are flexible, inspiring and healthy. This week has been full of huge teaching and sharing moments. Step by step.
My favourite visual artist just completed a show in Toronto called
Systematic complexity. Etienne Gelinas combines maps, mathematical principles and dynamic colours. I’m completely infatuated with his crazy compelling lines. Every community is different. The canvas we share is remixable. The heart needs to grow and find its inner circus while being focused on having a traveling show of curiosities with systematic complexity.
