A full year sponsorship for 42 K Sponsor a "thumb" for 4,200 - gets someone going to organise 4.2 events Sponsor one event for 420 USD/GBP - a get together in person a hitchhiker walk and talk event, an online event where we can pay the host to organise.
What other "packages" can we think of?
If we start to circulate a slightly revised Manifesto can we have some easy to respond to asks from the time bank to money that supports an activity/an idea..
what have we already got on what a Fellow might do? I feel we have discussed this a while back?
THE HITCHHIKER CONGRESS: PROJECT OVERVIEW Creating the Constitution for Hitchhikersguide.earth: A Digital Mutual Society For although in a certain sense and for light-minded persons non-existent things can be more easily and irresponsibly represented in words than existing things, for the serious and conscientious historian it is just the reverse. Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born. — Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game When Robbie Stamp and Douglas Adams, co-founders of The Digital Village, first met, they discussed their mutual love of Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. So much of the spirit of what we are trying to do is based on Douglas's genius - his ability to wrap serious ideas in playful language, to see the absurdity in bureaucracy while believing deeply in human connection, and to imagine wildly improbable things with such conviction that they become possible. Like Hesse's game, which synthesizes knowledge across disciplines into something both rigorous and beautiful, we're attempting to create something that doesn't yet exist but that thoughtful, imaginative and playful work can bring into being. PROJECT GOAL We will create the Constitution and legal company structure for the world's first global mutually-owned digital platform - giving members the power and agency to create and share value in ways they determine. Not Panicking Ltd will transfer h2g2 rights into this new structure, establishing member-owned governance for the next 42 years (at least!). This work will take 18 months and bring together Fellows, Field Researchers, and the broader community to build something genuinely new in digital space. HOW WE'RE ORGANIZED Seven Fellows will each lead one of seven constitutional workstreams, receiving £42,000 over the course of the project: 1. Governance, Emergence & Constitutional Evolution "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Not Being a Vogon" 2. Membership, Rights & Responsibilities "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Knowing Where Your Towel Is" 3. Economic Model & Value Distribution "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Pan-Galactic Value Exchange" 4. Data Sovereignty & The Integrated Self "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Your Data Self" 5. AI Policy, Ethics & Human Primacy "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Marvin" 6. Content Standards, Quality & Community Culture "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Magarathea" 7. The Heart of Gold - Making It Real Implementation & Reality Testing Each Fellow will convene Field Researchers for their workstream - in groups of sixes and sevens, up to 42 total across all themes. The Fellows determine how many Field Researchers they need. These Field Researchers participate as founding contributors, recognized for their role in creating the constitutional foundation, but they're not paid - they're here because they believe in what we're building. The work happens through whatever modes serve it best: workshops, meetings, podcasts, walking and talking. This isn't about rigid structures; it's about finding the right ways for people to think and create together. Overseeing everything is the Vision Fish - a small governance team that provides strategic direction and ensures coherence across the workstreams. Supporting the whole endeavor is the Towel Team, two people who coordinate logistics and manage what we're calling the "laundry budget" - the practical resources needed to make gatherings, travel, and collaboration actually happen. THE JOURNEY: SIX PHASES The work unfolds across six distinct phases, each building on what came before. In the first three months, we convene and scope. The Seven Fellows are selected and onboarded. Each Fellow then gathers their Field Researchers and begins the work of defining what their constitutional theme actually requires. They research best practices, explore precedents, and define the scope and key questions for their area. This isn't about coming with answers - it's about understanding the territory. Each Fellow produces a scoping document that maps what they can see from here and, critically, begins to surface what's missing from our initial thinking. Month four brings the first Vision Fish review, an intensive two-day workshop where Fellows present their scoping work. The Vision Fish provides strategic feedback, and we work together to see how the themes connect and where gaps or overlaps exist. This is where we ask: Is this the right scope? What are we missing? How do these pieces fit together? The Fellows leave with refined direction and a clearer sense of how their work integrates with the whole. Months five through nine are for deep work. Fellows return to their Field Researchers for intensive artefact creation. They draft the actual constitutional elements for their themes, working through research, consultation, and iteration. These artefacts can take any form that serves the purpose - text, video, interactive media, whatever will help people understand and engage with the constitutional principles. This