Agency, innovation & growth: reflections from Edge City Lanna by Rania Hashim

‍This is a guest post, first published on Rania Hashim's Substack and shared here with her permission. The views are Rania's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Edge City.

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After graduating high school earlier this year, I decided to take a gap year to better understand myself and the world before committing to a four-year path in university (read: I’m indecisive). While I was excited for the year, a lot of the beginning was defined by a sense of uncertainty; I had seemingly abstract ideas but struggled to envision how they would take shape. I felt burnt out and didn’t trust myself to make the right call, and this, coupled with finding out I had relatively severe ADHD, made for a rocky start to my gap year.

Amidst all this uncertainty, the one thing I knew I needed for sure this year was an experience away from home and my family, one that'd inculcate agency and independence and force me to grow out of my comfort zone.

This was around the time I got a Slack notification for this message:

This checked all the boxes in terms of what I was looking for in my gap year. Loosely structured environment surrounded by like-minded people, with a focus on being agentic in designing the experience? Sign me up.

Fast forward a couple of months, and I made it — I got accepted as a fellow to Edge City Lanna in Chiang Mai! :)

To provide additional context, Edge City is a month-long gathering bringing together people from various disciplines (but broadly speaking, science, technology and art) to live together and work on projects, while exploring novel ways of community living. The programming is largely community-driven & resembles an IRL sandbox for testing out cool ideas! You can find out more here.

At the crossroads I was at with my trajectory, being a fellow at Edge City was one of the most impactful things I could’ve done. The fellowship program generously funded my flights, ticket and accommodation for the whole month, without which I probably wouldn’t have been able to access such an incredible opportunity (ty edge city!).

This felt huge — a chance to be part of something entirely new in a country I’d never visited before. What I didn’t expect, however, was the profound impact it would have on me, not just in what I learned and who I connected with, but also in terms of the general outlook I held towards myself and the world. Much of my 7-hour flight back home was spent in reflection, and I’ve realized that the most impactful bits for me were in the below areas:

Exposure & Community

Something I really enjoy is intensive, focused exploration of different areas, be it the math behind neural networks or mixed media animation. I’ve realized that a crucial (yet overlooked on my end) component to this is to meet people who are working in the field. In Edge City, for instance, there were a lot more people working in web3/blockchain than I expected. Since this was something that I’d only read about previously, it presented itself as a great learning opportunity.

For me, a key value of the program lies in its multidisciplinary approach (as opposed to many similar programs/pop-up cities like Vitalia and Invisible Garden which have very focused objectives). Edge City reduced the friction in meeting people from diverse fields and facilitated the exchange of unique perspectives. I was able to familiarize myself with topics I’d only scrolled past on Twitter before — decentralized science, XR art, zero-knowledge proofs and more. This is specific to my experience: for a generalist like me, who thrives on cross-disciplinary exploration, the open-ended structure of Edge City was a perfect fit, though it may not be as enjoyable for someone who wants to dive deep into a particular area.

Being around people passionate about topics like these energized me further to learn more. For one, I’m now willing to believe that crypto is not a one-dimensional scam (lol). On the other hand, I've also started to think about the areas that I work on, especially alternative protein, through a totally different lens. I’ve learned that it’s the interactions you have with people who work on completely opposing things yet come into these environments with similar intentions, that turn out to be the most valuable. Edge City really drove that home for me.

I think Cursive, a project by a group at Edge City, captured this idea very well with its "Tensions" feature. Cursive works on cryptography-powered social networking via physical wristbands equipped with NFC chips. This was given to us at check-in. By tapping someone’s wristband with your phone, you could exchange social profiles and even see areas where your views clashed (Tensions). This feature was a great catalyst for interesting conversations. I love what Cursive’s building and it’s safe to say I was a serial tapper by the end of the month.

Cursive was just one of the many community experiments held at Edge City. There was also the community currency (∈dges), a merge of philosophical and psychological counselling (Concept Clinic), a crowdfunding platform to host events (Propel) and so on. Being able to access all these projects while they were still in the beginning stages and indirectly shaping their development was a highlight of the experience.

Generally speaking, I perceive Edge City to incubate some projects better than others — and the best types, in my opinion, are community-oriented. With this in mind, Denisa L, Lina T (two people I met at Edge City) and I decided to test out the idea of a biotech residency during the final week of the experience. More on that later!

Another aspect of the community I appreciate is the diversity of their life paths. Being among the relatively younger demographic of this program, most of the people I met had already passed through stages I was still navigating— and often in unconventional ways. Some of the coolest people I met had taken unique paths, be it working on something completely unrelated to their college major, switching careers multiple times, or even dropping out of high school to work with Stanford. Despite their wildly different (and often non-linear) journeys and definitions of success, it was interesting to note that everyone possessed a common curiosity and ambition. I couldn’t have asked for a more inspiring environment and this only makes me more bullish on the Edge City community.

