FOUNDATION STORY

Percolab is about a journey into the gentle revolution of humanness that began 30 years ago.

When I was twenty one years old, I was studying cultural anthropology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Through the lectures and textbooks I was learning about the different ways societies organize themselves and about revolutions. It just so happened there was a revolution going on at that time not so far away, in Central America. The Nicaraguan revolution began in 1979 and was well underway. I wanted to see it with my own eyes, help out with my hands, feel a revolution. In just five months, Nicaragua had dropped its illiteracy rate by almost 40% via a seemingly straightforward decentralized method.

What does that look like? Change? How do we redesign a country? I decided to put my studies on hold for a year. I gathered up a whole slew of art supplies ready to donate and off I went, alone. I travelled to Nicaragua via Guatemala. I knew I had entered a country in revolution within minutes after crossing the border. It was the 80s. If Guatemala was in a state of civil war with human rights violations such that no one dared look you in the eye, let alone speak to you, Nicaragua was all the opposite. People were alive with their free speech and freedom to contribute to the shape their country was taking. I was with one other foreigner on my bus from the border, a young man from Finland, curious about the revolution like me. People took our hands and turning over our palms, laughed. If we did not have worker hands, how could we contribute to the revolution? Laughter and loud talk. Everyone had an opinion on everything. It was so excessive it made me think that maybe they too had been heads and eyes to the ground not so long ago. I visited farmers who had benefited from land reform and felt rich with their small parcel of land. I worked for a private New York sponsor, purchasing huge art pieces that spoke to the struggle.

I spoke to community leaders who shared their creative visions and financial plans. I witnessed people entirely involved in building a different kind of country. I felt the possibility. I also saw the struggles and disappointments. The economy was out of control. The price of my restaurant meal could double before I finished eating.

I lived in a humble family home and volunteered at the daycare of a cigar cooperative. I spoke to community leaders who shared their creative visions and financial plans. I witnessed people entirely involved in building a different kind of country. I felt the possibility. I also saw the struggles and disappointments. The economy was out of control. The price of my restaurant meal could double before I finished eating. Even I got trained to protect myself from random armed attacks of the Contras. My Finnish friend, he was in a home in neighbouring village and gunshots ripped through their kitchen, wounding the family. This was by no means easy. The experience seared into me the awareness that we create the systems we live in and we can change them too. We can prototype at any scale, even that of a country. It takes a lot of work and even some will fight it. I learned the power of decentralized and distributed actions for profound change. The literacy statistics still stand as some of the most astonishing, still today.

Upon my return to Canada, I decided that the way to rethink and improve our systems was via education and so I became a teacher. I taught my students critical thinking and prototyping. It didn’t matter to me that they were young; I was in a rural school house and I played with my professional freedom. With time, I ended up at the ministry of education. I discovered I was not really wired to effect change as a bureaucrat. Like with the Nicaraguan revolution, I wanted to participate in the action. I thrive on the chaos of creating something new. The sidelines are not for me.

The experience seared into me the awareness that we create the systems we live in and we can change them too. We can prototype at any scale, even that of a country. It takes a lot of work and even some will fight it. I learned the power of decentralized and distributed actions for profound change.

At my 40th birthday I received an obscure present, my domain name, samanthaslade.ca. This online space served to help me shift out of my safe government job into the rocky world of entrepreneurship where I created a company as a full-on experimentation of what a company can be. It is now an international self-governed network of self-managing firms that support organizations and ecosystems to step into their future. 

It is all about rolling up our sleeves and co-creating a better society, together.

Samantha Slade, co-founder of Percolab & Ecto