Victoria (Spain)

Role: Co-organizer, visual thinker, and Excalidraw facilitator

Contributions to the Discussion

Victoria served as co-organizer and managed the collaborative Excalidraw whiteboard where participants visually mapped ideas about curiosity throughout the call.

Key Points Raised

Emphasized keeping questions open rather than closing down with premature solutions
Noted that curiosity has been an ongoing personal theme for her
Shared her son's observations about declining engagement among university students (age 30, teaches at university)
Made the powerful connection: "You need to care (be curious) to focus"
Raised the question: "Can you be curious when everyone says there is no future?"
Challenged the idea that curiosity is just about information: "Curiosity is not just about information"
Connected curiosity to understanding and finding meaning in big questions

On Education and AI

"Students can't be expected to put work on work they don't believe in. That's precisely what AIs are for."

"Writing and drawing were the first externalizations of the brain humans practiced, and what enabled our intellectual evolution"

Cultural Observations

Shared personal experience about changing voting behavior despite initial beliefs
Discussed privacy norms in Catalonia vs Madrid
Noted that AI tends to ignore European perspectives: "AI always ignores us, Europeans, the middle ground"
Recommended using Mistral AI for European perspectives

Question Formulation Technique Advocacy

Victoria was the strongest advocate for the Question Formulation Technique during the call.

Near the end, she made a crucial observation about the conversation:

"I love the conversation, I've learned a lot. But I don't think we have really... start to uncover half of... what Curiosity is about. Because we were explaining our hypothesis instead of asking questions."

Her diagnosis: The group had been sharing hypotheses rather than asking questions first.

She proposed using QFT for future sessions:

"I think we need to do something like that with a good focus question. And start asking the questions first. And then, like, playing with... these questions, prioritize, and then decide what to do."

Greek Mythology Seminar Example

Victoria shared a powerful real-world example where QFT transformed a stagnant seminar:

"I was attending a seminar... among people who were interested in learning about Greek mythology. The idea was that... We raised the theme, and one person was preparing the theme for the next session. And people would come with questions. Nobody did, nobody asked, of course."

After introducing QFT:

"we had so many questions, and we were able, like, to really go in the direction we wanted, Because we ended with those lists of questions, prioritize them, decide what to do with them."

The result: Instead of standardized sessions on "the topics everybody talks about," participants pursued individual questions and made sessions richer for everybody.

Other Tool Advocacy

Maintained the collaborative Excalidraw board throughout the session
Shared personal story about her father writing a Wikipedia article on calculation rules (took over a year)

Themes Victoria Explored

Related Participants

Co-facilitated with Jerry Michalski
Engaged with Eve Blossom about sense of place
Connected with Gabriele G through visual thinking workshop
Discussed AI with Pete Kaminski and LP1 (Louise)

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