The Social Age Safari is an immersive three-day event where we bring together 70 bold Explorers to be immersed in a deep exploration of the Social Age. It's a chance to learn, to engage in a co-created exploration of 'learning', 'leadership', 'culture', 'technology', and 'change' itself. Each year, our topics reflect what we have been exploring within our global community.

In 2018, we'll explore these topics together:

Resilience

As systems become optimised in the current space, they become brittle to change. We will explore Resilience as a feature of the Socially Dynamic Organisation.

Community

A community is more than just a collection of people: it’s a coherent, high functioning, resilient, entity. We will explore the conditions for community: how do we create fertile ground for a community to emerge?

Innovation

As organisations strive to adapt to emergent markets, ward off disruption, or act as disruptors themselves, the subject of innovation comes up time and again. But innovation is neither a system nor a process: it’s an emergent feature of a Socially Dynamic system. How will we foster, nurture, or provoke, innovation?

What is the Social Age Safari like?

In 2017, we explored 'The Landscape of Trust', meeting a panel of alcoholics, talking about 'trust' in rehab, a circus performer, talking about 'trust' in performance, a group of creative collectives, operating out of a squat, talking about 'leading without leaders'. We used poetry and music to explore 'trust' in each other, trust in teams, trust in organisations. We hacked some real technology to build the 'MOOD Post 3000', allowing us to dynamically measure the 'temperature' of the community in the room. We created a flock of 'SoundCloud Birds', capturing Social Learning with NFC chips. We talked to graffiti artists about gang structures and power dynamics, and talked to disruptive change agents within the NHS, about claiming permission to change. You will be exposed to new ideas, new communities, new technologies, and new thinking.

How does it work?

It is set up as a voyage, where we come together aboard a 'ship' to take part in a grand adventure. You will work closely within your core 'Shore Party', heading out to explore, coming back to 'make sense of it', and building your 'six-week experiments' to take back out to your workplace. It's a challenging event, aimed at strategic thinkers and leaders who want to help their organisation get fit for the Social Age.

Who is it for?

The Social Age Safari is not for everyone: it's not a conference with sessions and presentations where you will hear answers. It's an exploration at the cutting edge of Julian Stodd's research and thinking, exploring challenging ideas, and providing opportunities to both contribute and to learn. If you want to be given answers, it's not for you. If you are happy to engage in creating the answers, this is a space you will love.

What is the legacy?

Storytelling is a key aspect of the Safari: throughout the event, we publish editions of The Social Age Chronicle, a co-created newspaper, capturing our shared and co-created narratives of reflection and learning to take back into our organisations.