What we think we've figured out so far

a) Basecamps are in-person gatherings of (perhaps 60 to 120) co-conveners

Basecamps are in-person gatherings of people that aim to co-convene:

• "The mixing that is missing" (a shared, physical space for people who span generational, sectoral and socio-economic gaps)
• In a "room that is roofless" (where committed thinkers and doers can imagine and blueprint together without affiliation or external influence)
• Where "the expectation is existential" (where deep and systemic challenges are the agenda, and participants come with the courage to go forth and quest, wherever these dialogues lead us)
• To "connect, support and challenge one another" (not to sit and hear speeches or attend scripted sessions)

b) What should the goals of a basecamp be?

The basecamps are envisaged to be an ongoing, global series of locally rooted, in-person membership gatherings.

The collective aim of these gatherings is to help participants launch Expeditions and/or identify Expeditions that they want to support, learn from, get involved in, etc.

At a personal level, basecamps aim to be sites where participants can accomplish, in a single day, conversations, insights, allegiances and commitments that would otherwise take a year to arrange and complete, so that their Expeditions gain new direction, critique, speed and chance of success.

At basecamps, it is extremely likely that we will all meet like-minded pathfinders with whom we might continue to travel. But basecamps are not "professional networking events." They are collaborative, facilitated efforts to identify, challenge the thinking behind, and support bold expeditions. Basecamps are precious face-time for dialogues and collaborations that have already begun, and that will continue long after participants disperse.

Each basecamp also aims to enrich the re•base movement, in scope, diversity and energy of membership.

c) What should the aspirations for the basecamp format be?

With practice, the basecamps will evolve into increasingly unique gatherings that:

• Bring together diversity in ways beyond what is customary (e.g., young and old, advantaged and disadvantaged, executives and artists);
• Bring together leaders who are navigating the paradoxical demands that society puts upon their role (e.g., short-term vs long-term, shareholders vs society, monetary vs immeasurable, personal vs professional). Paradoxes are the sites where systemic problems are plainest to see, and hardest to deal with;
• Bring pathfinders together across cultures. Each culture is a mass experiment in how society ought to function. Basecamps aim to seed pathfinding expeditions with the wisdom from multiple mass experiments;
• Ask challenging questions. Basecamps are not conferences that dispense knowledge and wisdom; they are gatherings where we seek it, through challenging dialogue. Basecamps curate dialogues around high-quality questions, because this is the best way to learn and the best way to challenge our own thinking and self-awareness; and
• Bias toward action and celebrating small wins. Basecamps urge participants to set off on expeditions that engage with the paradoxes, confusions, uncertainties, anxieties, atomization and addictions of the present moment. Basecamps celebrate each successful attempt to demonstrate the possibility of a different and more beautiful world, as a necessary step toward reaching that new reality.

d) Where are more investment and resources most needed next?

i) Inviting the "mix that is missing"

The current approach is (roughly):

• The organizing team invites the first half of participants, with an eye toward (a) seeding each Table with diverse relevant perspectives and (b) inviting the "mix that is missing" into the overall room. This first wave is drawn from the organizers' own networks, but (increasingly) from alumni of prior basecamps and from alumni nominations.
• That first wave of participants are then invited to invite the second wave of participants.

This process aims to:

• Convene 60-120 participants who are drawn from within, and from outside, the current re•base community.
• Share amongst all participants the power and the responsibility to convene "the mix that is missing". It is not the sole responsibility of the organizers to achieve this outcome. It is a collective responsibility.

Executing this approach - and improving it - will require more human resources than are currently available. In the first wave, the organizers make good-faith attempts to create a diverse pool of half the participants (e.g., reaching out to both extremes of the socio-economic spectrum), but cannot volunteer the hours to persist into certain communities if the first few avenues fail. In the second wave, understandably, first-time participants do not immediately understand this new power and responsibility. Some simple additional resources (e.g. quick explainer videos?) would help.

ii) Supporting the drafting of Challenge Papers

In a fully resourced model, each Table Champion would be identified three or more months prior to basecamp. And each Champion would then work with one or more coaches to draft their Table's Challenge Paper, and to improve their draft through two or more revisions, so that the Paper that is shared with participants hits consistent targets for readability and "engage-ability" with a distinctively diverse group of people.

