A Sandbox Story

“Hi” she said, “I’m Niamh, and I’d like to spend a couple of minutes telling you about a community of amazing young achievers and change makers called Sandbox…”

That’s where it all began, 6 amazing months ago now, when a remarkable girl called Niamh Hughes introduced me to a collaborative communal movement called Sandbox.

What is Sandbox? Sandbox is the best of the Google generation.

Niamh and I are the same age, we were at the same university and we have mutual friends, but we had never met each other before: Dublin is not a big place, especially for two people with large networks. When I look back on that serendipitous evening our paths first crossed the things that comes to mind are how hungry I’d been; I hadn’t eaten all day, I had no idea what the event was about, or what I was supposed to speak on: I was cranky, it had taken an hour to get there, my radio was broken and traffic was crap.

What is Sandbox? Sandbox is an international coterie of individuals with shared values.

I didn’t even know who else was speaking at it; it was just another event, someone else asking me to talk shop, to fill a space, to engage and enchant and entertain. When the food came out, I did all I could not to stuff a platter of chicken goujons into my jacket pockets. Myself and my girlfriend Sarah had just bought a new couch; we were down 2 cushions and it was on my mind. I was idly sitting, waiting, doodling sofa cushions on the back of my hand… I was too tired to chat, my eyelids felt leaden and the hand that propped up my furrowed face was fast asleep. The battery in my phone was low, and I was reluctant to use it before the event started in case one of the speakers prompted an emergency round of Angry Birds.

What is Sandbox? Sandbox is a network that incubates leaders through community.

What was I going to speak about? I have no clue, the usual I suppose; understanding what it meant to be enterprising or something along those lines; the Zero Dollar Eco-system maybe, University entrepreneurship? It could well have ended up being about my desire for more chicken goujons at that point. But then, with a hum and a click a projector snapped on, a relatively small audience quietly took their seats while I made a last gasp break for the fingerfood. Then a slight, wee girl from Monaghan, Ireland stood up, smiled… sparkled… and changed my life.

What is Sandbox? Sandbox was my missing piece.

At the time Niamh was one of 3 Irish Sandboxers, and typically, for an Irish story, all 3 of them were based away from our small green magical rock on the edge of the world. Niamh happened to be one of the ambassadors of the New York hub, with Will (another Ambassador) and James being based in London. Despite their being quite a significant body of water between us, I’ve seen Niamh, Will & James more often in the last 6 months than I‘ve seen my own family. Family, that’s what Sandbox is, it calls itself an incubator, but really it’s a family, with patriarchs, matriarchs, brothers and sisters.  A group of amazing people with dispirit heritage but shared values, all striving to create the world they see in themselves. If it wasn’t obvious already, Niamh is now one of 4 Irish Sandboxers.  What is Sandbox? Sandbox is the family you choose.

I became a Sandboxer in December, days prior to my 27^th birthday (I don’t think Niamh ever gave the guys in Zurich a choice in the matter!) and less than a month later I was arriving in stunning Lisbon for the Sandbox Global Summit. A group of us, all but one of whom were unknown to me prior to Lisbon, were staying in an apartment together – the Divas. Our diverse little troop of Sandboxers at the Divas apartment had arrived from New York, Hong Kong, Haiti, Taipei, Washington DC, Ireland, San Francisco, Boston, and the “magical land of Pakistan” – an eclectic mix of incredibles  who became the bedrock of my Sandbox experience.

What is Sandbox? Sandbox is Tara Yip-Bannicq teaching me Creole. Sandbox is Kalsoom Lakhani helping me do magic tricks at 5.30am. Sandbox is Niamh asking for more towels and Paul Gleger needing them for his four hour showers!  Sandbox is a sociétié de la débrouillardise.

I’m now two weeks removed from my Lisbox experience. I wanted to take some time to even off emotionally after the summit. I wanted to know if I’d stop missing Niamh and Rahaf and Will and Tara and Tia and Kalsoom and Kane and Tim and DJ and Paul and Melissa and Mariam and Kat and Per and everyone else. I wanted to settle. I wanted to reflect. I wanted to digest what had happened; I wanted to know if the in-jokes about Boxbuddies, cupcakes and Scotland would stop making me smile; I wanted to understand how someone as stoic and genetically cynical as I am can be so substantially disorientated  by the humble human effervescence that  Sandbox radiates. But I haven’t settled, I don’t understand, I wake up every morning with a hundred new messages from a hundred new friends. It seems, upon reflection, that some smiles can’t be stifled and some fires can’t be quenched.

What is Sandbox? Sandbox is being able to trust someone you never met before because they’re just like you.

Over the course of the 5 days I spent in Lisbon I met some of the world’s most improbable young people; not up and comers but leaders in their field, decision makers and kindred spirits.  I was so enamoured with the stories I heard that I browbeat many of them into sitting down to do interviews with me (Thank you Rahaf, Tara, Kalsoom, Will, Mariam, Steve, Jaques Philippe, Tia, Isabel, Paul and Melissa). What was intended to be a short individual exercise in documentation developed into incredibly personal accounts of self-reflection and expression. I have never laughed so hard, smiled so much or felt so strongly about a group of people. I have never been so unguarded with my thoughts, open with my feelings, or trusting with my dreams; I have never before wanted so much to discover a common connection with a collection of individuals, I have never before hoped, so strongly, to be moved and to be changed.  I’m not sure how to effectively articulate the depth of the emotional peak I experienced at the summit or the trough I suffered upon our separation. I became so close to so many that it’s unfathomable that those people would not play significant roles in the rest of my life.

What is Sandbox? Sandbox is the hour and a half I spent talking to Tia about so much more that cities and Rahaf about everything. Sandbox is a cadre of young leaders who realise we are what we do and we become what we deserve.

Most of us live our lives in a deliberately linear way. We refuse to make decisions unless they’re forced on us. We refuse to accept opportunity for fear of change. Humans are pre-set to take the easy option when it’s available. Most of us occupy a space in the world that constantly smothers us. Most of us spend the majority of our life fluttering aimlessly and dispassionately pretty close to the null hypothesis of very human equations. Most of us spend our days living for the weekend. Most of us are never fortunate enough to be challenged and most of us struggle to express ourselves in a meaningful and relevant way. Most of us are stymied by being more afraid of the risk of failure than the risk of not having tried but I’ve come to realise that that’s the point; Sandbox isn’t for most of us. But what is it exactly? It’s difficult to articulate circumstance, even more so emotional context, but over the course of 5 days in Lisbon I came to see Sandbox as a mechanism for tribal hyper-interconnectivity at an astonishing scale, a chain of once in a lifetime opportunities with once in a lifetime people, life-changing moments with life-changing friends.

Thanks to the Divas

P.s In early May 2012, five Sandboxers will travel to Haiti to work on building Zero Dollar enterprise eco-systems. Keep track of the progress here http://iamjohnegan.com/never-quit-project/