Life Itself Strategy Materials

A wiki/knowledgebase for all Life Itself's strategy related materials.

Rough organization

/             # put all notes here by default
/materials/   # put entries for existing materials here
/templates/   # templates

Overview of existing materials

Inventory of existing strategy materials

See materials sidebar or subfolder.

Portfolio Visualizations

Interactive views of Life Itself initiatives and projects. Open any HTML file directly in a browser — no server needed.

• Force-Directed Map — drag, zoom, filter by type. Best for exploring connections.
• Horizontal Tree — collapsible dendrogram. Best for parent-child hierarchy.
• Indented Tree — file-explorer style list with status and tags.

Data is rebuilt automatically on commit (via a pre-commit hook) whenever initiatives/ or projects/ files change.

Building the data index

The visualizations are powered by visualizations/index.js, generated from markdown frontmatter by the build script.

# One-time setup
cd scripts && npm install

# Rebuild manually (also runs automatically on commit)
node scripts/build-index.js

The pre-commit hook triggers this automatically when any initiatives/*.md or projects/*.md file is staged.

A history of projects to work on strategy

• Jun 2024-🔁 (ongoing) - Strategy review and planning 🚧
  • This has somehow metamorphised a bit. Started out as a sync of Rufus & Sylvie and has grown into another strategy evolution.
  • Task: ❌ (TODO)
  • Shaping: missing …
• Jan 2024-⏸️ - Presenting our strategy (as is) 🚧⏸️ status: produced this KB and put most materials and never got to evaluation and publication
  • Summary (from task derived from shaping)
    • Appetite: 3d (reduced by 1d given we spent 1.5d in shaping and work we did in shaping will help)
    • Problem: lot of strategy-related materials but they aren't woven together or consolidated which creates a sense of overwhelm and confusion and prevents them being published and used.
    • Solution: inventory materials, create framework to organize them, create roadmap for publication. If we can, start on consolidated strategy.
  • Task: https://github.com/life-itself/community/issues/1048
  • Pitch: https://github.com/life-itself/comms/blob/main/pitch/2401%20Presenting%20our%20Strategy%20v3%20in%20its%20current%20form.md
• Sep 2021 - Updated and consolidated Core SCQH / logic of existence / theory of change including summary "why Life Itself" - Sep 2021
  • Task: https://github.com/life-itself/community/issues/36
  • Currently we have a large amount of material spread in many areas. We would like a consolidated structure for our SCQHs and at least one root SCQH plus a consolidated summary version so that:
    • We have a clear, simple and short summary for e.g. our front page, for communication
    • We have a organizing structure for our work i.e. any given activity should now be mappable against that hypothesis tree / theory of change
• Nov 2022 (opened) [uber][epic] LI v3 Strategy & Implementation
  • This was the overall task item for doing the v3 strategy
  • Task: https://github.com/life-itself/community/issues/196
    • A10: pretty minimal https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lxWWI4IvnWPLPtQjLY2_fGkko99MnqIDKMCD6E-uDaQ/edit#heading=h.3vdu4snhplyo (could merge to issue)