Since my post earlier in the week about Working Out Loud, I have had some very encouraging feedback (including a tweet from John Stepper) and made some new connections with people who are interested in helping. Encouraged by this, and as it is still International Working Out Loud week, I thought I should share a few more of my ideas about what this could become.

This is in addition to posting on the blog everyday, which is a way of working out loud in itself. Or thinking out loud, perhaps. In fact, it is already starting to uncover issues, ideas and thoughts that hadn’t occurred to me before. This is more from the act of hitting the publish button than from any dialogue but it is an unexpected, though welcome, consequence.

Anyway, as I have said before I would like this humble blog to develop into a bigger community for Post-Executives, as a resource and a source of help and support for, as I perceive, a very under-served and growing group of people. Some of the ideas I have are:

• Start a monthly meet-up, initially in London (because that’s where I am), so that people can connect and develop relationships.

• Have an online community for people to share their stories and knowledge and give and receive help to each other. This has to be a secure and trusted space that is easy to use and access.

• Create resources that are appropriate to this audience and support their re-imagining. There is a lot of stuff on the internet for starting a businesses, doing a ‘start-up’ (which is a different thing), working as a freelancer, changing career and so forth but it is targeted at a younger, less experienced and less skilled audience who are starting from a very different point.

• Run workshops that bring people together to work on their re-imagining programmes, help each other and create mutual support groups (i.e. mastermind groups, Active Learning Sets, WOL Circles).

• Develop or curate online courses to support the new learning requirements that Post-Executives have. Perhaps have a ‘Re-imagining Framework’?

• Do a series of interviews with people who have left Corporate life and have, or are in the process, of re-imagining themselves. Could be podcasts?

I guess this is my starter for ten, or straw man, or Aunt Sally. What I really want is to get people involved in a conversation and be guided by what they say they want and what needs emerge.

Finding the people to engage in that conversation is my current task, so I am asking for ideas about the best ways and places to connect with my ‘Post-Executives’.

None of this is revolutionary but if we could make some of it come about, I wonder what the effect would be? What impact could this have?

All feedback welcome!