You can see us talking about LOPO with Elsa Punset on REDES here or below. Thanks to Elsa, we think she’s awesome!
As a result we’ve had huge interest in LOPO chapters in Spain. We’ll be contacting all of you who’ve been in touch with us shortly about how LOPO is spreading through the Spanish speaking world…. Watch this space. It’s going to be exciting.
The League of Pragmatic Optimists return with the first of many regular events in London in 2013 (to complement growing chapters in Madrid, Wellington and Cape Town).
So please secure your places for our first LOPO serendipity session of the year where you can pitch an idea you need help with to the assembled attendees, or contribute your genius to projects asking for your insight.
If you’ve got a project that aims to make the world better and you’d like to pitch at LOPO London please e-mail Tom Mansfield beforehand. You can, of course, turn up on the night but we only have limited slots…. so you may be bumped to our next meeting in April…
For everyone else, please let us know you’re coming so we can plan for the right numbers (that’s what we use Eventbrite for) and then contribute your lovely brains on the night…. As before we’ll take over the upstiars of the lovely The Green pub, 29 Clerkenwell Gree, London EC1 (a mere hop from Farringdon tube/ rail)- which does lovely food and snack and fine ales and wines…
Reserve your place here
Arrive 6:30 for 7pm kick off.
Should be fun!
So, as usual there been a lot happening at LOPO towers – ready for us to move forward in 2013.
We’ve been getting the foundations right behind the scenes. Whilst we know it’s frustrating for some of you that we haven’t been more ‘out there’ in 2012, but we’d rather have a successful future thand a short lived past. After all, we are, at heart, pragmatic optimists. Too many network ideas fail because the founders don’t think carefully about how to grow and when. We’re not keen to make that mistake.
News, news, news….
So, LOPO is stirring. We’re working on a new web-platform, we have a new world-wide admin team in place, a new chapter manual is being forged and we have people wanting to set up chapter in places far too numerous to mention…
Do keep watching this space…., it appears to be growing.
In the meantime do visit our new facebook page… and join up, so we can contact you with local LOPO activity when it kicks off.
A good few of you have been asking (and rightly so) ‘what’s happened to LOPO?’
Here’s the update.
We feel we’ve done our ‘beta’ with the meetings in London – and now have a good idea where we want to go next and the infrastructure this will require: most notably a collaborative web-space to allow LOPO projects to live online.
We now know that LOPO helps projects thrive – just look at The Indigo Mind Machine one of the projects that got a boost from the London meetings.
So, LOPOists from LOPO London and LOPO Wellington, New Zealand (who include the awesome people at Mohawk Media) are working together to find the right technology and bring it together to create the online collaboration and innovation space we need. This is taking longer than we’d like but we also feel that having more chapter meetings at this stage will just get us at the same point we’re already at – and we want to create a worldwide movement. That requires a good web-space.
In short, we’d like to launch LOPO Madrid, LOPO Singapore, LOPO Sydney, LOPO New York (and all the rest) with a good platform from the ‘get go’.
So, to (mis)quote Monty Python: LOPO isn’t dead, it’s not even resting… but we’re aware a lot of you want to meet again. We assure you, you will…. And we thank you for you enthusiasm for LOPO and your patience with the web-space team.
Here’s one of the projects that got a boost at the very first LOPO meeting in London last year – The Indigo Mind Project…. now moving forward thanks to LOPOist collaboration and enthusiasm…
Dear LOPOists,
Meetings have been on hold since last month as we have decided it is important to have our web space running before continuing monthly sessions. Everyone keeps telling us they want somewhere to continue lopoing online – and so we’re in a research and development phase working with LOPOists in London and Wellington, New Zealand.
However there is a London LOPO speaker event coming soon so please hold tight for details…
In the meantime keep serendipitising and we leave you with this great vote of confidence from an exchange with Steven Pinker - “Pragmatic optimism is an idea whose time has come.”
LOPO London 3 (23rd Feb) went well. Six projects pitched and we were inundated with thanks afterwards from proposers who said they had great input from the LOPOers to take their projects to the next level. Hurrah!
That said, we still think the format needs tweaking – and we’re still working hard on a web space (we had some offers of help there which we’re following up), so watch this space.
In addition look out for a LOPO speaking event coming soon….
Please see event details (and reserve places) at: http://lopolondon3feb2012.eventbrite.com/
Update: This event now oversubscribed. Do add yourself to the wait list and we’ll try to release a few more places nearer the date.
After the success of London LOPO 2 in January, and due to popular demand we’re ploughing straight on with London LOPO 3; same venue on Thursday 23rd February and, we hope, much of the same vibe. We listened hard at the last meeting (and those of you that have been in touch since) and we’ll be trying a new meeting format including a slightly different room set up, easier ways to capture ideas and input, along with some other ‘serendipity tools’.
Similar to the last meeting we’ll have
As before we’re meeting upstairs at The Green Pub and Dining Room in Clerkenwell (Farringdon Tube and Rail). The pub’s website is here.
So come down to:
As always it’s an opportunity to bump into people who want to make the world better – it’s all about serendipty and the meeting of minds…
With love,
Mark, Tom & Fiona
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