Author: Michael

Posted on

Is Your Organization a Black Hole?

Some new physics research is suggesting that Black Holes in space could be the ultimate quantum computers. This New Scientist article explains that a controversial new study argues that nearly all the information that falls into a black hole escapes back out, in the form of “Hawking radiation,” that eventually evaporates them away completely. Originally thought to be too random to be useful, it is now acknowledged by Hawking himself that black holes do not destroy information.

The physics-speak in this New Scientist article is fascinating in itself, but also because it all sounds like organization and conversation to me — this great, invisible, gaping void that sucks up all the information it possibly can, originally thought to destroy all of that information, creating chaos, unless it was harnessed, controlled and directed.

What I’m hearing in the physics of organization is that the massive, invisible conversation that is the whole organization talking to the whole organization, every day in the normal course of business, devouring information, also radiating energy and effects, is also making fantastically complex quantum calculations. The challenge in outer space and open (organization) space seems the same: to decode the radiation coming out! As we understand how these things work, we will better understand what to put in them (invitations) to get the results we want.

Elsewhere, I’m working my way through Tor Norretranders’ User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down To Size, which posits that the Third Grand Unification Theory in physics will reach way beyond the unification of gravity with the other fundamental forces and connect theoretical physics as a whole with consciousness, meaning, conversation and the stuff of everyday life.

Posted on

Open Space Technology: Practice Retreat
April 18-20, 2006

I’ve been sharing the story of the essential practices of Open Space Technology with a variety of people in recent months, from facilitators and managers, to physicsts and software technologists. I’m pleased to say that the response has been surprisingly positive.

In April, Chris Corrigan and I will be leading a Practice Retreat to share our learning about the essence of Open Space leadership. The program is experience-based and serves all levels of Open Space, facilitation and leadership experience equally well. The practices are taught in the context of Open Space Technology, but will be immediately applied to all kinds of other work in organizations and communities.

Chris and i have been offering practice workshops together since 2002, but this is the first time we have offered a full three-day retreat together. It will take place on Bowen Island, near Vancouver BC. See the invitation and registration for complete details.

We would love any of you to join us, and of course, please feel free to share the invitation with folks in your network who might be interested.

Posted on

OneWebDay

Celebrate the health and diversity of the internet. The mission of OneWebDay is to create, maintain, advance, and promote a global day to celebrate online life: September 22, 2006. One big day and web of parties, projects, people.

Posted on

Opening Space After Attacks in Nepal

For three years, I have had the opportunity to work with peaceful development leaders in Nepal. In my last visit we did a four-day, national, Open Space and Appreciative Inquiry conference and training summit event. Most recently, the Maoists have attacked the village of one of the main leaders of the group. This photo is one result and the invitation below is another.

Namaste,

Now we are suffering from difficulties. our some pride were gone with palpa attacks. it was did by Maoist on January 31, 2006. now we are make a team for reconstruction. so we are appeal to all you to support us for reconstruction. we are going to Tansen summit for Imagine new tansen through open space technology. after that we provide you our master plan.

Appeal of NAINN

History, no matter where it is, the wealth of people of the whole world. A smallest unit of something can be a big insight in the future. It’s our duty to preserve and protect the identity of human civilization. In this context, Nepal Appreciative Inquiry National Network (NAINN) wants all to recall the destruction took place in Tansen, Palpa on 31 January 2006. The tragedy was not expected. The world runs in complexity and in chaos.

So it happened and now we all are bound to accept the damage. The attack form the Maoist destroyed a century long living history of Nepal. Asia’s biggest gate is lying on the ground with its seared body. Many historical and archeological things were engulfed with fire. The old building, which was supporting the government offices with pride, is now roofless, door less, windowless and with broken pillars. The surrounding is damaged as well.

But there is still hope. The structure is not completely ashed. The people of Tansen are not hopeless, we Nepalese people’s energy is not swallowed by the fire and bullets. We have hope that the Palpa Durbar comes into its original outlook within a very short time. It’s the dream of Palpali and whole Nepalese people. And we are sure that our dream comes true since we have the sympathy from national and international government, organizations, I/NGOs, supporters, people and all the well wishers.

