we're a global community of curious humans thinking about and building better futures together, in multiplayer mode. we're not traditional researchers or consultants (though you'll find those skills here!), but people creating infrastructure that helps transform collective imagination into real momentum. think of us as part signal-spotting collective, part cultural transmission lab – all working to make futures thinking feel less like reading a white paper and more like joining a movement. because while we believe the future belongs to those who think about it, the magic happens when we build together.
that's our whole community! from our core team (hi!) to our 400+ members across 10 local chapters to everyone who drops by to share signals. when we say "we," we mean everyone building better futures together.
nope! we're not here to predict the future – we're here to help more people participate in shaping it. we track signals of change and experiment with making better futures possible, but you won't find any crystal ball gazing here. except yes, we do love us that emoji.
think of it as our collective intelligence hub. it's where we share and discuss "signals" – clues about how the future is emerging (or unraveling). not just news articles or trend reports, but anything that makes you stop and wonder about what's changing.
a few things: we're fully community-owned, we work in multiplayer mode by default, and we focus on making futures thinking accessible to everyone, not just experts. plus, we're building real infrastructure to help possibility break through, not just writing reports.
oh, we build things! from our Field Guide (shipped to 22+ countries) to Tomorrow.Radio to our microgrants program. but we also believe that thoughtful conversation IS doing something – it's how we develop collective intelligence about what's possible and how to make it happen.
we're playing the infinite game! rather than trying to "win" at futures, we're building infrastructure that helps more people see themselves as shapers of tomorrow. success is when futures thinking becomes as natural as any other cultural practice.
instead of trying to build futures alone (single-player mode), we believe in the magic that happens when people dream and build together. it's like your favorite late-night conversations where ideas build on ideas and everyone leaves feeling more capable than they came – but at community scale.
anyone who takes an active role in imagining and building better futures! Not about formal citizenship or status, but about seeing yourself as someone who can shape tomorrow. the term comes from our belief that the future belongs to those who think about it (and a lot of inspiration from friend of the community and author of Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us, Jon Alexander)
that's exactly the kind of question we love exploring together! We're not prescriptive about what 'better' means, but we are committed to futures that expand possibility for more people. It's an ongoing conversation we have as a community.
this hits at something we think about constantly. futures work has historically been dominated by western, privileged perspectives - the same people asking the same questions in the same rooms, reinforcing ideas that have served them well. We're committed to doing it differently.
for us, that means actively creating space for and learning from diverse ways of imagining and building futures - from Indigenous seven-generation thinking to Black radical imagination to intersectional feminist worldviews. it means examining our own inherited patterns and assumptions. and it means designing our community for what we call the Edge Effect - where bringing together different perspectives creates the kind of productive tension that sparks new possibilities, for the many, not just the few.
we know we're still learning and unlearning. but we believe better futures emerge when we imagine together across differences, not from any single dominant viewpoint.
This is an ongoing area of growth for us. While we have active members and chapters across the global south, we know we need to do more to decolonize our practices and make space for different ways of thinking about and building futures. We're actively working to shift power and resources to support futures work happening outside the usual western contexts.
By designing for accessibility from the start! Whether that's keeping our core tools free, making our practices easy to adopt and adapt, or ensuring our community governance gives real power to all members. But we know there's always more work to do here – we actively seek feedback on barriers we might be missing.
no, and we don't pretend to be. building better futures is inherently political - it means questioning who has power, who gets to imagine tomorrow, and who benefits from keeping things as they are. while we welcome different perspectives and approaches, we're clear about our values: we believe futures work should be accessible to everyone, not just the privileged few. we believe in collective imagination over individual prophecy. and we believe that transforming how we think about and build futures is crucial to creating a world that works for more people.
this isn't about partisan politics - it's about being honest that any work toward better futures comes with a point of view about what "better" means and who gets to decide. we'd rather be upfront about ours than hide behind false (and for that matter, privileged) neutrality.
tl;dr: for example, we talk badly about the orange man and his henchmen in the server. the signals are flying. are they not?
they help us remember that change is organic, not mechanical. some ideas need time to germinate, others bloom unexpectedly. we're not building a machine – we're tending a living ecosystem of possibility.
everyone who contributes to RADAR has a stake in the value we create together. this happens through our $SIGNAL token, which you earn through participation – you can't buy your way in. more than just financial ownership, it's about having real agency in shaping our direction.
well, it's not our primary objective. to date, we've bootstrapped through a mix of crowdfunding, grant-gathering, and community-owned projects (like our events and drops). while we continue to explore partnerships in the private and public sectors, no matter where our model takes us, there's one constant: any value created flows back to the community members who helped create it. know a fairy godmother or have a thoughtful partnership in mind? we're all eyes and ears at your-friends@radardao.xyz.
we use web3 tools because they help us create real mechanisms for shared ownership – social, emotional, and financial. But don't worry if that's not your thing! you don't need to understand web3 to participate. we're here for the futures, not the tech.
absolutely! we love collaborating with organizations in the private and public sectors who share our values around multiplayer futures. whether that's through sponsored research, custom workshops, or other creative partnerships. just know we'll probably definitely try to make your work more accessible and experimental than you're used to!
it varies! some decisions happen through formal community voting, others emerge through discussion and consensus. our core team helps steward the community's direction, but major decisions about RADAR's future involve the whole community as much as we're able. we're always experimenting with making this more transparent and participatory.
great question! we track things like community growth and engagement, but we're more interested in how our work helps shift people's relationship to the future. through tools like our Hope Census and community feedback loops, we look for evidence that more people feel equipped to shape tomorrow. but we're always refining how we measure impact.
