Dance of Informal Systems

Dear Friends,

I value your attention and will keep this personal update short and sweet.

I will be hosting an informal Agripreneurs Meetup around central London between 16th - 18th September. I am heading to UK tomorrow to attend Small Giants Academy’s Mastery of Systems Leadership Retreat from 11th to 15th September and plan to meet few agripreneur friends and code-to-croppers (techies gearing up to become agripreneurs/farmers) around UK. If you read my newsletter and are in town, I would love to meet you.

I am also excited to check out the physical copy of my great-grand father’s 1908 Farming Guide (I first wrote about it here) book that has been housed in the Asia and Africa Studies of the British Library.

My maternal great-grandfather was a wonderful agriculturist (in my biased view) who collaborated with G.A.Natesan to publish “Farming Guide” in his mother tongue Tamizh in the year 1908, based on his farming advice articles in the popular nationalist tamizh language newspaper “Swadesamitran” that was founded in 1882.

As the kind librarian who reserved the book upon my request and wrote the sweetest email I will cherish for a life time wrote, “The book is part of our special collections, it can only be read in the Asian & African Studies Reading Room, on the 3rd Floor of our St Pancras main building in London.”

Around 2014, it was the discovery of this book in an accidental google books search that led my journey to where I am and what I do today for a living. And therefore to hold the book in its original form is an ineffable form of spiritual communion I’ve been praying to the Providence for a very long time. And I am glad that the universe will finally make it happen in a blissful orchestra of events.

The retreat I am attending is a part of the Mastery of Systems Leadership Fellowship I am undertaking from September’25 to May’26 with a fortnightly six hour learning cadence. The course structure looks something like this.

What makes this fellowship special is the fact that it is sponsored by the community and its learnings will be harvested back to the community. I am personally excited for the fellowship for two reasons.

1) I have been informally speaking the language of systems in my work and this will help me learn the language more formally from the tribe of systems thinkers I’ve deeply admired: Daniel Schmachtenberger, Indy Johar and Nora Bateson.

2) I've been having this sneaky feeling that I am getting too native in my work (at the risk of becoming solipsistic) and starting to wonder if agritech ecosystem engineering really makes sense from a formal system change lens. I hope this exploration will provide an outside-in view to evaluate my systems change thesis in food and agriculture systems. And more importantly, examine my priors more honestly.

I am coming back from this retreat and heading to another retreat I am hosting for agripreneurs. It's the fifth agripreneurs retreat I am hosting in Coimbatore. There are few slots that are still available.

P. S. When I was growing up in those beautiful halcyon days, I never wanted any inch of formality in the calendar of my life. And I am getting what I wished:)

P.P.S. Wish me Luck!

Cheers,

Venky