Much of what Ruth Glendinning and Kent Dahlgren aspire to deliver with the Anti-Fragile Wealth Production Engine is focused upon keeping people and families rooted within their communities, centered in their homes.

"From placeholder to place-makers," as they like to say.

Sooner or later, the question emerges: "how can we get more money?"

In the Podcast "How can we gain access to the money we need," Ruth and Kent provided a preview to the topic in an interview with Chris Cain, of Alternatives Federal Credit Union where they discussed various innovative funding models, including "character-based lending."

This podcast episode goes deeper, exploring alternative and complementary currencies as a foundation to a topic that will be discussed in much greater detail as Ruth and Kent evolve their own neighborhood pilot.

Is this about crypto (short for crypto-currencies, such as Bitcoin)? No, although the topic of "alternative currencies" is briefly discussed.

What's more appealing from the perspective of "placeholders to place-makers" are complementary currencies, such as the farinet - a complementary currency used in the Swiss city of Sion, valued at the same rate of the Swiss franc, and the Detroit Community Scrip, created in 2009 to help restore local financial confidence following decades of economic decline. 

In this episode, Ruth Glendinning and Kent Dahlgren delve into the important differences between productivity and productive capacity. 

These terms are often used interchangeably, but are actually quite different when used in the context of sustainable, inclusive local economy that may evolve to become one that's truly anti-fragile.

What is the value of work? Or time? 

Productivity is generally mapped using transactional measures, as in how valuable are your actions to the desired outcome of the person paying you. 

On the other hand, Productive Capacity refers to other gifts or talents that you have that are less easily measured, and often hidden until the right conditions are created and bring them forward.

Ultimately, we’re all much more complex & interesting than we’ve been entrained to believe.  To create truly anti-fragile communities, need places in which we can all bring our whole selves to bear when we seek to bring forward new stories of the world we want to live in.

The bottom line is that there’s more to everybody than the current system allows, one that's often built upon the extractive, destructive quality of predatory capitalism and its counterpart: corporatism.

We are trained and conditioned to believe we are a cost, and not worth very much, as alluded to in one of our prior podcast episodes: "Weaponizing Language."

The Anti-Fragile Wealth Production model is designed to emerge those gifts and allow a richly diversified collaboration that inspires the sustained functioning of a community that delivers improved health, wealth, prosperity, and safety.

An embrace of anti-fragile best practices aspires to unlock the potential for rooting and growing strong neighborhoods in which integrated economic and community development is practiced as organized collaborative action to:

With the advent of ‘work anywhere’ technology, there is a growing opportunity for deeply rooted urban populations to activate the invisible capitals of trust, relationship, community, history and commitment to a shared future, leading to a higher quality of life and better opportunity to develop community-rooted value-based business.

In their most recent episode, Ruth Glendinning and Kent Dahlgren sprang into action, announcing the launch of an Anti-Fragile pilot community close to home, and in their own neighborhood.

In that discussion, Ruth and Kent introduced the Community Activation and Launch Methodology (C.A.L.M.)'s first step ("outrage"), and how an investment in exploring a community's outrage informs the efficacy and staying power of the solutions defined in the C.A.L.M. model's second step ("Vision"), to be discussed in a coming episode.

In this episode, Ruth and Kent discuss a few beneficial examples of why one may seek to explore "a third way" between two opposing extremes, which they generally refer to as "limiting vs activating energies":

An embrace of this "third way" unlocks and reveals significant opportunities and resources for those ordinarily stymied in their efforts to effect positive change.

Ruth and Kent discuss various lenses for how the audience may come to embrace this perspective, including an exploration of South American shamanic tradition and its acknowledgement of what's called the "ayni," which reveals hidden opportunity by holding the center and incorporating the seemingly opposing influences of four extremes.

Upon conclusion of this episode, the listener will come to see the world through a different set of lenses, for opportunity and wealth is abundantly available.

In this podcast, Ruth and Kent jump immediately into action, and this episode discusses the role of "outrage" in defining a capitating and effective "vision."

