Regenerative Exploration – Understanding the Problem through Place

1. Overview for Hub Leads

The first stage is the foundation of the entire hackathon journey. It asks participants to pause, to listen, and to observe before they design or code. This phase focuses on helping teams connect to the living context from which their projects will emerge.
As a hub lead, your role is to hold a collective learning environment where participants explore the potential of their place as a living system. You are not simply managing activities, you are hosting a space for community intelligence to surface.

This is not a typical design sprint. It is a process of unfolding the potential of place through its community of practice. Through inquiry, dialogue, and reflection, participants begin to see their community as an evolving system capable of regeneration.

2. Objectives of the Week

By the end of this week, each team should:

Develop a clear understanding of the essence and story of their community.
Speak to their neighbors and collect narratives that help into the sensemaking of their local community.
Identify the caretakers, stakeholders, and systems that define their place.
Establish a sense of shared purpose and belonging within their team and hub.

3. Facilitation Philosophy (Regenerative Approach)

To hold this space effectively, the hub lead must model regenerative practice. Regenerative facilitation requires attention to relationship, rhythm, and potential.

Guiding principles:

Serve the potential, not the problem. Help participants recognize that they are here to nurture what wants to emerge in their place.
Ask catalytic questions. Guide dialogue:
- What is the inherent potential of this place?
- How can we be of service to it?
- What is this place asking of us to become more of itself?
Facilitate discovery, not delivery. Allow teams to find their own insight. Your role is to help them stay with the questions long enough for something real to emerge.
Create coherence. Use rituals of opening and closing, shared reflection, and regular check-ins to maintain connection.

4. Core Activities and Flow

Opening the Space

Begin with an opening circle where the intention of the week is shared.
Introduce the concept of working in service to place.
Invite participants to articulate what drew them to the hackathon and what they hope to learn.
Establish group agreements around listening, respect, and shared responsibility.

Walking the Community

Encourage participants to go out into their communities.
Guide them to observe with fresh eyes: what feels alive, what feels neglected, where is energy gathering?
Facilitate conversations with community elders, young leaders, local entrepreneurs, and civic actors.
Ask participants to collect narratives and photos that illustrate how life unfolds in their place.

Making Sense Together: Use the Emergent Table

Reconvene to share stories and observations.
Facilitate a group sensemaking session to identify patterns, tensions, and opportunities.
Use mapping tools to visualize relationships, flows of value, and systems boundaries.

Defining the Challenge: Discovering the Problem Statement

Help teams formulate a clear, place-rooted challenge statement.
Ensure it is grounded in potential rather than deficit.
Connect the challenge to a larger regenerative question: how could technology serve this place in becoming more of itself?

5. Holding the Space (Guidance for Hub Leads)

This week requires careful facilitation. Many participants will be eager to move quickly into solution mode. Your responsibility is to help them remain in exploration long enough to uncover meaningful insight.

Practical approaches:

Establish rhythm. Begin and end each day with a short reflection.
Use dialogue rather than instruction. Create small group discussions instead of long presentations.
Surface emotion and relationship. Allow participants to express what they feel connected to, what frustrates them, and what inspires them.
Encourage embodiment. Walking, drawing, mapping, and storytelling are as important as talking.
Practice presence. As a facilitator, model attentive listening and curiosity.

6. Expected Outputs

By the end of Stage one and two, each team should produce:

A Community Essence Map: a narrative timeline capturing the key moments, actors, and shifts that emerge in walking local communities.
A Stakeholder Map: identifying caretakers, institutions, and emerging leaders.
A Draft Challenge Statement: a concise articulation of the problem or opportunity identified through exploration.
A short reflection summarizing what the community is asking for.

7. Documentation and Storytelling Guidance: Publishing Stack

Encourage participants to document both insights and processes. Stories of discovery are as valuable as the data collected. Each hub should gather:

Notes, transcripts, or recordings from community conversations into Docs
Visual documentation (photos, drawings, maps).
Reflections on how perspectives shifted during the week.
Early ideas about how technology might serve the identified potential.

This material becomes the foundation for the “publishing stack” that will accompany projects through the hackathon.