Auf Wiedersehen & Reflections on developing 42 WOBBER version 1.0

tldr: building 42 Wolfsburg / Berlin was one of the most rewarding and successful ventures of my life and I would like to leave with a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to it.

I have now happily moved on to explore my next professional venture. If you are looking for a cosmopolitan entrepreneur with transdisciplinary experience in tech, education, governance and philosophy, please consider getting in touch. Until the end of the year I will research, design and develop opportunities while (re)connecting with peers, partners and potential team mates.??

In the following you find a summary of reflections I shared with the 42 stakeholder community -- for most outside 42, the second part with ==PERSONAL INSIGHTS== might be more interesting:

Over the last weeks I had some time to reflect upon the 3 year journey of building 42 Wolfsburg and the 1,5 years of building 42 Berlin. For those interested below are some learnings and pointers to knowledge- and culture-artifacts that might serve you as our LearningSpaceShips continue go boldly where no one has gone before.

In autumn of 2020, when there were only a few freelancers and the presidents, we developed a first version of our Community Values and we have revised and updated them several times since. This is a sign that we believe that it is important to ensure that the community owns and evolves those values. Our community values are the very foundation of our shared identity and define who is “inside” of our community - if you care about 42 Wolfsburg / Berlin I encourage you to fuel the current revision with your feedback or join the collabowriter group!?????

Another pivotal element to charter the course of an organisation is to know where you want to go. Our 2030 Vision (as we had shared back in January) contains the strategic goals that guide the 42 WOBBER crew as they develop their OKRs. I want to encourage all students, fellows and partners to share feedback and possibly request amendments both on the long term goals as well as the half-yearly OKRs. A couple of months ago I had shared my OKRs with the Wolfsburg students as they had requested and that might be good practice.

The third essential element of all organisations is its governance. We introduced a multistakeholder governance and participation setup that is unique among all 42 schools. The Quality & Learning Circle (Q&L) allows all community members to get their voice heard and propose innovations and adaptations of our practices and policies. But also the Board of Trustees (Kuratorium), our advisory board that allows our company partners and supporters to participate and contribute their expertise and perspectives to our school’s strategy & practice, is unique among 42 schools.?

The 42 curriculum and esp. the infrastructure our French peers have built to enable peer-learning (holy graph, peer-evals, quality assurance through exams, etc.) is brilliant. At 42 Wolfsburg / Berlin we have begun to augment the 42 curriculum through two strategic innovations, which I am confident will continue to evolve and blossom in the coming years. By inviting experts from academia and industry to apply and join our community as Fellows we opened our schools to another kind of peer-learning: the Fellows learn about 42 and from our students unique backgrounds while providing their expertise through mentorships and in joint learning & development projects, including contributions to new open learning projects like SEA:ME. Another innovation that I believe will make 42 Wolfsburg / Berlin stand out among 42 Schools are extracurricular curricular - both self-motivated e.g. around mobility (SEA:ME) or good social media usage but also trainings developed in collaboration with our strategic partners e.g. on SAP technologies.??????????

Socrates has coined the aphorism: “the unexamined life is not worth living” and in memory of the Delphi Oracle 42 Wolfsburg’s lobby sports a neon-sign “Know Thyself”. For me 42 and education as a whole must be rooted in humanism; hence I am truly dedicated to allow as many learners on this planet to learn about themselves and what a good life means for them. Because this knowledge will ultimately empower you to pursue a meaningful and rewarding life venture - and knowing ‘why’ will give you the resilience needed to succeed.?

This is why I have introduced the Life Design training as an Open Educational Resource @ 42 Wolfsburg. It is now up to you, the community, to build on the peer-learning materials and find peer-hosts for future iterations.

As most of you know, I deeply believe that Open Education, Open Innovation and subsequently Open Source and Open Standards are the most promising strategic directions for 42 WOBBER, but also for our network society. Allow me to quote from an OpEd I recently co-authored with Vint Cerf and Marc-Oliver Pahl: Karl Popper, who worked out the strengths and modes of action of our open society, wrote: “Without openness in society, the market economy lacks the air to breathe.” Open Standards unleashed the most powerful innovation ecosystem ever created: the Internet. Let‘s learn from that and gather the global village of progressive social market economists around the prospect of an open mobility ecosystem.?