A very good news to all of us is that a Tansen Reconstruction Team, led by Mr. Ram Bahadur Raut (National Chairperson of NAINN), has been formed very recently in Tansen, Palpa. It’s right time to contribute for the revival of the identity of whole human beings. Nepal Appreciative Inquiry National Network (NAINN) requests all National and International governments, NGOs, INGOs, Donor Agencies, people and well- wishers to make a contribution from your side so that Tansen Durbar can resurrect very soon.

A small drop of water, if collected from many, can fill a large pot.

Posted on

MeshForum 2006 – Chicago, May 7-9

MeshForum is a conference on Networks – bringing together an interdisciplinary mix of academics, artists, business leaders and government experts for three days of learning and collaboration. Our mission is to foster the overall study of networks – across fields of industry and academia.

Confirmed speakers at MeshForum 2006 include Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, authors of Naked Conversations, and Manuel Lima of VisualComplexity.com, as well as a mix of academics and business people. We also hope to once again have experts from the Pentagon (Office of Force Transformation) and FEMA. On the third and final day, the format changes and yours truly leads an Open Space for speakers and audience members to break into small groups and work together on the discussions which have arisen out of the previous two days.

The goal is that MeshForum provides more than just a chance to present and hear great content, that it also provides a forum for interaction and collaboration, especially between people in different fields and industries. Register Now

Posted on

Inviting Employee Engagement

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s secret to maintaining flow:

The only solution to achieve enduring happiness, therefore, is to keep finding new opportunities to refine one’s skills: do one’s job better or faster, or expand the tasks that comprise it; find a new set of challenges more appropriate to your stage of life. Paradoxically, the feeling of happiness is only realized after the event. To acknowledge it at the time would only serve as distraction.

Recently, I’ve been working in the area of “employee engagement,” organizing “engagement summits” in Open Space, to invite deepening engagement with the most important business issues, following company-wide engagement surveys. This quote puts that work in perspective. Anything other than direct invitations into the most important issues and opportunities seems like so much distraction in organization. We need to engage in something!

via Chris Corrigan

Posted on

Real Practice

How do we know if our practice is a real practice? Only by one thing: more and more, we just see the wonder. What is the wonder? I don’t know. We can’t know such things through thinking. But we always know it when it’s there.

–Charlotte Joko Beck

Posted on

Heart Practice

I’ve written previously about the four essential practices of Open Space Technology:

  • Opening Heart
  • Inviting Attention
  • Supporting Connection
  • Grounding the Energy

When I first applied this view to my work, after 10 years of opening space, I found they made everything easier. I could do opening heart, during set-up. Then I could invite attention to start the meeting, and so on. One step, one task, one practice at a time.

In my latest facilitations, however, my learning progresses. I am finding that all I really need to do is the first practice, opening heart, and the rest happens almost automatically. This feels more like a river current carrying me and the rest of the event along.

I can see the other practices go by. I know that I’m doing them. And not doing them. At my best, they are becoming more like things that go by in a river, rather than goals or tasks I swim toward, accomplish, or do.

As I rest, relax, and open the space that we might normally refer to as heart, I find that the mental and physical state that arises leads naturally into the next thing, inviting attention. That attention allows supporting connections. Energy flows in and from the connecting and conversing, and automatically seeks ground in some tangible (real) action or product. And those actions and products, however large or small, become the foundation for deeper rest, relaxation and opening.

I find it easiest to start with heart and opening, but I suppose we can start anywhere, as long as we’re willing to be carried through all four seasons or dimensions of practice. If I can’t relax my heart, I can go back to past results, or back further, noticing whatever supporting connections I might have available. But more and more, it is the physical sensations of heart that tell me most clearly where I am, when is right, and what to do.

I’ll be gone on retreat for the next couple of weeks, resting in practice. Find me again here in March, or join us in April!

Posted on

Are You A Buddhist?

People sometimes ask me this question, usually because of my monk-like hairdo or some other Buddhist-like things I say and do. I always have a hard time answering. While some of my teachers are well-known Tibetans, what to say when they talk like this…

In Buddhism we have an incredible arrangement: universal education from beginning at birth up until death, as an old person. I feel these things could be put into a universal language. Give up religion, give up Buddhism. Go beyond the Buddhism. Essential aspect of the philosophy put into the scientific language. This I feel is my aim.

…about Essential Education? So, I don’t know if I’m a buddhist or not, but I care about awareness, education, practice, wisdom, and compassion.

