Drea & Yaz here.
Drea:
This week I’d like to tell you all a wonderful tale of collaboration.
Quick backstory: Ask my parents and they’ll tell you - one of my favorite childhood phrases was ‘me do.’ Welcoming another person’s input can feel like a serious loss of control, so asking for help is something I’ve always been a bit reluctant to do.
However, during these past 3 weeks, I’ve really had no other option. Just ask my personal caretaker, Yaz (who I cannot thank enough).
Yaz:
So basically, while performing some bada**ery on a skateboard, our friend, Drea, went flying and broke her arm! With immense persistence as an innate quality of her personality, this woman is the reason about five or six other people have also begun skating, which is amazing! It’s seriously the most awesome new skill, although some of us prefer to skate in a straight line (lol). Safety first… but also you gotta be fearless.
For a hot sec, both of Drea’s arms were out of commission and given that I spend quite a bit of time with Drea and her arms, I’ve been able to temporarily offer mine! That’s what friends are for :) Overall, it’s been quite a heartwarming experience for me but then again I’m not the one with the broken arm.
Drea:
Heartwarming to the max.
This predicament has helped me see that what you lose in control, you make up for in insight. Sometimes the most difficult problem can be solved by someone else’s most obvious observation. For instance, with a freshly fractured arm and frazzled mind, I was struggling to assemble even the first piece of my 92018409184 part desk. Luckily, Yaz came to my rescue. “Why are you on Step 7?” Right. Good question.
Yaz:
Sometimes we ask for help/ideas on our own terms. But sometimes, we’re forced into releasing control. Whichever route you take, you’ll end up in a space of collaborative communication. I find that we are often surprised by how much an outside perspective can bring in terms of clarifying and enhancing the completion of a project or creative process. The above story is quite a silly one to carry across this idea, but hey, the whole is contained within the parts.
Drea:
So in the spirit of shared insights, perspectives and creative burdens, we’re launching a new event series: Junto Den Events. Eventually, we want this to be a blueprint for other people to host their own freeform sharing events. The goal is to eventually grow a distributed network of ‘Junto Dens’ (aka chapters).
Yaz:
Designing an alternative social media platform with the intention of rebalancing our relationship with technology means that offline experiences of community and expression are just as (if not more) important than online ones. To attend and/or learn about what the first of these free experimental gatherings will entail, check out our eventbrite here.
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Thanks for following the story - much love
Draz
PS. We’re looking for a mobile engineer to join forces with us. We’re using Flutter, which is a framework for building fast, native cross-platform apps. Send me an email at eric@junto.foundation if interested. (https://junto.substack.com/p/flux-13-create-with-us)
What’s new
#JoinTheConversation
Feel free to join our Junto Pack slack channel! You can sign up here and email yasmin@junto.foundation if you’d like to speak with someone on the team directly.
#JuntoIndiegogo
Due to a stream of requests, we’ve extended our crowdfunding campaign to Indiegogo InDemand. Check it out here!
#JuntoPack
We’re going to revisit monthly Junto Pack calls. They’re going to take place the first Sunday of every month at 2pm ET, starting on May 5th. Feel free to join if you’d like to receive more intimate updates on what’s happening month to month, ask our core team any questions, and see how you can get involved. We’ll post the link to the video conference in our Slack channel here.
#InfiniteGratitude
Junto stickers, bracelets, t-shirts, and hoodies are under production and will be delivered in June, as promised. If you reserved a username, we’ll confirm those in June as well. If you missed the Kickstarter and want to get involved, you can still do so on our Indiegogo page here.
#WeeklyResonations
Here’s what our team found valuable this week:
From Dora:
Walking around in Brooklyn, I was super excited to discover Precycle, The First Store in NY selling package-free produce, bulk food and home goods. Yesss!
Precycle is a package-free store in Brooklyn NY, selling local organic produce, bulk food and sustainable, Eco friendly household products for a zero waste lifestyle.
We want your feedback.
Like what you see? Share it! Think we can be doing things better? Let us know. We’re open to ideas so DM us at hi@junto.foundation or drop any of the team members a note at their individual emails listed on our website here.