The episode concludes with a splash: an example of how the Texas Cottage Food Law helps home-based entrepreneurs generate up to $60,000/year in a food-related business, without the necessity to secure permits or food inspections.

The 11 podcasts to date have introduced language essential to unlocking the Anti-Fragile Playbook's fullest potential, and Ruth and Kent have shared their respective applicable experiences. They've interviewed Tanya Golden - a saffron farmer and "accidental advocate" - and novel funding options have been discussed, with Chris Cain, of Alternatives Federal Credit Union.

Now it's time for execution.

Working with Trudy Martinez (of 214 Alpha), Ruth Glendinning and Kent Dahlgren begin their own pilot community - an Anti-Fragile living laboratory - right in their neighborhood.

The Anti-Fragile Playbook will be a printed, step-by-step guide that walks an advocate from outrage to stewardship, through service that's community-oriented, and at its heart is the Community Activation and Launch Methodology (C.A.L.M.) process.

The C.A.L.M. process activates local leadership and bootstraps adoption of the Anti-Fragile Wealth Production Ecosystem including the 214 Alpha Community Activation mobile app, and distills decades of best practices in grassroots community activation into seven phases, beginning with "outrage" - the topic discussed during this episode.

One may have a vision (C.A.L.M. phase two), but unless the vision is solidly rooted in expressions of outrage that people feel on a personal level, at best may be difficult to sustain people's attention, and (at worst) will fail to short-circuit the multi-generational cycles of trauma and poverty.

Regarding "vision," here's a preview of what's right around the corner:

At the conclusion of the six-month project milestone, 1,000 people could be active within the community activation app’s marketplace with, maybe, 100 of whom are sellers, 900 are buyers.

The 100 sellers average 20 sales (transactions) per month, at $20 per sale.

They may be selling crafts, small food items, or simple services in a home-based entrepreneurial effort that’s operating below the threshold of a formally-structured business.

In this hypothetical example, and at this volume, each seller generates almost $400 additional gross household revenue per month.

In this projection, total marketplace revenues from sales in the community activation app would amount to $40,000/month, enriching the community of aspiring entrepreneurs.

And, at 5% per transaction, $2,000/month of transaction fee based revenue is automatically deposited to the community account, which goes towards self-funding the effort.

We all know that technology moves fast, but in this podcast Ruth Glendinning and Kent Dahlgren discuss an unusual example of technological innovation that will help us save ourselves: language.

To begin: think about your first cell phone; try and recall its shape, its size, and its features.

Now, compare it to the one you have today.

There's been dramatic progress in cell phone technology in the past 10-20 years, wouldn't you agree?

10 to 20 years.

Now. Try and imagine this: language (our most advanced technology) has been evolving for 200,000 years, and at a more rapid pace.

Think hard about the words you use to express your needs, wishes, and desires.

Q: are you activating this high technology?

Q: do your words launch your ideas? Or do they keep you locked in a cage?

This is not a theoretical discussion; this podcast is about immediately effecting change.

We assure you: those in power are using this activating language to full effect, and to your detriment. And it's intended for you to remain helpless, awaiting a savior.

Time to level up.

Right now, there are brothers and sisters among us making difficult choices about the relationships they are in, frequently placing them in abusive situations, just so their kids have a place to sleep.

Ruth and Kent speak of "weaponizing" language on purpose, for the proper role of a warrior is to protect and serve, with an explicit emphasis upon the least of our brethren, so to speak.

The Anti-Fragile Playbook is focused upon the necessity to source and activate local leadership, and one of the first things these grassroots leaders need to do is break the chains of their own stifled potential.

In this podcast, Ruth and Kent share several engaging anecdotes, such as an example of how the deft use of language secured the capture and conviction of a hacker for federal industrial espionage, outpacing the potential of so-called high-tech to capture the bad guy. 

This podcast is all about action - how to identify your strength, step into your power, and use it with subtlety, from a place of service, and to great effect.

It's 11:11 local time.

We provide the tools necessary for advocates to deliver self-funded economic revival, with built-in governance, for local communities?