is also when the explicit mandate to discover "what's missing" comes into its own. Fellows are actively looking for what we didn't anticipate, what our initial framing overlooked, what reality reveals that theory missed. Month ten is the second Vision Fish review, another intensive workshop where Fellows present their constitutional artefacts. Now we're asking: Does this actually work as governance? Can real people understand and use this? How do these pieces fit together into a coherent whole? The Vision Fish reviews for clarity, implementability, and integration. We identify contradictions that need resolving and provide guidance for revision. Months eleven through thirteen are for creative testing - and this is where things get really interesting. We take the constitutional artefacts out of the abstract and test them through storytelling, theatre, role-play, and games. We run scenario simulations: "What would happen if...?" We engage the broader h2g2 community in play-testing. We use the actual infrastructure that the Heart of Gold workstream has been building to pilot these governance structures in practice. This creative testing period culminates in the First Annual Hitchhiker Congress - one anchor event bringing together the Vision Fish, Fellows, and Field Researchers, surrounded by up to 42 satellite events happening across different locations, formats, and communities. The anchor event becomes the central gathering where constitutional learning is shared and integrated, while the satellite events test the constitution in diverse contexts - perhaps theatre performances in one city, governance simulations in another, podcast discussions, walking conversations, community forums. Each satellite event feeds insights back to the anchor Congress, creating a rich tapestry of testing across geographies and approaches. This phase is about feeling how the constitution works, not just thinking about it. What emerges? What did we miss? Where does governance break down under stress? Do people actually want to participate under this structure? The Congress and its satellite events produce field reports, identify gaps and failure modes, and generate emergent wisdom that only comes from actually trying to live under these principles. The final phase, months fourteen through eighteen, is where everything comes together. The Vision Fish and Fellows integrate all the learning from creative testing and the First Annual Hitchhiker Congress. We create the final Constitution, incorporating the insights that only emerged through practice. We design the specific legal company structure that will enable member ownership. We define the transition plan from Not Panicking Ltd to the new governance structure. We establish the plans for building membership in the next phase. We prepare for public launch. Everything is documented - not just the final Constitution, but the process itself, so others can learn from what we discovered. THE PRINCIPLES THAT GUIDE US Throughout this journey, certain principles guide our work. Emergence is built into every stage - we explicitly task each Fellow with discovering what's missing from our scoping, acknowledging that we cannot see the full territory from where we stand now. Reality testing ensures that governance works in practice, not just theory. The Heart of Gold workstream provides continuous reality checks to the constitutional Fellows. We take a Common Law approach, focusing on minimum viable principles rather than exhaustive rules, emphasizing who decides rather than trying to pre-decide everything. Subsidiarity runs through all our thinking - decisions should be made at the most appropriate level, with the Constitution setting framework rather than dictating detailed operations. And at every stage, we apply the Tripod of Work: tasking (clear outputs required), trusting (real authority given to those doing the work), and tending (multiple review cycles to ensure nothing is lost and everything connects). WHAT WE'LL DELIVER At the end of this process, we will have created a Constitution that establishes governance structures, membership rights, economic models, data sovereignty principles, AI policy, and content standards. We will have designed the legal structure that enables genuine member ownership. We will have working infrastructure from the Heart of Gold workstream. We will have a clear transition plan for transferring IP and governance from Not Panicking Ltd to the new member-owned structure. We will have documented the entire process so others can learn from it. And we will have a founding community - Fellows, Field Researchers, and engaged members - ready to build the next phase. The First Annual Hitchhiker Congress will become a landmark event, establishing a tradition of gathering, testing, and evolving that continues beyond this founding phase. WHY THIS MATTERS We're not just creating a constitution for one platform. We're proving that member-owned digital governance can actually work. We're demonstrating that there's an alternative to extractive corporate platforms, and we're documenting how to build it so others can follow. If we succeed, this becomes a template that others can use. If we fail, we'll document publicly what doesn't work - which is still valuable. Either way, we're honoring Douglas Adams' 25-year legacy while creating something genuinely new for our current digital moment. We're taking the wildly improbable and making it real. Through serious and conscientious work, we're treating this non-existent thing - a truly member-owned global digital platform - as if it exists, thereby bringing it a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.