10 weeks of collaborative research.

Inspiring conversations with unexpected experts of all stripes.

An interactive report that did more to embody play than even we originally imagined.

5 public briefs and as many weeks of imagination-and-ideation workshops asking the question “What If?”

All in the effort to kickstart A More Play-Full Future — the better future we spent a whole cycle cultivating as a community. The cycle may have come to an end, but a more playful future is just beginning.

And really, that’s the point. Each cycle, we focus on an emerging future that represents a meaningful and impactful macro shift; a theme that’s deeper and longer-lasting than the fleeting fads and micro trends that suck up so much of our media and attention.

With each cycle, our aim is to bring the emergent future to life, dial into the vision of that future that we collectively believe represents a better future for all, and direct energy, momentum, and resources into that vision so that we can accelerate its manifestation.

Since we published A More Play-Full Future in early May, we’ve watched the topic bloom around us. From industry reports and speculative sessions to playful planning for the months ahead, we couldn’t be more thrilled to see play in our feeds so frequently.

You see, better futures aren’t built in bubbles. The more committed and thoughtful brains, hands, and resources (from individuals and brands alike) we can put behind a vision of the future, the more likely we’ll all be to manifest — and benefit from — its fruition.

Quite literally, the more the merrier!

The future isn’t a single-player proposition; and our whole process has been oriented around opening the doors to more and more people at every stage.

As our 10-week research cycle wound down, we organized our first ticketed event series — Into The Future — to bring industry leaders, curious challengers, and the playfully-minded from around the world together to explore and co-create visions of A More Play-Full Future in four weeks of invigorating talks and engaging workshops.

As research gave way to incubate, we’ve embodied the same multiplayer mission. It’s why we’ve partnered with Kernel to set up a 10ETH buildstream to retroactively fund more playful, open-source futures; why we’re collaborating with OP Games to create a brief that inspires more innovative uses of NPCs and ERC6551s in service of a more playful world, and why we’re partnering with Culture3’s publication to curate playful projects at the edges of innovation to inspire more of the same.

Imbued with the power of The Enchantress, The Healer, The Mediator, The Teacher, and The Artist, play has the potential to unlock so many different paths to better futures. We can see it on the horizon, and we’ll continue nurturing it — inviting those who believe in its vision to join us in drawing A More Play-Full Future closer in.

Cycle #2 by the numbers:

• 1 Non-Profit Partnership

• 123 Contributors

• 136 Patron Supporters

• 250+ Public Session Attendees

• $20K Distributed

• 4000+ Signals Shared

• ∞ Miro Post-It’s

What else have we been up to?

In the span of any given Cycle, there’s more to the community than this one single focus. And in Cycle #2, there was a lot.

Alongside accelerating A More Play-Full Future, we:

• Published our Multiplayer Futures thesis, outlining our theory of change and putting forward a plan for how to activate it.

• Contributed to Foster Edition 3: Several People Are Typing with a work of collaboratively written speculative fiction that explores the potential of a future where technology and nature intertwine to connect the minds of creators.

• Launched our Weekly Worldbuilding initiative: a weekly ritual open to the public that prompts collective imagination and generates visions of the future through rhythm and routine.

What’s coming next?

We’ve been thinking and talking a lot about sustainability when it comes to RADAR. Not just ‘how do we achieve financial sustainability’ (though, as a bootstrapped community, this is a big one), but also, how do we sustain our influence? Our collective wellbeing? The energy in the community? The momentum around the futures we explore and incubate?

And so, many of our upcoming initiatives are focused there.

Routine & Ritual:

We know it can be hard to keep up with everything going on in the community — especially in a world where we’re spreading our attention thinner and thinner by the day (no, we’re not on Threads). With this in mind, we’re launching a new monthly cadence of public and community events and keeping everything organized with Luma. Subscribe to the calendar or sign up to specific events to join us public Signal Sessions, live ‘Worldboarding’ sessions, community Town Halls and new member Onboardings.

For members only, we’re doubling down on sustainability by also introducing Sanity Sessions. The idea is to make space to discuss some of the struggles we all face as curious thinkers and community participants and to support each other on the journey to ‘operate from sanity, rather than strive toward it’ (thanks to Oliver Burkeman for the inspo).

The RADAR Collective:

It’s always been on our radar that this robust foresight community we’ve built could easily double as a foresight practice — and now, we’re doing it. The RADAR Collective is the foresight consulting arm of RADAR, engaging partners in both research and innovation projects that further our mission to accelerate better futures.

