Aug 9, 2010

A good reason to shave your head.

On Friday, I shaved my head in support of kids with cancer. Was a bit scary, but loads of fun!

My hair is being donated to a charity that makes wigs for kids with cancer, and I’m hoping some of you guys are inspired to make a small donation to Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH).

Donate here.

It’s a world-class operational hospital and research institution - so it does a lot of good for individual kids and families, and for paediatric medicine as a whole. They’re fund-raising for a new building, and Morgan Stanley is match funding donations. So they’ll put in a pound for every pound that you put in.

I support institutions like GOSH because they attract the best and the brightest, so donations are well-spent and allocated to the greatest need. (This is as opposed to single-issue charities which can sometimes be limited by their original mandates.) It is the only specialist biomedical research center for pediatrics, the largest center in the UK for children with heart or brain problems and the largest center in Europe for children with cancer. GOSH has been growing for 150 years now, so I have confidence that this is an investment in an asset that will keep providing benefits for a long time.

I’ve done this without trying to raise “sponsorship” in advance, simply because I believe in it and I think people will donate for the right reasons if they want to. If you’ve thought of giving money to a charity but haven’t gotten around to it, or are still looking for a suitable charity, you can trust me that your money will be put to very good use here.

Thanks guys.
Sal

What am I up to these days?

I’m in a cozy place, preparing for parenthood, dabbling with some art projects, getting my hands dirty with ZK and ML. One of my more “product-y” projects is a communication tool for community groups and unconferences. It focuses on autonomising teams rather than “coordinating”. Another is a set of primitives for “hyperstructuring” Free Software to help contributors get paid fairly.

I’m also part of Discover Mode - where I’m a solver-for-hire helping a Web3 projects with product design and strategy.

In the past, I've designed peer-learning programs for Oxford, UCL, Techstars, Microsoft Ventures, The Royal Academy Of Engineering, and Kernel, careering from startups to humanitech and engineering. I also played a role in the Lean Startup methodology, and the European startup ecosystem. You can read about this here.

Books & collected practices

  • Peer Learning Is - a broad look at peer learning around the world, and how to design peer learning to outperform traditional education
  • Mentor Impact - researched the practices used by the startup mentors that really make a difference
  • DAOistry - practices and mindsets that work in blockchain communities
  • Decision Hacks - early-stage startup decisions distilled
  • Source Institute - skunkworks I founded with open peer learning formats and ops guides, and our internal guide on decentralised teams