Zanzalu strives to meaningfully progress technological advancement and human flourishing by intentionally connecting diverse, talented, and dedicated individuals in a high-trust community that grows with them. As such, Zanzalu is equal parts a social experiment, an ideas playground, and a global talent network.
The value of Zanzalu comes from four critical factors:
- Community: A community that stays together through events and has (1) frequent and meaningful interaction between members and (2) decentralized coordination. It is important that Zanzalu creates a hierarchy distinct from the default world. Like Burning Man, Zanzalu members should be valued by their original contributions to Zanzalu. However, Zanzalu contributions should also be valued by positive impact on the wider world, both through the Zanzalu platforms and beyond.
- Talent: Zanzalu is a niche for the expression and cultivation of the unique skills, interests, and aspirations of its members. Our strength will come from the immense diversity of our community and openness to engage with new ideas. We should attract the misfits and weirdos who don’t fit in with the default world and offer them a path to success. However, to attract talent it is important to enable and promote talent. Zanzalu will be a strict meritocracy, where talented individuals, regardless of credentials or background, can rapidly rise in status. As a network, the larger we grow, the more talent we’ll attract, and the more impact we’ll have. It’s important to bake into our DNA from the beginning a desire to scale.
- Trust: Zanzalu must be a high trust society. Trust ensures Zanzalu members will be able to quickly form friendships and work together to achieve common goals. Members must be honest. Members need to know that other members aren’t going to take advantage of them to allow for effective coordination. Cultivating trust across the entire community not only requires shared values, but also formalization of good coordinating institutions (see later section). This will be particularly important as we scale; semi-formal institutions will allow Zanzalu to operate across continents and communities, while maintaining integrity.
- Co-creation: Zanzalu is fundamentally dependent upon co-production; without the active participation of the community, there is no value creation. Co-creation and self-organization - two principles reflected in our tentative institutional structure (see later section) - will shape the content of Zuzalu and enable creative production. Individuals are incentivized to take ownership of particular sub-events, and are rewarded for their contributions, potentially financially, but also through the respect of their peers. Co-creation and meritocracy also allows leaders to emerge organically from within the community.
Our theory of change follows directly from these four attributes:
Our theory of change has three components: (1) connect highly-talented individuals with diverse, yet symbiotic, interests; (2) cultivate social capital within the network by promoting informal association in an open, experimental environment; (3) facilitate the recombination, refinement, and diffusion of ideas, ultimately leading to new social, technological, and institutional innovation in the long run.
In this way, by cultivating and harnessing these four key attributes, Zanzalu will become far more than the mere sum of its parts. It will be a generative spark, not only for technological advancement, but the ways in which people relate to one another through, with, and beyond technology.