The collective will offer a full roster of services to organizations of all types, leveraging our membership’s diverse backgrounds, skills, knowledge, and expertise to create an offering unmatched by most traditional consultants.

We’ll operate in two capacities — as a project resource for those freelancers and agency partners who require support or would simply love to superpower their project with an injection of RADAR magic; and as a project lead, taking on bespoke projects and diving deeper into the better futures we’ve explored thus far in collaborative sessions and more.

Members will have the opportunity to opt-in to participate in commercial opportunities, setting their own guardrails around what, when and how they’d like to engage. They’ll also have the ability to leverage RADAR’s service arm in their ‘IRL’ gigs as freelancers, brand-side clients, and agency professionals.

We’ve developed the collective alongside core members of the community and have worked hard to maintain the magic that we all love so dearly. So don’t worry — the immaculate vibes (and all the frogs) aren’t going anywhere.

RADAR Launch:

As we outlined in Multiplayer Futures, Cycle #1 showed us that we could create serious momentum around a vision of the future, gathering a community around A Future In Sync that was eager to make that future a reality. But, at the time, we didn’t have the infrastructure to sustain it.

We needed to take what was a multiplayer moment and turn it into a mode and a movement. We just needed the infrastructure to make it happen — and with RADAR Launch, that’s exactly what we’re building.

Far too often, ideators, innovators, and builders struggle to bring their visions to life, falling victim to the cold start problem. Left to the devices of a world in single-player mode, they’re disconnected from market demand, gatekept away from critical resources, and unable to tap into network effects — and so their individual visions fail to propagate. Too early, too late, too misunderstood to have an impact, their visions fall short of capturing future-market fit.

RADAR is already opening the loop by identifying emerging futures ripe for adoption and priming it by facilitating imagination and ideation among those who are drawn to the vision. So what if we closed it, too?

Enter RADAR Launch: the platform where anyone can launch ideas in alignment with our futures.

Launch will be a place where founders, builders, creators, and makers can bring their ideas to market no matter their shape or size. And we mean it. To make better futures our reality, we need all types of ideas to flourish and thrive: products & services, experiences, campaigns, media, communities, you name it. If it helps to cultivate one of our better futures, it’s a fit for RADAR Launch.

It's the place to source your earliest adopters by growing a waitlist. To find collaborators by requesting specific skills and services. And to crowdfund their milestones on their terms, all onchain. And, of course, the reward is reciprocal. Early adopters will be able to build onchain reputation by showing their support for the most innovative projects aligned with the futures they believe in.

By unlocking early consumer ownership that’s financial (with skin in the game), emotional (with a vision you believe in), and social (with visible, onchain attribution), we believe we can supercharge adoption and — in doing so — further accelerate the better futures RADAR puts its energy and resources behind.

Partnered Briefs & Funding Pools:

To accelerate the expansion of projects on the platform, we’re collaborating with partners: investors, individuals, blockchains, and brands who have deep conviction in an opportunity space that’s inherently linked to one of our futures.

Together, we’ll set bespoke briefs with dedicated funding pools to inspire and attract builders to activate against them. Unlike traditional hackathons where only a few projects receive prizes, 100% of the funding pool will be dispersed among participating builders — with funders able to support as many projects as they’d like until the funding pool is closed.

As Launch continues to evolve, our vision is to incorporate novel ways for consumers to take financial stake in projects on the platform — which means that our approach to funding pools will evolve, too. With public funding pools, anyone will be able to support the visions of the future they believe in via collective treasuries. But more to come on that later on.

As we embark on this cycle, our conviction in multiplayer futures is stronger than ever.

We’re in a pivotal moment in the world. People are sick of letting the future just happen to them, and they’re done with competing for scraps and seeing their ideas fail to gain traction because they’re stuck in single-player. Using web3 tools to activate shared ownership in the futures that lie ahead is a powerful unlock, opening doors to greater accessibility and distribution of resources and attention outside of the narrow structures that exist today.

If the last year-plus working on RADAR has taught us anything, it’s that people are hungry to be meaningful stakeholders in better futures for themselves, their communities, and the world. They want to support visions they believe in, and they want to help make them happen. They’ve just never had the tools to do it.

It’s our belief that there’s no meme more powerful than the future, and nothing more empowering than enabling people to take ownership of it.

RADAR Launch is one of many steps we’re taking toward this vision, so stay tuned for more on that front. And if you’re still still with us and eager to support our efforts in Cycle #3, look out for more on A Centaur future coming next week and get ready for the launch of our Patron NFTs.

Until next time!