The map also shows (in red) the flow of a regular cycle of activities connected to particular spaces or the network as a whole. We are proposing a natural flow of activities, that tie in modern project management processes (often inspired by agile / lean methodologies), institutional and natural rhythms.
In particular we are proposing an annual decentralised festival, or conference, which serves to bring together the spaces and act as a showcase of the work created in the previous year. This event will also act as a governance event for the network, enabling a new plan for the forthcoming year to be agreed and people and budgets allocated.
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This annual event is described in more detail below, but it is important to state early that much of the purpose of this project is to redesign the way we govern, and organise ourselves. As such, and in common with other elements of this document we take some familiar and common cultural ingredients and blend them with technology and new ideas to create or recreate something new and unfamiliar. With regards this annual event it is both a serious governance milestone and a great party, with art, dance and food.
## Purpose of the events Those of us with an engineering mindset, may see little purpose in such an event or "party" - however this is misreading the purpose of such an event. The purpose is quite simply to provide a clear project management infrastructure which is motivational to the diverse set of participants that we will need to build this network. This methodology has been evaluated over a number of years, and based on discussions and interviews with around a dozen co-living and co-working projects. It is not based on theory but on the evaluation of the practice of such organisations in the use of currency and governance mechanisms - particularly projects that involve a mix of technology, art and creativity and wider community engagement. The combination of a larger annual cycle, punctuated by regular monthly or shorter cycles is a familiar, well tested and is readily amenable to combine with an agile development methodology. Regular monthly "product-planning" meetings which discuss progress with a wide range of stake-holders can readily be mapped to a podcast that helps grow the community and interest in the project. The podcast and annual event can act as a key motivational factor for artists key to exhibit their work, and also act as a framework to engage in a slower overview of the direction of the project. In Googles GIST terminology the annual cycle provides an opportunity to refactor project goals, and select a series of step-projects and OKR's for the year. Each pod-cast production cycle can adopt agile methodology designed to showcase and receive objective feedback on the progress of the project from a diverse set of expert opinions (guests invited to the podcast). Therefore, our aim here is to place the annual event within the context of a series of regular sprints, punctuated by (product) planning meetings that act as opportunities to both manage product development (activities) and engage an audience of makers that can help us build and design complex systems. We call the regular events pod-casts, and they are described in more detail below.