The story behind moving the edge

A tale of continuing exploration, connectedness, emergence and inclusiveness

One stream of the story began in May 2004 where two Danish business consultants got together for a cup of coffee at a habour-side restaurant in Aarhus, to explore what new ways of leading they felt were emerging in the field of collective intelligence.

They quickly included colleagues in the exploration of what this might look like and the potential it might hold. This led to a series of inquiries where it became clear that the common ground of the participants was a readiness to live their practices in every aspect of life.

From this an initiative named Collective Intelligence Practitioners Initiative (CIPI) was formed. CIPI came to life to attract other consultants who worked consciously with collective intelligence in their practices. With the CIPI initiative more people joined in. After two small gatherings it became obvious that collective intelligence practitioners come from a much broader field than just consultancy. Amongst the participants were a chef, a deejay and a sports-coach, who all brought in new perspectives on how collective intelligence could manifest itself.

Suddenly food, music and physical training made everybody see the vast potential in bringing people from all walks of life together to explore what's possible when they start to notice each other and share their experiences. At this point the idea of holding an International CIPI Festival emerged as a clear vision. A convening team was founded to clarify the idea and carry it out. Again more people were included expanding the team internationally. Among those joining the convening team were three from another group that had been meeting by phone for a year exploring "convening the field of Collective Intelligence" -- and our two efforts have merged like a confluence of purpose. So it seems this is an idea whose time has come.

What you see on this website is the result of the convening team's exploration of the purpose, the idea, the working-principles, the name of the gathering and so forth. None of the participants from the beginning till now, had any idea about what their exploration would bring, so they have stayed open to whatever emerged while trusting there is a deeper meaning where none was clear at first.