However, being surrounded by all these amazing people did introduce an element of imposter syndrome to the equation, and at first, I found myself lacking the confidence to integrate myself into different experiences. I soon overcame that feeling (reasoning: “it’s stupid to question whether you deserve to be there when you’re 2,882 miles away from home”) and I realized my experience was exponentially better when I was focused on immersing myself in the environment — learning, showing up and engaging — rather than overthinking being good enough.

I could go on about the community, but one final note: Edge City has a strong multigenerational facet, which is unlike anything I’ve seen before. There were 20+ young (<13) kids as part of the experience and they weren’t just passive observers; there was programming set in place for them (massive s/o to Mari for doing such a great job on this!). Being a fellow, I even got to contribute to these efforts, organizing a Halloween-themed scavenger hunt and taking them on an excursion! This experience was super rewarding :)

Programming

Context: Programming at Edge City is largely co-created, with any attendee being able to contribute events, workshops or discussions to a shared calendar. While there are some community staples hosted by Edge City themselves (e.g. Sunday community dinners, weekly town-hall style assemblies etc), ~80% of events are organized by attendees themselves.

The concept of a co-created calendar amplifies the value of a multi-disciplinary community by SO much. It’s one thing to have a serendipitous conversation with someone you meet over breakfast, but to access so many different discussions by experts each day on diverse topics from the science of consciousness to historical government paradigms, is something else altogether. I especially enjoyed Cathy’s workshop on gene editing because it was so hands-on!

On the flip side, it's also empowering to be able to host events and contribute your experiences to the calendar. I found myself doing this more and more as the month progressed and it was honestly a great experience. In fact, in the last week, our team (Denisa, Lina & I) decided to pilot a biotech residency program within Edge City as our submission to the Edge City Lanna hackathon. The hackathon was a week-long event open to all (non-attendees included) that invited solutions to improve human flourishing and propose impactful projects in AI, human longevity, crypto and more. As part of our project, we hosted biotech-centric programming every single day. This included:

• Daily biotech deep work sessions for accountability (50:10 Pomodoro-style work blocks)
• Casual discussions over meals (e.g. speculating on how biotech can give rise to sci-fi realities, discussion on the role of biotech in pop-up cities)
• Biotech project showcase (demo day), with prizes funded through Propel ;)

My one regret? Not contributing to the calendar sooner; there is so much value in being able to share your expertise and facilitate discussions on topics that mean so much to you!

Identity & Self Direction

A more unprecedented result from the past month was the general paradigm shift I had in defining myself. I've read (and obsessed over) Paul Graham's "Keep Your Identity Small" loads of times, but it wasn't until I had an experience like this that I fully internalized it.

This time around, I was very intentional about seeking experiences that didn’t always align with my (often self-restricting) labels, which led to a month of many firsts; a first Muay Thai class, a first cold plunge, a first attempt at VR art, and of course, a first time living and travelling by myself. The environment allowed me to fully immerse myself in these experiences and strip myself of preconceived notions on who I was “supposed” to be and instead, focus on truly being.

I've realized that the different contexts we place ourselves in really nurture different aspects of who we are. And the way I see it, Edge City brought out a side of me that I really liked. It brought out a side of me that was curious and open to trying new, weird experiences, hosting dinners and discussing theories on reincarnation over group hikes, all while working on my own projects. This has made me more conscious about the contexts I'm a part of and encouraged me to expose myself to even more of these in my gap year (possibly at the next Edge City??? 👀).

Another way I like to think about this area is that by gaining exposure to so many different experiences, I've also gained valuable data points in terms of self-insight towards what I enjoy and do not. For instance, I've found that I get into my "flow state" when I'm talking biotech, collaborating with others and rapidly ideating/designing things as we did for the hackathon. This has given me a better sense of direction.

Despite having a stronger sense of direction, am I still uncertain about what my life could look like a couple of months from now? Yes. But the difference is, this time I feel better equipped to deal with it. I'm starting to enjoy leaving room for spontaneity in my life and letting my plans evolve as I go. From my conversations and limited personal experiences, I’m starting to think it’s almost better to not overoptimize.

As marketer-y as it sounds, I'd be lying if I said that Edge City didn't change my life for the better. I'm extremely grateful to the Edge City team (Jack, Janine, Timour, Sophie, Telamon & Cheyenne!) for having me as a fellow and enabling me to have these experiences. From helping set up for events to learning how to build with AI, the whole month has been nothing but valuable and fun and I owe all of it to the team ❤️

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‍This is a guest post, first published on Rania Hashim's Substack and shared here with her permission. The views are Rania's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Edge City.