Q: is this communism?

Quick answer: no, it is not. Nor is is socialism - neither definition makes sense, in the context of our solution.

As more people learn of our vision, people are trying to reconcile our vision with their lens upon the world. This podcast discusses a series of questions and answers regarding our project. 

Quoting Kevin Doyle Jones in a recent post:

The anti fragile playbook’s story is becoming clearer. This explanation of what it is not, chips away at the stone to reveal the sculpture beneath.

In this podcast Ruth and Kent discuss the following questions we've received:

Let’s go back and review our vision statement:

What is your solution?

The Anti-Fragile Neighborhood Wealth Production model is designed to bring forward the hidden wealth of neighborhoods, creating an accessible, inclusive story of the future for all, no exceptions.

What’s in the package?

The Anti-Fragile Playbook is an easy to follow guide for self-governance, and features a neighborhood franchise, where the neighborhood goes into business with itself to create a citizens assembly that’s entirely self-supporting and regenerative.

We’re building a (1) handbook, (2) people-based professional services that are sourced in the community, and are using (3) a mobile app) for self-funded economic revival that leverages an exclusive marketplace to deliver an economic and social stimulus on the community’s terms.

In the lush and fecund Willamette Valley soil, within two greenhouses backing up to an ancient temporal rainforest running for hundreds of miles in all directions, Oregon native Tanya Golden has built and launched her own saffron farm.

Yes. I said saffron; at $5,000 per kg, it's the most expensive spice on earth.

Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus, commonly known as the "saffron crocus," and its high retail value is maintained on world markets because of labor-intensive harvesting methods, which require some 200,000 saffron stigmas to be hand-picked from 70,000 crocus flowers for each 1 pound (0.45 kg) of saffron product - work traditionally performed by women.

A great example of what Anti-Fragile Playbook co-author Ruth Glendinning refers to as "women's work" - the high-value labor typically devalued, demeaned, and ignored.

While it's believed that saffron originated in Iran, researchers may have been domesticated in or near Greece during the Bronze Age.

Saffron's recorded history is attested in a 7th-century BC Assyrian botanical treatise, and has been traded and used for thousands of years. Its use in food, medicine, and art remain central to Iran's culture; one of the oldest and richest continuous civilizations on earth.

Interesting aside: Tanya boasts deep roots in skateboard culture, and has been featured in books, articles, and videos due to her participation in the Burnside skateboard park; a 30-year experiment in semi-autonomous self-governance, cited by author Keith Hamm as heralding "the second coming of the skatepark," and discussed in prior Anti-Fragile Playbook podcast episodes. 

Several years ago, a fellow skateboarder contacted Tanya if there was anything she might want from Israel. He was in the region building a community skateboard park. High-quality concrete skateboard parks are a high-prestige global export from America's Pacific Northwest, built by craftsmen and women who have cut their teeth for 30 years building and maintaining the Burnside skatepark; a depth of experience and skill found nowhere else on earth.

A natural healer deeply in touch with her own family's indigenous traditions, a girl taught by her grandmothers why it's proper to walk with reverence while barefoot at the feet of 200-foot trees, in open communion with the forest's ageless voices, foraging with reverence for berries and mushrooms, Tanya recognized an opportunity to pursue a vision which had restlessly eaten at her imagination:

How to inspire a community to collaborate on a solution that benefits all, beginning with the women.

As Tanya says with great poignancy: "just how hard to I have to work to have the right to say no?"

Tanya's vision pairs indigenous and vulnerable women with a female mentor to learn valuable skills and crafts, in time graduating to become part of the matronage to extend the benefit to others, thus allowing her to transition her business into a 501(c)(3), using the community activation app by 214 Alpha.

She aspires to sponsor a self-sufficient, self-governing community for indigenous and vulnerable women, inspiring threads of cross-cultural pollination and support.

In this episode, Kent Dahlgren & Ruth Glendinning have a far-ranging conversation about their influences and envisioned potentials for communities, all grounded in gratitude for this year that changed everything for everybody.