We'd like to evolve to the point where people see the opportunity to Champion a Table at a basecamp as a highly sought-after chance to very quickly make a lot of progress in how they think, and relate to people about, a big important problem that preoccupies them.

Critical Questions that still need answering

a) What is the right funding model for a basecamp? And what is the right way to communicate the value of taking part in a basecamp?

re•base is a non-profit organization with a goal to be 100% owned and self-sustainable by inspirational and action-oriented people.

The funding model being tested for basecamp:London is "contribute what you can." The amounts contributed by participants will go towards:

• First, covering the direct costs of convening basecamp:London,
• Second, covering expenses incurred by the organizing team, and
• Third, investing in the infrastructure to support effective and successful Expeditions and subsequent basecamps.

A lot of careful thought went into the "contribute what you can" approach to funding basecamp:London. Any fixed fee will diminish the mix of people who feel that (a) they can attend and (b) that their participation is equally valued.

One obvious alternative model - to charge a fixed fee, then subsidize those who cannot afford it - treats some people differently from others. We're naïve if we think that such differential treatment would not influence how we think and behave in the room. It would. It would undermine our mission to create "the mix that is missing."

Another obvious alternative - to subsidize the costs of our coming-together with external sponsorship - would, we think, compromise the "roofless" quality of our basecamps. Pragmatically, no organization will sponsor an event whose content conflicts with their agenda. So to accept outside money is to accept that what happens at basecamp (and beyond) must be consistent with that outside agenda.

The world is already full of spaces that make such compromises. Even if the compromises are not immediately apparent, they exist. What is lacking, and needed, we believe, is a space that can be uncompromising ("roofless") in its explorations.

And that means fully member-funded gatherings. But the "contribute what you can" approach does present challenges. For example:

• Some people perceive that their contribution is a "donation" to some other entity, but that's incorrect. It's an act to share the costs that they themselves are generating by showing up. And, if they contribute beyond the costs that they themselves generate, it's also an investment in the diversity of the room (which enriches the value that everyone gets from being in it).
• Some people are used to spending, say, £2,000 on a 1.5-day, overnight event that has an agenda packed with big-name speakers and other familiar tokens of "here's what you get in exchange for paying the ticket price." But if we take away the stage and sprinkle the same speakers at round tables in a room, they don't quite know how to value that experience. On the one hand, basecamp supplies more of what people really want - meaningful engagement in a roomful of amazing people. On the other hand, it supplies less of what people are familiar paying money for.

Convening fully member-funded gatherings also means, we think, a certain frugality. We owe it to ourselves to convene in inspiring spaces. And we look for such spaces whose owners "get it" and are willing to give our group preferential access with no expectation of getting something in return. (Basecamp:London is taking place where it is because the venue and accommodations are being supplied to our group at a heavy discount below cost, which makes it the single most affordable option we could find in the London area.)

Keeping the hard costs of convening low helps to keep accessibility and diversity high. At the time of writing this paper, it looks like the "contribute what you can" approach will not generate enough money to compensate for the labour cost of putting the event together.

• Each person who takes part in basecamp:London generates about US$400 in direct costs (including accommodation, meals, venue, facilitators and materials). The direct costs would be higher, but the venue and accommodations are being supplied at a 50% discount below cost.
• We estimate another US$250 per person in indirect costs - mainly, to cover out-of-pocket expenses by the organizing team to bring the many elements of basecamp together. This time has been volunteered, but we as a community cannot rely upon it being gifted repeatedly. That is not sustainable.
• Many participants choose not to make a money contribution, because they are already making a large non-monetary contribution (as Table Champions, Facilitators, Organizers, etc).

b) How should we schedule upcoming "global" basecamps, and how should that be decided?

