Up until now we haven't really had a direction, Pat, it's just been an informal study group.

The purpose has always been to learn from Venture. But there's never been a particular path for that. Learning from Venture is what the dialogues (and speaker series before) are intended to do: to learn about Venture from those who were involved, with an eye toward how we can use that knowledge for the future.

Beyond that learning was to be self-directed. The regular Study Group meetings on Tuesdays are to discuss what we have learned and what we want to learn; to plan and reflect on our learning.

That's all the "path" was.

It seems to me that many folks want to do something more active and hands-on. There seems to be especially strong interest among participants in developing a community-wide vision.

Unfortunately, there are no resources for establishing a formal organization to do that on a large scale. And, as much as I think it's important to learn from Venture, there don't seem to be resources to support large public meetings. I personally can't afford to put more effort into them.

I know the path I personally want to take and would welcome anyone and everyone to come along. That involves scaling down the public dialogues and doing more to directly and systematically engage people.

Since there are no major resources to support that, it's going to have to be a collaborative, "crowd-sourced" approach. Basically, I'm going to approach it as an entrepreneur rather than a professor. Unless you have other suggestions. I'm flexible but personally need to refocus.

So the Study Group needs to shift from studying what Venture did to identifying specific needs & opportunities to do what Venture did. It needs to move from self-directed learning to collaborative action to directly engage regular folks, basically what you suggest: ask simple, meaningful question, record responses, and share them to inform the "network."

That's where I'm going to focus.

For example, I love your list of topics. We need folks to convene small group discussions and share results, rather than having a few large gatherings that don't really have results. How do we do that? I think Venture points the way. I plan to follow that path. Again, I more than welcome others to come along as partners, participants, sponsors, etc.

Does that make sense?

On Mon, Apr 6, 2026, at 7:02 PM, Deconstruction Advisory Board wrote:

I cannot attend Tuesday's meeting. The feedback I have gotten from those I invited to attend and others who attended once or twice is that they are not really clear on what we are doing. They were confused about the difference between the Study Group & the Dialogues. They appreciated learning about Venture's past but unclear of the path we are taking. Until we have resources, I think the best things we can do is ask questions of people we meet, listening, recording responses for future use & networking.