Title (same as in your application form)
Pop Up Village Playbook: An open source guide for anyone to make their own Zuzalu style pop up village.
Team member names
Noah Chon Lee
Eva Klaus
Short summary of your improvement idea
Zuzalu pioneered a “pop up village” as a form of gathering that sparked a strong sense of community and the creation of multiple projects.
Since then, 5 Zuzalu inspired pop up villages have happened so far and around 20 groups are attempting to create their own.
We believe the “pop up village” movement benefits the world by inviting people to engage in a co-created community learning environment.
However, we have heard from various groups how daunting it is to create a pop up village.
By creating an open source guide, we make it easier for anyone around the world to create their own pop up village.
What is the existing target protocol you are hoping to improve or enhance? Eg: hand-washing, traffic system, connector standards, carbon trading.
Pop up villages, which could be defined as, “A temporary gathering of 100-200 residents who co-live with a co-created schedule and co-work on meaningful projects.”
We describe them in greater detail here: What Is a Zuzalu Style Event?
What is the core idea or insight about potential improvement you want to pursue?
Pop up villages have already resulted in the following impact in the world:
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Development of viaPrize (viaprize.org) in Zuzalu as an open source crowdfunded prize platform which saved multiple lives through a prize that motivated a medical supply delivery in Ukraine
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Development of Social Layer in the ShanHaiWu pop up village (shanhaiwoo.com) as an open source events platform for a community to co-create a schedule (https://twitter.com/SocialLayer_im)
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Repair of water tanks and long-term support for Ava’s House Kids’ Shelter during MuChiangMai (https://twitter.com/themu_xyz) pop up village
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A life saved of a Honduran construction worker when the community at Vitalia rallied together to donate blood after his motorcycle accident
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Countless new partnerships and friendships through these gatherings.
However, conversations with various groups who are interested in making their own pop up village has revealed that it is oftentimes too daunting and difficult to know how to begin.
Our core insight is that we may improve pop up villages as an innovative social tool by documenting them and creating guidelines that give communities around the world a pathway to build their own.
What is your discovery methodology for investigating the current state of the target protocol? Eg: field observation, expert interviews, historical data analysis, failure event analysis
We would interview organizers and residents of various pop up villages and accumulate the knowledge into a curated guide broken down into small articles.
We have already assembled this outline for the topics and the articles within each topic we would write: Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.
In what form will you prototype your improvement idea? Eg: Code, reference design implementation, draft proposal shared with experts for feedback, A/B test of ideas with a test audience, prototype hardware, etc.
We will prototype the idea as we incorporate feedback from the various pop up village groups. As groups use our guideline, we will also ask them what was helpful and what they think we should change.
How will you field-test your improvement idea? Eg: run a restricted pilot at an event, simulation, workshop, etc.
Both team members are organizers of Zanzalu in Zanzibar. Thus, we will be users of the guide ourselves as we organize our own pop up village.
If we receive this grant, we would use $5,000 of it on scholarships for builders from developing countries to be able to join Zanzalu.
Who will be able to judge the quality of your output? Ideally name a few suitable judges.
We are friends with many of the pop up village organizers who would provide invaluable insight as judges. Here are a few:
Janine Leger of Zuzalu and Edge City
Laurence Ion of Vitalia
Sun of the Mu
Noah is also planning to join Protocol Week at Edge City Esmerelda where we may present our findings and request feedback.
How will you publish and evangelize your improvement idea? Eg: Submit proposal to a standards body, publish open-source code, produce and release a software development kit etc.
We will develop the guide to publish online and also post individual articles to The Network Society Forum. We will incorporate insights from the Zuzalu community and collaborate with Chance McAllister who is organizing the ZuWriters club and is providing us with over 200 pages of notes and transcriptions from interviews of community members at various pop up villages.
See the following articles that are already written:
Timeline of Upcoming Pop Up Villages - Upcoming Zuzalu Style Pop Up Villages 2024
Lessons Learned from Zuzalu Inspired Pop Up Villages - Lessons Learned from Zuzalu Inspired Pop Up Villages
What is the success vision for your idea?
Over time, we intend to see pop up villages transform from something a person sees on the news and thinks, “wow, look at what rich people do,” to instead be something where someone could turn to their friends and say, “wow, why don’t we do that together?”