One idea to be member-driven about this is to set certain criteria for the site of a global basecamp and invite people (inside and outside the community?) to assemble resources to meet that criteria. When sites do so, then the organizers commit to help making it happen (subject to resources and other constraints). A couple criteria might include, e.g.:

• An organizing team possessing some to-be-defined prerequisites (e.g. diverse local connections to help bring together the people and resources of a basecamp)
• A venue partner who gifts an inspiring and appropriate space with no expectation of anything in return
• Securing some initial (local?) champions who are preoccupied with big challenges and have the energy to frame them and engage them
• Securing some initial participants who demonstrate a good start toward the "mix that's missing"

Another idea that's been floated is to appoint a certain period each year (of two-week, or one-month duration?) when all basecamps, everywhere, local and global, are scheduled. One imagined benefit of this idea is to give organizers of local basecamps a calendar-milestone to work toward (If they can organize their basecamp to fit within that time-window, then their local event is, in effect, taking part in a simultaneous global event. That may be appealing for various reasons - e.g., as an intrinsic motivator to participants)

c) (How) Can others organize basecamps within the re•base movement?

Alumni and supporters have already come forward and expressed their interest in convening basecamps in their country/city/community, following the re•base model, in Singapore, Australia (Sydney and Melbourne), New Zealand, Jordan, the United States (New York, Santa Fe), Canada (Toronto #2, Calgary), Colombia, Kenya, South Africa.

The firmest offer (i.e., with a local person pledged behind it) is for a basecamp:Calgary or basecamp:Banff in Spring 2020, and for a basecamp:New York in Fall 2020.)

The authors of this paper want to work with alumni who want to convene a basecamp, and figure out together how that would work. The authors don't want to figure out the "franchise model" for ourselves, and then supply others with the finished kit. We have a strong desire not to be the bottleneck resource that gets in the way of a good thing.

Critical sub-questions then become:

i) Is there a distinction between basecamps that are convened by the original re•base team and those that are convened by basecamp alumni? (e.g., perhaps along the TED vs TEDx model)

One distinction that has been proposed by some basecamp:Toronto alumni is that the main (global?) basecamps spawn new Expeditions, whereas the "local" basecamps serve mainly as waypoints where existing Expeditions can apply to convene a Table (e.g., the Toronto-born Expedition to put "An Artist At Every Table" sees that there's a local basecamp coming up in Florence, and thinks, "Hey, that's an obvious place for us to bring our work, find new allies, etc…")

Part of the thinking here is that the resources needed to curate 5-10 new Challenge Papers for a basecamp are significant. This local-basecamp-is-a-waypoint approach might de-link the (a) logistical effort and (b) content creation effort to pulling off a basecamp, and make it easier to do. It could also supply the expanding population of Expeditions with a variety of milestones to choose from, to help them find and maintain focus on their journeys.

Another possible distinction could be that local basecamps convene around a specific issue of local concern or strength (e.g. A diverse group might gather in "City X" under the challenge of "Rethinking Welfare" to launch a serious grassroots investigation of Universal Basic Income-the hype, the hopes, and the interests and arguments for-and-against).

ii) How do we ensure that every basecamp reinforces and spreads the values of the re•base movement, and does not compromise them - especially when many of these values and culture elements are still emerging?

We've got a hunch that basecamps should mutate as they spread. "Mutate", rather than "scale up," intuitively feels like a better metaphor for how this movement grows. So a basecamp in China and a basecamp in Kenya should be the same, but different. It should (a) align with the core/hub principles and values that define the overall movement while also (b) retaining autonomy to do whatever's best given their context and intentions.

The challenge is that this list of "sames" and "differences" isn't yet fully known. And it probably always will be provisional, and will be improved with each new basecamp experiment. How do we co-develop that emerging list, while holding central and staying true to some essential principles and characteristics? (e.g. no outside money)

iii) What is the "onboarding" or "screening" or "commitment" process that would help get each local act of convening off to the right start, and what is the ongoing collaboration process with the global group to keep things on track - leading up to, at, and beyond each local basecamp?

Maybe to qualify under the "re•base / basecamp" banner, organizers of a local basecamp might need to, e.g.:

• Agree to a core set of principles and values
• Agree to meet certain quality standards for the gathering
• Agree to connect it with the wider network somehow (by extending invitations or sharing outputs, for example)
• Undertake a concise training on the basecamp model, the dialogue process, etc…

iv) How should "local" basecamps and "global" basecamps be contractually, legally and financially related?

v) How are alumni from "local" basecamps, and how are Expeditions that arise from local basecamps, enabled to be fully included and supported and involved in the wider movement?