As you can see in this recent Fast Company article, the world has finally slowed down enough to catch up with S.L.O.W. Tech™. 

Back in 2010, Ruth watched an interview with the editor of the Austin Business Journal in which he dismissed the value of the CRM concept as ‘low tech’ and, therefore, not important to the future of Austin as it was envisioned by the people with money & power.

Ultimately, S.L.O.W. Tech is about using technology to improve the human experience, not distract from it.

This dovetails with the purpose and power of the 214 Alpha platform for community activation which provides the 'how' to the 'why' of creating an accessible, inclusive economic opportunity for all, no exceptions.

Ruth's new venture, Future Story Lab, was formed for the purpose to identify & emerge sense making tools around the evolving future. Combined with the power of Kent's 214 Alpha platform for community activation, we are providing the 'how' to the 'why' of creating an accessible, inclusive economic opportunity for all, no exceptions. It is this power combo that is evolving the Anti-Fragile Playbook, a roadmap to guide the journey to what's next.

Success is fleeting, and does not exist absent the context of failure. Those who embrace failure as a source of wisdom, from a place of humility and honesty, are more adept at successfully navigating extreme circumstances.

In this episode, CEO Kent Dahlgren shares his experience with a concrete skateboard park, originally built illegally in the heart of Portland, Oregon, but today still operating in a state of semi-autonomous self-governance for 30 years.

The Burnside Skatepark is considered a watershed event in the world of skateboarding, broadly considered the catalyst for birthing what’s been called the “Second Coming of the Skatepark;” the boom of public and private skateboard parks built in the decades after skateboarding's rumored demise, following the failure of for-profit skateboard parks in the 1970's.

Asked what he’d call a book about his experiences with Burnside, Kent says “I’d either call it ‘Five years of failure,’ because we could not have done it if not for the lessons learned in the five years prior to our eventual success,” or “one bag at a time,’ because that’s how you build a 9,000 square foot concrete skatepark: one bag at a time.”

The key to the project’s success was in the intense lobbying and negotiations made with the local business community, neighbor association, local law enforcement, local businesses, parents, parks and recreation, etc.

Construction of the park was not endorsed and was therefore illegal, but by the time the city rallied with resources sufficient to destroy the park, the skaters, including Kent, had constructed an air-tight coalition of public and private entities.

In 1991 resolution 1179 was agreed to deliver a community policing agreement, outlining key players, and roles and responsibilities.

Again: this agreement has ensure the park has remained viable and continued its evolution for 30 years.

Kent has been pursuing these pragmatic solutions since the mid-1980’s, and has learned a great deal about what it takes to succeed in the context of extraordinary challenges.

These same insights have come to inform Kent’s vision about self-governance, agency, and community sovereignty, and it’s from this place of wisdom that we are all pleased by the opportunity to work with Ruth Glendinning of FutureStory Labs on an Anti-Fragile Playbook, which provides a step-by-step guide on how community advocates can deliver an autonomous, self-funded economic revival, on their terms, and in alignment with their values.

In our fourth Podcast - "It Takes Money to Make Money  -  the Soft Capital Edition" - Ruth and Kent discussed how one can accelerate the acquisition of hard capital by recognizing and activating forms of soft capital that are ordinarily overlooked.

Wisdom, attention, trust, values, and character - these and more serve as examples of soft capital that are absolutely necessary for a grassroots effort to succeed.

In this interview with Chris Cain, of Alternatives Federal Credit Union in Ithaca, New York, we discuss various innovative programs for community activists seeking hard capital for their neighborhood or community, as well as explore the subtle nuances which exist between hard and soft capital.

Lending institutions don't always have a good name, but it's refreshing to hear of programs such as "character based lending" offered by Alternatives Federal Credit Union.

The abundance necessary to rejuvenate our communities already exists in ample quantity, hidden in plain sight and unrecognized, and not all of it hard capital.

To make this work, we’ll need both sides of the coin, including hard and soft capital.

There's every reason to feel optimistic about our shared future.