🌿The Spore

Brought to you by the team at Organizational Mycology

Ongoing shifts and uncertainty in funding landscapes and general support for science are causing many of us to start thinking about how we can create more resilience: How do we continue advancing science, computing, and all the other things we’re interested in when the traditional structures seem to be (temporarily or permanently) falling apart? What can we do to work outside of these traditional structures, and still maintain our commitment to including and empowering a variety of people? 

The challenges we’re facing introduce questions about team management and the act of organizing. We might, for example, find ourselves collaborating and sharing resources with folks who we haven’t worked with previously. We might need to find new funding streams together, build new tools, rely on our networks, and work together in new ways with new partners to keep our work and our research going. 

Resilience is vital these days and at OrgMycology, we’re always looking to mycological metaphors, like slime mold.

Have look at this visualization / model of slime mold behavior (press the Play button at the top once the code loads on your screen) hunting resources (screencap below). Watch the simulation for a while and you’ll see the mold breaking old networks apart and creating new ones, building new pathways that reflect the shifting landscape. The network is continually breaking apart and forming again, covering new territory, and exploring the landscape.

Mapping this onto our current challenges, we can see how we might need to embrace new connections and new networks.

Where are your existing connections breaking apart and re-forming? How can “old” connections continue, just in new shapes and arrangements? What do you want to preserve?

News 

A few friends have started commenting on our 10 Simple Rules for Leadership without Formal Authority article and there are some really nice reflections from Stephen Deobald:

“this is a fantastic document and much of it applies to any leadership role, not just foss leaders. 9/10 if you’re leading by formal authority, you’re probably doing it wrong”   BlueSky

Check out more comments from our friends Ted Laderas and Richard Littauer.

Short Updates

• 🌐 For our CZI Open Science friends, we’ll be holding our monthly Open Science Community Call, Strategic Planning for Open Source Projects - Open source projects often operate under a great deal of uncertainty: Grants may or may not be funded, contributors and maintainers come and go, and upstream/downstream dependencies change. In this 60-minute call, we’ll discuss how co-producing a strategic plan with your core team and/or community can help navigate uncertainty and make your project more adaptable to both surprise and routine change. Join other members of the CZI community to discuss topics such as: What’s the difference between a strategic plan and a project roadmap, and how can they complement one another? How often should you assess and revise your strategic plan?  How can your strategic plan be useful beyond goal-setting, such as communicating plans to funders, inviting feedback from the community, or managing turnover on your project team? Sign up for the call (and future calls), and learn more about Open Science Community Calls.
• 🌿 Beth just put out a note from her Everyday Flourishing project. She speaks about what we can do in the winter to conserve energy.