Great question: Thanks for asking!

Recently I had the great pleasure of assisting in a very small way, helping to build the straw bale walls of Hamish Randle’s and  Rachel Rose’s new home near Whanganui. The house has been designed to meet exacting Passive House building standards.

It was on a public holiday on September 26, commemorating the Queen’s life and contribution and I couldn’t have thought of a better way to celebrate it. This post from Rachel gives a great account of the day.

Rachel is a Collective Intelligence member, who I would describe as a very smart woman, an excellent communicator of high-performance building and a forester.

Rachel co-owns MacBlack Timber, a specialist timber merchant that sells exotic locally-grown timber. Her farmhouse is built mostly from cypress framing and will have cypress ceilings and solid elm flooring. I can’t wait to see it finished, and Rachel has agreed to a podcast interview when it’s done.

Houses built from straw bales have been around for centuries. In this case, an old material and construction method is being paired with a very high-tech modern, verifiable standard (PHI Passive House). The result, says Rachel, will be a durable home with amazing indoor air quality, always comfortable temperatures and will need virtually no heating or cooling. More in this wee video clip.

• I was there for just one day as a volunteer.
• I was being nosy really – I wanted to see this close up.
• My intention was to learn more about this ancient building process.
• My learning was far more than I could have ever predicted.

Here’s what I observed on the day.

• It started with a really well delivered and communicated brief of the process to about a dozen of us. 
• It was clear we had a mix of experts and mostly novices on-site. 
• Everything was very deliberate, and patient. Questions were asked and answered.
• Personally I felt a little out of my depth and thought how could I possibly be of any help.
• We were split into three teams of four people, with one of the builders in each team.
• And off we went raising the straw bale exterior walls.
• One team was quicker and when they got to the final part of the wall we were all called over to watch the completion of the wall – which is bloody tricky and a work of art.
• It’s compressed with jacks in order to fit in the last row of bales and I thought I hope our wall will cope with this!
• As it happens, it did – about 60 minutes later.
• What I began to realise is that we were mostly volunteers that day, guided by a few skilled professionals.
• We were all people with some connection to Rachel and Hamish. But they had hands-on experience with these materials because they’d previously volunteered to help build a total stranger’s home in the Hawkes Bay.
• That weekend of volunteering brought about a late design change to their own house. Instead of plasterboard and insulation, the internal walls are now being made with light earth material (LEM).
• Rachel says it is characteristic of building with these materials; people who are into building with natural materials are generally keen to learn and develop their skills. It’s common for a diverse group of people to show up and volunteer. This was one of those points in the construction process where a lot of unskilled labour gets the job done really quickly.
• Our lunch was prepared by some locals and we got to meet them – it was awesome.
• The other thing that was really interesting was how healthy these volunteers were – both physically and mentally.
• While we were given really clear boundaries and guidelines at the beginning, as the day progressed we began to get more freedom, and became quicker and more confident.
• That’s when I started to really appreciate what this day was about.
• It was about being in community, and we were volunteering to help build someone’s home!
• And it felt fabulous!!

The framework gave us safety, meant we were useful, and as a community of volunteers we created new weak connections which are incredibly good for us. 

Volunteering feels good.

Over the following weeks I discussed this experience with a number of people, and Michelle Gudopp in our office introduced me to the French definition of Cadre – It’s the embodiment of the cadre, or frame, that French parents often talk about. Cadre means that kids have very firm limits about certain things—that’s the frame—and that the parents strictly enforce these. However, inside the frame, kids have huge freedom to explore.

This resonates big time, and I believe organisationally we need to get way better at this to create better outcomes on multiple levels.

In one of my latest podcasts with Kim Aitken, creator of Truss House, we discussed how her innovation is all about building and activating communities to build new homes, not just teams of builders. It was one of the moments when you start seeing a pattern emerging.

This community thing is getting under my skin, and I realise we need to activate this old value system to take on the future challenges we are facing.

This is the learning web3 and in particular DAOs can learn from. Technology is one thing, but being in community is another, and it takes expertise like I experienced, building with straw bales.

It would be so good for people to experience what it’s like to work in such a tangible space.

Where does that knowledge exist already?

I have said this before; I believe Māori have a natural advantage (as do most indigenous cultures) in being in community. It’s not for the faint-hearted as it takes real rigour to be able to challenge each other, and still function.

Collective Intelligence is great at this with our teams, and we now have aspirations to take it to the next level with the launch of our own Collective Intelligence virtual village in the first quarter of 2023.

This is a big step forward for Collective Intelligence, and the timing is right. I keep imagining this: – What could be created by taking away the barriers of our members, alumni, and associates from connecting in a trusted space.

That’s our opportunity in 2023 after months of planning. Please watch this space.