A community action day in Görlitzer Park, Berlin, held alongside Berlin Blockchain Week and the wider Logos event week. Less talks, more doing: cleaning the park, sharing a meal, and exploring how local circles can organise around real community problems.
Unlike the conference schedule, this event focused on participation over presentation. The afternoon combined practical community service with structured discussions on local organising, testing how Logos Circles can move from conversation to coordinated action.
What worked
- The event attracted the kind of people we hoped for: builders, organisers and activists looking to contribute, not just consume.
- Cleaning Görlitzer Park created an immediate shared purpose and sparked conversations that wouldn’t have happened in a conference room.
- Local park dwellers thanked participants throughout the cleanup, reinforcing the value of visible local action.
- The closing circle generated thoughtful discussion around issues participants wanted to address in their own communities.
- The quadratic voting exercise with Voqua, previously tested at Plural Events in collaboration with Logos, worked well for identifying priorities and quickly converging on shared interests.
- Despite the smaller group, there was a strong sense of energy and genuine connection throughout the afternoon.
What was learned
- Practical activities create stronger relationships than another discussion panel. Working together provides a natural foundation for future circles.
- Future event weeks should be organised around other event venues where possible, allowing different audiences to overlap and reinforce one another.
- Free events still benefit from participants having some skin in the game. Systems such as Kickback deserve another look.
- We missed an opportunity to reach more aligned participants. Better coordination with local activist networks and simple printed flyers at related events (specifically Web3Privacy) would likely have increased attendance.
- The cleanup highlighted that visible symptoms, such as litter and discarded needles, naturally lead conversations towards deeper structural causes. Participants repeatedly discussed addiction, community breakdown and prevention rather than treating waste collection as the end goal.
What broke
- Attendance was lower than anticipated, leaving significant unused catering and increasing venue costs if calculated per attendee. Note: no food was wasted, as we shared it with another volunteer org using the venue that evening.
- Promotion between the different Logos events during the week could have been better coordinated a lot better.
- Outreach remained largely within the crypto ecosystem instead of extending further into Berlin’s existing civic and activist communities.
What was produced
- Quadratic voting priorities collected through Voqua. Topics included:
- Disability access and public ramps
- Privacy and social media education
- Housing and homeowners’ rights
- Waste education
- Community fundraising (related: bUm Berlin, where the event took place)
- Community gardens
- Local wood supply economies
- Cardboard recycling initiatives
- The Logos issue buckets were tested in practice as a framework for organising local challenges, including economic security, public space, education, environment and community building.
- Two breakout circles developed concrete follow-up plans:
- Accessibility: participants designed an open-source approach for community-built wheelchair ramps using locally available 3D printers. The proposed roadmap included identifying locations, taking measurements, designing modular ramps, fundraising for durable materials, coordinating university printing facilities, publishing open-source designs, mapping installed ramps, and creating QR codes linking each ramp to documentation and community funding.
- Privacy & social media: participants agreed that practical community workshops on privacy, digital autonomy and online verification should become a recurring activity for future circles.
- Inspirational content for organizers
- This message: kirsten rebuilds society 🍀 λ 44 on X: "you can just do things, during Berlin Blockchain Week! today @Logos_network Circles activists did a trash cleanup at Görlitzer Park + set actionable plans to solve problems in their local communities. the Parallel Society is built one action at a time. let’s go! https://t.co/FNbHqkaYBb" / X
- Aftermovie: Guil is 🌱 🌈 on X: "Last week I attended the @Logos_network Circle in Berlin, where the theme was Action, Not Permission. This is what I saw. Building the parallel starts with small actions, shared responsibility, and people willing to show up. https://t.co/0OH6tLcIIJ" / X
What happens next
- Incorporate these lessons into the evolving Logos Circle format.
- Improve coordination across multi-day event weeks by consolidating venues where possible.
- Experiment with commitment mechanisms for free events.
- Continue refining the issue bucket framework and quadratic voting process as tools for identifying local priorities.
- Support participants interested in turning breakout ideas into ongoing local Logos Circle projects.
Build on this
- Quadratic voting results from this event: Voqua - Quadratic Voting Tool
- Kickback attendance model for future events - this would be an epic Lambda prize to relaunch on Logos
- Continue to validate & refine the Logos Circle issue buckets and organising framework.
- Next Logos Circles: Logos · Events Calendar
Thank you to Kirsten for co-organizing, to all participants and a special call out to Guil for volunteering to make an aftermovie.
Build the parallel. λ
