Risk takers
The warming up immediately broke through common approaches. After several short ice breaking exercises, touching each others foot, looking deep into the other persons eyes before telling your name, our Danish host Niels asked for the risk takers in the group, people with project ideas for a better future. During a workshop session several ideas were shared in small groups in order to get better insight. Involving people with different backgrounds helps ideas to grow and evolve. What are the needs? How do we fulfill those needs? Little by little the ideas were transformed into a more challenging stage and presented to the group. The only constraint of the exercise: 'Do it playful and present it in active way!'

Balance
After each presentation Niels asked: 'Is there a balance? Is there a need?' What are the experiences of the risk takers? The experience was very rich. Roseliek explained enthusiastically: 'It was very helpful. I got loads of feedback. For Pim it was an eye opener: 'I didn't think about starting with the kids before'. The role of the whole group in the reflection process was important. As Peter said: 'Everyone is part of each story.'As Annemiek explained: 'When you share things it can grow' and this can be enjoyable, as Wouter pointed out: 'It was fun to do. Now I have more ideas for the usage of my project.'
The most important lesson to be learned was provided by Niels in the end: 'Why are you all looking at me? Why are we waiting for a leader kind of person? Why don't you just start yourself?!'

Fish bowl
In the second part of the evening the so called 'fish bowl approach' was used to examine O2 and its future. In front of all participants four members of the O2 board discussed their concerns about the regular subsidies that will stop after 2008. O2 can offer an interesting platform to discuss design and sustainable development. What will be a strategic approach? Should we have to go for a multiple strategy: other sponsors, more members, /commercial activities (with differences between members and non members)? There was a clear understanding of the audience which helped to bridge the gap between the board and the O2 members. Kakee, the previous chair of O2 NewYork, came up with very straightforward advice: We had to go with the flow. Follow the energy ('we have this great idea') and support what there is (...although you love other projects). Reward each contribution!

Fun to do
We came to the end of an evening full of playful presented ideas and useful feedback. The exercises were fun to do although not for everyone enough to understand the input of the Kaos method. Maybe the exercises would have been more focused if people came already with an "enterprise project" developed. Some participants were expecting this type of learning from the evening. But definitely KaosPilots made us aware of our own strength and curiousity.

Thanks to all participants, to Gerda Zijlstra for bringing us to Kaos Pilots, to Niels from KaosPilots for being the energetic leader of the evening, to Zus Kookt for the lovely food, to Enviu for offering us their new office space for this event, to Annemiek and Iris for the preparations, to Peter for designing the invitiation card, and to Anna for her feedback after the meeting.

Foto's