This first announcement about Dadamac Connect is aimed at people who are already in contact with Nikki Fishman and/or me (Pamela McLean) in some way. Others are welcome to read this of course, but it will make more sense to people who know us.
A new enterprise
Nikki and I are setting up a new enterprise called Dadamac Connect.
As individuals, inside and outside of Dadamac, we have a track record of "connecting the dots" in various ways. For years, in a comparatively informal way, we've been:
- Bringing together new combinations of ideas, individuals and organisations.
- Introducing people and helping them to do useful stuff together.
- Enabling people to collaborate despite communication barriers (such as separation through distance, and belonging in different cultures).
- Building people's skills, confidence and connections as they face new challenges and opportunities.
Connecting the past and the future.
Now, in Dadamac Connect, Nikki and I are creating a point of connection for all the things we've done in the past and all the things we'll be doing in the future.
Dadamac Connect is going to be financially sustainable, earning its living through the services it provides. It may do some pro-bono work, especially while it is developing its client base (and later when it's rich enough to do generous social corporate responsibility projects) but it is being set up as a business. If we can't see a way to make something pay, then we won't do it.
We start out with a wealth of intangible assets built up through years of connecting and collaborating, of learning and doing, of experimenting and reflecting, and of doing day-jobs unconnected with Dadamac. Dadamac Connect has emerged from all of this and more.
We aren't just connecting our own pasts and our own futures through Dadamac Connect. We'll also be helping others to make the transition from "past lifestyles" into "future lifestyles" (i.e. the move away from a traditional "learning then earning" pathway into something better fitted to the unsettled scenarios facing us today).
More about how we'll be doing that in a future post - or contact us for details.
Transparency, starting with what we've got and gradually emerging
We don't have a Dadamac Connect website yet so it makes sense to publish this announcement on the Dadamac.net website. This is because Dadamac Connect is emerging from our previous work in Dadamac.net - and as the front page of the Dadamac.net site proclaims:
Dadamac is about "Collaboration, Education, Livelihoods and Development in a Changing World".
It's also relevant that:
"The Dadamac.net website is a working space, with practical projects, creative ideas, and thoughtful analysis all bubbling away together."
Dadamac Connect is a practical project.
For the sake of transparency I should probably explain that most of the content and structure you see on the dadamac.net website is the outcome of what could be described as my "unusual hobby" i.e. it's been a learning-by-doing project (as it also says on the front page "To discover connections between all things Dadamac simply look below the surface and there'll be some tie, weak or strong, to Pamela McLean). To put it another way the work I've done in Dadamac to date, some of which is visible here on Dadamac.net, has been work driven by passion not payment. Dadamac Connect benefits from my connections and from Nikki's.
So, although Dadamac Connect will probably have a site of its own when it's more firmly established, this is its natural home, its starting point, and part of its social capital. It will emerge as a separate entity later.