Our recently launched Open Education master-level program Software Engineering in Automotive and Mobility Ecosystems (www.seame.space) and its many partnerships, including with a Korean university consortium, are a great point in case here. BIG Thanks to Pratik and Tim who are the unsung heroes of this program.

As a community we embraced radical inclusion and openness most visibly in our Safe Harbor Program, in which we organized and welcomed Ukrainian and Russian refugee students. We crowdfunded more than €18k and managed to provide those in dire need a safe space and for some, a new home and viable perspective. THANK YOU to everyone who contributed and - most importantly - to those russian and ukrainian students who proved that a peaceful world is possible - against all odds!!???????

It was an amazing challenge and opportunity to build 42 Wolfsburg & 42 Berlin. As far as I can tell both schools and the organization as a whole are in good shape and thus I propose we can call the status in July 2023 version 1.0. As you know my intention has always been to decentralize power and enable transparent decision making as the foundation of an open peer-learning organisation. By leaving my founding CEO role, my intention is to pass enthusiasm and appetite for responsibility and participation to the student community. Remember: Let the inmates run the asylum (Dr. Cilgari) & with great power comes great responsibility (Spider Man) ??????

========= PERSONAL INSIGHTS ============

Allow me to finish with a couple of personal insights from leading our joint-venture:?

• We have mostly an emotional access to what life is all about. In a world where technology and globalized systemic change makes it difficult to cultivate your internal locus of control and pursue self-efficacy, I learned that the only question that matters is: do you feel good while doing your job. Social psychology scholar Johnathan Haidt (who’s work I highly recommend) recounts an ancient buddhist parable, describing our rationality as the rider of an elephant that is made up of our emotions. For me it is quite clear: in today’s world mastering technology is important, but being in tune with your emotions is even more fundamental for a happy life.

• Conflicts are valuable - We grow through them;?

but we should never “solve” them through aggression?

In a community that is radically inclusive, we are struggling not only to ensure minorities feel safe, but also to push everyone to work to include those with a traditional/conservative mindset. I was really surprised to find many from minority groups mandate their progressive thinking as the schools position; for me the most important cultural aspect is that everybody feels welcome and a coopetition of ideas leads to a progressive leitmotif. ?

• Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.? There is pretty solid research that cooperation (tit-for-tat) beats aggressive and other competitive approaches. But of course we all play many rounds of different games throughout our lives. It is important not to obsess about an individual game but lift your spirits and ground yourself in the infinite games of life (p.7).?
• Ideas are cheap and execution is hard. I consider myself a fox and hence I enjoy juggling many balls and living in ambiguity about the outcome of initiatives is nothing that keeps me up at night. But having started many ventures, at 42 Wolfsburg / Berlin I learned that it indeed needs a village to raise each barn. It is somewhat painful to leave some ideas which were never priority and hence lingered without the necessary momentum: especially the Manual for Happy Software Engineers and our BER LearningSpaceShips board computer B4T2. If you see value, I’d be more than happy to support.??

At the opening party of 42 Berlin I asked everybody to contemplate Why are you at 42? For me the answer was to learn as much as possible about how to enable humans from all walks of life to learn about and pursue their individual dreams.?

Thanks to all of you, I learned a ton about bootstrapping a learning community, participatory culture, effective organisational infrastructure, as well as to evolve governance and diverse synergetic partnerships.??

As members of the 42 Wolfsburg / Berlin community you are a fellow agent in the quest for a sustainable open society. Please feel invited to reach out and connect with me on linkedin or via mail. I’d love to learn about your journey, why you joined 42 and what impact it had!?

My dear colleagues, dear presidents and association members I wish you all the best and a successful journey in running 42 Wolfsburg / Berlin.?

Auf Wiedersehen,

Euer Max