Looking at flocks of birds doing their aerial ballet around the trees in autumn is amazing. They are all synchronised without a single leader to be seen. Nature shows us that large groups of individuals can be organised and strive for a common goal without compromising on individual interests, talents, skills and even cultures.

Arcade City acted as a magnet for like-minded people, who all found a common sense of belonging. This new shared culture has gone far beyond Arcade City now and next to the social community on Facebook has also attracted developers from the blockchain space and business entrepreneurs, bringing in more facets to the culture, where expressing core talent is stimulated, and freedom of action is encouraged.

All have one belief: we feel like together we can truly change the world.

This text describes the evolution that is taking place to create a swarm culture that embraces the different types of swarm members and by that gives the overall organisation its own, new culture. Swarm 2.0 gives an idea of how we can continue our amazing journey.

Like every great change in society, Arcade City got started by a couple of people who were fed up with how things are. It grew into what almost became a political movement. Everybody touching the idea and the brand’s advocates felt this in their heart: now is the time to change society. We all feel it’s up to us to try and become the change we want to see in this world.

If you have been connected to the Arcade City project, you came here to change something, but probably things are not evolving fast enough for you. You might even feel a bit disoriented right now. It’s the best indicator telling us we’re really changing something. If we would feel like everything’s a-ok, it would tell us we haven’t changed anything yet.

We’re on a trajectory set out by cryptographic technology. So it’s normal to feel all shook up.

We are in the middle of a cultural change, meaning we are embracing more cultures and need to integrate these without having to change the nature of each culture, but rather give it room to thrive and see it as complementary to the existing cultures.

At the moment, we’re like a pack of kids running behind the same ball, playing soccer for the first time. It’s time to get coached, and make sure we are in tactical positions and start playing for real. As the swarm grows it becomes even more important to have more structure to be able to deliver faster.

How can we embrace diversity and make it complimentary?

We all have a shared vision. That’s what brought us together in the first place. So we can stop talking about our vision and start doing things to make this vision real.

In order to make the vision a reality, we all have the unique talent to spot things that need to be changed. The reason you spot these thing in the first place is because you’re probably the best person to change it.

How we create this change is dependent on the strategy. If the strategy is to build an app, get organised like a developer team. If the strategy is to get a group of people together to form a driver’s guild, get organised to get out and flyer, talk to people in the streets, go into clubs and restaurants soliciting for rides.

Trying to create one, same method of operating for different strategies is impossible.

The right tools for the right job

People get together because it’s fun to be around people with whom they have a shared culture.

Culture is which stories we tell each other, and how we tell them. We use tools to tell stories. One might use his voice and body to express an idea, someone else just wants to act and drive a car. A developer will write code, a graphic designer will create visuals.

The tools create the culture. I think we all experienced how different the same people can be on reddit, twitter or facebook. Again, the tool shapes the culture.

In our project, we currently identify three main cultures:

1 / The Swarm

· Culture: Very open (focus is external), talkative, getting inspired, rallying each other, funny, consensus seekers

· Strategy: Social media communication, real life organising and outreach

· Toolset: Ryver, Facebook, Twitter, mobile, Text, Hangouts, facetime, print

· Goal: Get everyday people using the principles and technological facilities to bring our shared vision to life

· Organisational model: Democracy like

2 / The Developer Team

· Culture: More closed (focus is internal), structured comms (user stories, planning poker), focused on tasks, getting real with each other, nerdy jokes, childlike behaviour

· Strategy: Code (smart contracts, javascript, photoshop, html), Scrum / Agile / rapid prototyping, computers

· Toolset: Atom / Sublime, Mac OS, Ubuntu, Photoshop, Github, Gitter, Netlify

· Goal: Create real life technological tools everyday people can use to create our shared vision

· Organisational model: Technocratic dictatorship

3 / The Business Team

· Culture: Open but factual (focus is internal and external), structured, both feet on the ground, getting things done, result driven, polite, balanced

· Strategy: Spreadsheets, conference calls, legal, KPI’s, status and progress reporting

· Toolset: Google Docs / Spreadsheets, Hangouts, Skype, LinkedIn, Windows, Conferences / Networking

· Goal: Coaching the hives in reaching their goals, keep the hives growing towards the shared vision, focusing on making the token ever more valuable

· Organisational model: Business like, somewhat hierarchical

Three core hives, one swarm.

Most people in each hive will not be very interested in the other hive. That’s a good thing: we want nice tight hives with like-minded people loyal to each other, not to another hive.

In each hive there are some people who are also interested in the bigger picture, in what’s beyond the hive. These people will find each other in sustaining and further imagining our shared vision.

Our greatest value and main selling point are these different cultures. They allow for conflicting interactions, based on trust generated by the shared token. This results in a magical method of creating value.

Letting these cultures blossom and interact requires faith in letting go, setting the prerequisites for a new society to arise, based on a common way of expressing value, resulting in a new peer to peer economy.

Author:

Michael Thuy, System Architect