Rockonomy

Does anybody from Baltimore remember way back in the day when 98 Rock used to do that month thing?

Like, AC/December?? Rock MARCHes On?? RollVember?

Even as a dopey pre-teen I thought it was pretty dumb, but, here I am at 58 doing a little self-debriefing about what a really great month it’s been, and the word that pops to mind?

Can you guess it?

While you work on that, here’s a brief debrief.?

This has been a transformative, rock and roll month for those of us in the StreetWell - Rising Housing - Appalachian Field Services ecosystem.

Rising received some amazing news, about a certain final approval for a certain big batch of funding for its Impact Real Estate Portfolio.? We’ll share all the deets when we’ve inked the final docs, hopefully in a week or two.

AFS has climbed up to 18 employees now, thanks to the renovation work Rising is driving!

And then there have been this month's mind and soul liftin’ economic democracy events.

Like, on October 10, fellow StreetWellian Todd Youngblood, MBA and I attended The Ownership Economy 's #OwnershipEconomySummit in Manhattan.

And, this last Friday and Saturday (Oct 20-21), Todd and I did the Zebras Unite #Dazzlecon in DC.

I am still processing, so please bear with me while just jot down a few notes and impressions, here, and cliche’y utterances like:?

I am finishing the month feeling so lifted, connected, energized.

Suck as clichés do, I mean, still, that is spot-on how I feel.

I’ll plan to build on the ruminations below over a few upcoming posts, and hope that as I continue to write and reflect, I'll also maybe stumble my way to some higher level of synthesis or, dare I hope for it, wisdom?

I may even write about specific human connections I made, which I think I have found are far more the valuable things I gain from these conferences, than, say, any of the particular elucidations of this or that speaker or session.? And I don't just mean those connections with whom I end up actively collaborating; equally valuable are the fleeting exchanges, the 15 minute convo’s where one finds out that not even an old introverted curmudgeon is alone in the work, the joy, the anxieties, the hopes, the disappointments, the victories of social entrepreneurism.

Ok, so let’s get to it and just jot down this list, then, some of these October conversations and connections, like:

• On real estate, and the history (hippies & kibbutzes!) and resurgence of cooperative or communal living.
• On the menace of PE.
• On Central America, the freedom of expression, the ugliness of machismo.
• On community inclusion currencies, opting out of the USD, and B Notes (which are not Baltimore Bucks).
• On real estate and Appalachia and tech startups.
• On the intrigue and toxicity VC backed tech-bro startup culture.
• On Impact VC, how does that even work?
• On the menace of PE.
• On Zebra Oases.
• On how to build enterprises committed to healing and to work-life balance and still compete with the oligarchs who are making no such commitment.? And how to do it without the creating unintended harms and lopsided power structures within a cooperative?
• On replicating in #Nashville the Impact Real Estate Portfolio model we are building in #Baltimore!
• On the gap between a tsunami of money looking for compelling impact investment opportunities, and, the compelling social enterprises doing amazing impactful work.
• On the need for a well-formed, well-funded co-op policy and advocacy coalition.? On Co-op Parties.
• On the menace of authoritarianism, and how will we get to economic democracy if political democracy dies first?
• On Toward vs Towards, and the value of FBombs.
• On the Terms we use to describe our work, eg, Social Enterprise, Impact Investment, Ownership Economy, Shareholder Economy, Circular Economy, New Economy, and so on.
• On the menace of PE.? On the menace of PE.? On the menace of PE.
• On the need to not grab the mike at a conference and just go on blathering and meandering away because you’re so charged up about a topic.? On the need to - instead - stfu and work on tightening up one’s thinking and to strengthening one’s ability to articulate one’s thinking by…

….committing to writing, say, 2,000 words/week, maybe by throwing some social media posts?? out there.??

Alright, I’ll try to wrap this up by picking one of the above to jabber about.

At both the Ownership Economy Summit and Dazzlecom, the vibe, the buzz, the jam, was, of course all about shifting economic power from the few and the privileged to the everybody.

At the Ownership Economy gig, we talked about, well, “The Ownership Economy.”

At Dazzlecon though, I kept hearing the term “The New Economy.”

I feel pretty confident I understand what is meant by “Ownership Economy,” and alas my understanding jibes pretty tightly with the OE website which talks about:

economies that value widespread ownership and participatory governance?

and about

transforming how companies are owned and run, shifting from a traditional?top-down model to one that involves more people in decision-making and benefits?distribution

At Dazzlecon, however, I found myself yearning for an explanation of what exactly we mean by “New Economy.”

The Zebras Unite webpage doesn't mention "New Economy," but does share a vision to:

co-create and catalyse community, capital, and culture for people building businesses that are better for the world.

and to

explore alternatives to the white-male dominated, hockey-stick return expectations of the silicon-valley informed business and funding models for the overwhelming?majority of entrepreneurs who don’t fit that mould

These are two communities, with two pretty clearly aligned visions, right?

(Interestingly, only a tiny overlap in attendees at the two events, which, I wonder why?)

So then, probably, “Ownership Economy” pretty much equals “New Economy,”? I thought to myself as I heard the latter term pop up throughout the two days of Dazzlecon.

And then, while leading a small Dazzlecon discussion, Matthew Epperson used the term, and then kinda defined it when he got to this slide:

Please jump in here Matthew and set me straight, but, I took his definition of "New Economy" to mean a system where a wide variety of stakeholders finds their way to shareholderdom, via the core cooperative “one member one vote” principle.

I think another phrase that’s been thrown around under this mode of thinking is “Stakeholder Economy,” just btw.

Anyway, as I reflect on this point, I:

• ask myself - are you sure you’re not just being petty or pedantic here? (I think the answer is no. I think having tight terms to define our goals or movement is pretty important)
• google “Ownership Economy” and “New Economy”.? The former yields the kind of links and blurbs we rah rah around.? (A Forbes of all places quote pops up, “a system where power and economic rewards are distributed between participants as opposed to concentrated at the top–”!)? The latter, not so much.? You get this mixed message, like this top search result, from Investopedia: - New economy is a buzzword that was used to add to the hype of what tech companies in the 1990s were promising in terms of new ways of doing business and earning a living.- More recently, the term new economy has also been used to refer to a redesign of the capitalist system around environmental and social goals.

I'm a jackass but not a big enough jackass to presume to tell you what to do with what I just shared.

So let’s just wrap this noise up.? I’m not sure how much thinking-tightening got done in these here 1233 words, but I’ll be back and I’ll keep working on it.? Please jump on in and let me know what you think about the terms we use to describe our work, our community, and our movement.? Or about any of the other topics I’m fixin’ to reflect on.

In the meantime, this month, in circa 1978 98 Rock land is:

Rocktober. But you guessed that already, right.

And it certainly has been.

Rock On, You Ownership/New Economy Rock Stars.

(WIYY Baltimore, 98 Rock.? I’m Sarah Fleischer with the concert - er, conference - update <---- old Baltimorons will get this)