it's built into everything we do! from quick temperature checks in Discord to formal feedback sessions after events to our community decision-making processes. but more importantly, we try to create an environment where feedback flows naturally – where people feel comfortable suggesting improvements or trying new approaches. some of our best innovations have come from community members saying "what if we tried..." (seriously, reach out, we want to hear!)
our cycles are seasonal deep dives — whether its into specific futures worth nurturing, or more recently, specific areas of practice. they're dedicated containers for the community to focus its energy and often result in special drops and/or events in line with the exploration at hand. check out our past cycle explorations in the archive, and our focus for 2025 here.
ah, The Great Yearning! it's our focus for 2025. we've noticed a pattern: there's all this potential energy for better futures that keeps getting stuck as just... yearning. through our labs this year, we're developing tools and practices that help transform that yearning into real momentum.
our local chapters are like mini-RADARs, bringing our multiplayer approach to futures work into specific geographic contexts. each one has its own flavor while staying connected to the broader community. want to start one? we've got a guide for that!
The Curious Human's Field Guide to the Future is our love letter to futures thinking! it's a hybrid activity book/manifesto that's shipped to over 22 countries. think of it as your personal toolkit for spotting and shaping better futures.
think of them as small bets on big possibilities. when we're lucky enough to have funds at our disposal, we put out specific briefs either to the community or more broadly to the public. people with ideas of all shapes and sizes can propose projects that help build better futures, and we collectively decide which ones to fund. It's our way of turning shared visions into real experiments.
not at all! some of our most valuable members are recovering pessimists (cough, keels). what matters is being open to possibility – not blind optimism, but the kind of grounded hope that comes from seeing paths forward, even when they're challenging.
nope! the only real requirements are curiosity and generosity. our community includes researchers, artists, cultural analysts, network weavers, and folks who just have a knack for noticing interesting patterns. if you're curious about building better futures, you belong here.
if by 'creative' you mean 'professionally artistic', nope! if you mean 'able to imagine things being different than they are now', then yes – but we believe everyone has that capacity. we're here to help you unlock it.
We aim to design our spaces and practices with different needs in mind – from making our Discord channels screen-reader friendly to providing multiple ways to participate in events. As a community chock full of neurodivergent individuals, we'd like to consider ourselves quite cognizant of designing for various abilities from the jump. But we know we still have loads of work to do. We actively welcome feedback about barriers we might be missing and adapt our practices accordingly.
nope! our core community spaces and tools are free by design. while some special projects (like our Field Guide) have costs associated with physical production, we work to keep economic barriers low and often have community-funded support available when needed.
while we currently operate primarily in English, our community spans 22+ countries and we're actively working to make our tools and practices more linguistically inclusive. several of our local chapters operate in multiple languages, and we're always looking for ways to reduce language barriers (like ensuring closed captioning was available in a whole host of languages for participants of LoveFest!). have ideas for making RADAR more accessible in your language? we'd love to hear them!
Like any living ecosystem, conflict is natural and can be generative! We have clear community guidelines and moderation practices, but more importantly, we cultivate an environment where people can disagree thoughtfully and learn from different perspectives. It's not about everyone thinking the same way – it's about thinking better together.
We celebrate them as learning opportunities! Seriously. Some of our best insights have come from things that didn't work as planned. We document our failures as carefully as our successes because that's how we build better infrastructure for possibility.
oh yeah, we love a good tarot spread! not for fortune telling, but as one of many tools we use for collective sensemaking and planning. our annual readings help us explore different perspectives on the year ahead (ask us about the time we pulled the same dragonfly card twice in a row – a 1/112 chance!). we're pretty practical about our magic around here: tarot, astrology, and other frameworks are welcome alongside more traditional planning tools. whatever helps us think differently about possibility and notice unexpected patterns!
assuming you've already applied and been accepted, the answer is simple: join our Discord! that's where most of the magic happens. say hi in #welcome, explore our Signal Garden, and see what catches your attention. no pressure to dive into everything at once. start with what intrigues you most.
Discord is where we've found the perfect blend of structure and serendipity. While it might seem not be your everyday app, it really does gives us everything we need: real-time and asynchronous conversation, easy file sharing, great search functionality, and most importantly – space for the kind of organic, playful connections that make multiplayer futures work. Plus, it's free and familiar to many of our members. That said, we know it's not everyone's go-to platform, so we try to make key updates and resources available in other formats too.
RADAR works at your pace! some folks drop by to share occasional signals, others dive deep into our labs and projects. there's not really a minimum expectation beyond "don't be extractive" — so just be mindful to contribute when and how you can.
sharing one signal that made you wonder about the future. that's it! from there, you might find yourself drawn into discussions, experiments, or projects – but it all starts with noticing something interesting and sharing it with the community.
not at all! while we love seeing familiar faces at our live events, we design everything to work asynchronously too (time zones are a drag). drop in and out as your energy and schedule allow – there's no FOMO in multiplayer mode.
some members keep their RADAR work entirely separate from their professional lives, others find ways to weave them together, and many float somewhere in between. we respect those boundaries – while also recognizing that futures work often transcends neat categories. whatever works for you, works for us.
take it! we design for ebb and flow, knowing that energy and capacity change. you can step back anytime and return when you're ready. the garden will still be here, growing at its own pace.
everything you contribute remains yours, but by sharing it you're giving the community permission to build on and share your ideas (with credit, always!). we're big believers in generous citation and collaborative building. think of it like planting seeds that others can help grow. and it's an incentive to drop back in and see what's grown!