Last weekend seven of us held the first Open Master's studio- Axle Brown, Liz Falk, Alana Ramo, Alex Simon, Mike Durante, Laura White, and Alan Webb. The Studio was a four-hour event that helped us make some new friends in the program, understand this process in more detail, and dedicate some time for focused sharing and listening to each other present our plans, one at a time.

At the end of the day, we all dedicated to find at least one partner to buddy up with in the program and to share our plans in more detail to them this month.

We also liked the idea of using group dinners as milestones, so several of us committed to share our first drafts of our plans- and to take on at least one first personal "mission" within that plan- by the first or second community dinner. For example, Laura is working on creating a reading list she wants to commit to finishing and Alana is writing a "hit list" of possible mentors or interesting people in the arts and creative community to reach out to.

There were also some clever ideas discussed for the Open Master's community, too, including:

Organizing an Open Master's book club to keep each other on track on our reading lists.
Organizing an Open Master's field day for teaching a variety of DIY skills to each other.
Hosting a Mothup-style storytelling event at a dinner or call
Experiencing some of the Work on Purpose activities together at one of our upcoming dinners to help us with exploring ourselves and our topics more deeply- which Laura, who works at Ashoka and Echoing Green, offered to help organize for us.

After that high-energy start, we are looking forward to the next Studio, which is October 14th!