Lessons Learned—25 Hours and Beyond

Overall, the #24hours24steps event was a resounding success, both numerically speaking and in terms of “community temperature”. Here is a summary of the outcomes and the future ideas that came out of it for the MIT Bootcamp Alumni community.

Numbers — the quantifiable

• Participation data: during the course of the 25 hours of the event, a total of 287 participants joined; the virtual Zoom room registered a low of 3 participants (at no time did the space remain empty) and a peak of 28; one Alumnus even stayed on uninterruptedly for the entire duration of the videothon;

  

• Harvested resources: a total of 25 hours of footage was recorded and edited in the ensuing weeks, resulting in a total of 65 video clips ranging from 10 to 60 minutes each, uploaded to a YouTube playlist and made available to the extended Alumni community through sharing one video per day; other written data is still being parsed for reshare; we believe this will form the basis for creating a case history archive that could be of benefit to our whole community, including entrepreneurship teachers and trainers.
• Ongoing conversations: a forum-like container space was added into our MBA² Alumni network platform, to house ongoing discussions around each of the 25 steps thus enabling an asynchronous cumulation of our collective intelligence over time.
• Creative inspiration: one Alumnus who is a graphic designer ideated and executed on his idea of mirroring back to the community a sense of what had been generated, as well as honouring the work of content contributors, by putting together a Speaker Map and Speaker Cards.
  

  

Community Fever — the less-measurable

• Testimonies : Some of the less quantifiable, warm data, comes in the form of heart-warming testimonies, here is one example I quote from a participant who also committed to help facilitate a session: “A success! The energy level was so high that the adrenaline rush is still kicking in! From industry veterans to tech wizards to innovators to commendable spokespersons, each one of you added a wonderful angle to the story, and to the learning journey. Everyone played a vital part.”
• Imagination : Also, it is interesting to observe (in some of the more recent community interactions) the imaginary projection of this prototype into possible future evolutions — for instance, some Alumni are excited at the thought of a more structured “24 hours in 24 days event”, or forming peer-driven coaching groups, or even setting up outward-facing consulting clusters.  It is as though new energy has seeped into the social soil like oxygen through the plough of this prototype, thus expanding the future field of possibilities and germinating a higher, more ambitious future potential for a community that is learning about its own capacity to create impact through harnessing the power of the pack.
• Collaborations : exciting new conversations and prospects are being born across the network as a result of having once again joined forces to work toward an exciting common goal.

In the context of my work with the Presencing Institute regarding leadership and communication, I am particularly interested in better understanding the relationship between leadership, vulnerability and trust. This is what we will look at in the last article of this series, where I share the reflections and observations that derived from the #24hours24steps initiative.

Footnote: this is the 4th of 5 articles adapted for the Disciplined Entrepreneurship website, from an original article by Rachel Hentsch, published on Medium.