It was more a diffuse in terms of people’s areas of expertise, basically. Then it was observed that in order to solidify the organization and get it on its own two feet, as it were, that it needed something of little bit more centralized in terms of leadership.

…or whatever summits?

Those conference communities are… something that we could probably survive democracy. [laughs]

After organizing or participating in a symposium in thought like grew a new Twitter follow?

…and that like…

Oh my gosh, I’m part of some of those.

That’s super interesting. I’ll have to look into that. For me, the leadership of RadicalxChange, as you say, is a small organization. In the conversation with Madam Jen, where we talked more about the institutional structure, they explained to me that previously, the leadership was a bit more decentralized. Different ...

I didn’t know that about the Occupy.

I see RadicalxChange. This is also what’s within the scope, as you say, as a two way informational exchange. That would be at least the bare minimum before it gets hands on and logical. [laughs]

In terms of auditing, what you do get sometimes are then syllabi or reading lists circulating as downloads. [laughs] We’re not students at the school.

For me, in addition to auditing what the applications and what the conversations are in the existing network before building it up, which will be easy once you know what people are doing, it’s creating ways that can also expand based on the work of others within the network.

What I would want to do with that media platform was to allow people to connect the dots. If there’s a housing rights group in Budapest and they’re doing something interesting that could apply to housing right groups in Minnesota, then there’s certain ways you can get them in touch. ...

When I elected to cover, say, a digital art collective in Seoul, Korea, it was because whatever they were talking about was also something that art students at the Georgia State University we’re talking about. Even if they were doing it on a super look like.

We had an international audience. It was always about navigating those things. That became one of the real pleasures of the exercise. We had a magazine. We also did public and educational programs.

The other thing, the other thing RadicalxChange could do is also to platform them. This was also something I was interested in at Art Papers, which was the nonprofit I was running in Atlanta. I had to do a lot of service to the local community. They funded us. They ...

Then it does become about information exchange too. Radical exchange. In a lot of these, if it’s good, then, as you say, there’s no “Wizard of Oz” figure actually orchestrating. You trust the individual units. You trust the individuals to cultivate what they’re going to cultivate from the ideas.

Exactly. I should know. I should think about that version of audit. I was thinking about the dramatic tax version of it. That’s exactly right, auditing the class. We attend it, and listen, and learn, get things from it. We don’t submit a paper per se.

Deep dive into the conversations in the already existing international chapters to decide where everyone’s at and then also how this can grow inappropriate, organic ways.

My first impulse would be getting excited about the chapters or figuring out what the community is without intervening upon it, without being hashtag this piece or implement this piece but almost doing some audit or whatever the less scary language for audit is.

Then noting the similarities, not comparing but I would say synthesizing, then suddenly you have information about what you’re supposed to do or what you can do from the platform.

For me, these types of relationships are very exciting because of the diversity of the means of engagement but also as information streams back to the organization, because you learn so much in engaging with these various communities, like what people are talking about and what their needs are.

I throw the voting out as an example, but I was just like, the NVs for me, these levels of institutional partnerships, and then you have, like, the Harvard’s under graphics or the MIT Media Lab or whatever.

I was on the board of a DIY media organization that had XEN workshops, just the gamut. These organizations or even in these little board meetings that are already quite…I’d have people over to my house. We could have had a version of quadratic voting and some of those scenarios.

Before coming back to Berlin, I was living in Georgia for five years. I’m not from there, the state, not the country. What I saw, there were a lot of grassroots organized projects, like coalitions of black farmers, or even there was some, specifically from the black communities, really radical ...

One of the things that appeals to me about RadicalxChange is also the diversity of the community, which capacity to engage. It could be the diplomatic community. It could be the Ethereum community. It could be super localized.

There’s a kind of space. Just like the slogan as mission statement, as we say, already exists into Fridays for Future or what have you. Now my mind’s racing a little bit.

That’s incredibly clarifying for me, I have to say, just taking ownership of this hashtag as NGO.

The SDGs.

Yeah. It’s a mission statement, but it’s also a slogan, as you say. It’s something along the lines of like, “We provide water.”

Obviously, the best nonprofits do this in a way that’s extremely expensive. I forget which NGO I’m thinking of but one of these big international behemoths.

Again, this is an institutional question. I don’t know, and I want to know what the organizational goals are around it, but whether it would be worth also inhabiting the language that’s more familiar when it comes to nonprofits, “Here’s our mission. Here’s the communities we serve.”

That would be the first and last time. I would have compared my movements to Adam and Eve. [laughs] I did wonder whether in terms of translating what RadicalxChange does or somehow making it accessible on this more grassroots level, whether it did come up to attempt to also…

Yeah, exactly. I did wonder…I’m jumping around a little bit. I…

Which is cool. I like that, decentralized. Also, I like the idea of an organization registered nonprofit. Like water.

Also, that we touched on Gitcoins super briefly with Vitalik. I had discussed it with them, but I was curious. I asked Vitalik whether the relationship with RadicalxChange was formal or systematic. He said that is more because he’s involved with…

Colorado did. Is it statewide in Colorado?

[laughs] I don’t know, just in terms of the network that already exists and then maybe the State of Georgia in the US “quadratic.”

I see quadratic voting as a test, as the Petri dish for quadratic scenario. I see it in these institutional partners. People on communities vote on stuff or student body.

On a way more old school.

Where else do you see within the RadicalxChange network, the current one…? Not to ask you to answer a question that I should work on answering myself, but do you see other opportunities where these principles being explored on a more theoretical level could be just deployed?

I’m not allowed to have any Zooms or any video calls where we don’t talk about NFTs. It’s just the way [laughs] of my life right now.

That’s it, yeah, that’s incredible. I mean, we’ve also got everyone present where… [laughs]

Not to say that it wouldn’t have happened anyway. For me, the pandemic is like an accelerator – that’s why I say accelerated. It didn’t make new stuff happened.

I’m surprised. Do you see it as like a pandemic accelerated?

How’s it going? [laughs]

For me, I’m interested in Taipei also because I get the sense that what you’re working on over there is the most practical applied instance, and especially the most scaled up instance of having implemented some of the ideas.

That is a community and ideas oriented. Cryptocurrency rather than tech-oriented. Vitalik agreed with that assessment and then also was like, it’s nice when it’s not compared to Bitcoin.

That’s interesting with the pedagogy as well, that was geared towards that conversation a little bit, even the way, or at least it certainly seems to be in the perception of Emporium versus Bitcoin.

What’s RxC Taipei?

Amazing. One thing when I think about these overarching goals and dominant themes within RadicalxChange and within the orbit, and I’ve been interrogating everybody [laughs] about what the chapters are doing and how they’re working with chapters. Obviously, some more than others, some are more institutional, more formal partnerships.