Posted on

OpenWorld: Land for Education

Mark Frazier at OpenWorld reports this progress on what I would call micro-democracy:

…the Explorers Foundation of Denver announced that its Cobden-Bright Award will help fund Openworld’s development of a new “Grassroots Land Registry” web site, whose aim is to pilot a new strategy for awakening dormant capital in poor communities.

Highlights of the strategy are described in the full text of the announcement below. In brief, the approach we are gearing up to demonstrate hinges upon creating new incentives for residents of neighborhoods to work together on resolving ownership disputes and creating private land registries.

The project will reward residents in pilot project areas who agree to a “good neighbor” covenant for arbitrating disputes, and who upload photos and brief video affirmations of uncontested property claims to an Openworld web site. Households in areas that take such actions will gain access to microscholarships for eLearning and microvouchers for health care resources.

Go, Mark! Go!

Posted on

Socratic Practice

James Rehm’s review of Michael Strong’s book on Socratic practice makes me want to be a teacher.

“Socratic questioning,” writes Strong, “is an endlessly sophisticated art. It is the engine that drives Western thought forward. Socratic questioning is not a technique, it is an approach to conceptual understanding which contains within it an intrinsic craving for conceptual refinement at every level of understanding.” (p. 149).

…A good argument can be made, he says, that introductory science courses would teach more if they offered students an immersion in scientific method and thinking rather than flooding them with a sea of information. In the same way, Strong – who likes math and is good at it – believes that Socratic practice should be a prerequisite for all math education. Why? Socratic practice, whether it traffics in discussions of trust, love and betrayal or other ideas equally remote from square roots and tangents, improves students’ facility with abstract concepts, and abstract concepts are the basis of mathematics, which is at root a way of thinking rather than a body of knowledge.

In reading the whole of this review, I notice that I have some deep inner valuing of teaching and learning. They are self-inviting, self-satisfying, self-sustaining. The more I teach or learn, the more I want to teach and learn. And in Socratic practice these two seem to run together, as the flow of Awareness. Why stop with the humanities, math, and science? Why not paint all of our work with this care?

Strong’s book, The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice is available at New View Publications.

Posted on

Small Change News Invention

I invented something last week at Recent Changes Camp. An adaptation of a WordPress weblog. A question came up about how to attach a sort of “toolkit” to articles about people doing good in community, to help others connect and support more good.

Here’s my hacker solution: A WordPress weblog that would allow open registration and then direct posting by readers of these articles. Titles of posts would name the issue. The body of the post could include any sort of contact info and clarification of interest.

A small set of categories would allow people to tag themselves with levels of interest and action: give money, give time, give stuff, refer others, make links, talk by phone, email, meet to discuss, host a conversation, learn more, teach skills, partner on project.

With a little skilled software tweaking for easier user access, it seems that this system could be quite a nice little marketplace for readers, writers, givers and activists. Anybody could search for the issues and interests they were looking for. I’m posting it here in case somebody out there already has a use for it. Might be a next generation of SmallChangeNews.

Posted on

In the News

The Oregonian newspaper caught me opening the space at Recent Changes Camp

Recent Changes Camp made news in Portland this past weekend, combining software and community development. The Oregonian ran these photos and a good article as well…

…some wondered aloud whether it would descend into chaos — or into some kind of hippie technology fest. “I really had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know whether there would be people with no shoes on and caftans or what,” said Mike Cannon-Brookes, chief executive of a Sydney-based company called Atlassian Software Systems, which designs wiki software.

A couple of people did come in sandals, and many wore jeans, but no one was burning incense. And once the meeting broke up into a dozen discussion groups, it suddenly seemed focused and orderly.

Good News Network founder Geri Weis-Corbley captured a great on-the-fly open frame movie of the event as well.

The Oregonian newspaper caught our wall at Recent Changes Camp

Posted on

Revolutionary Government

Remember the American Revolution? When the people rose up and made government respond to their needs and interests? Seems a new revolution may be emerging in the state of Washington. It’s called Easy Citizen Involvement.

I met Dick Spady, the leader of the revolution, at RecentChangesCamp last week. He’s working to create something called Citizen Councilors in Washington state. Last year he ran a legislative initiative. This year he’ll collect 200,000+ signatures on petitions, to take it directly to the people, on a statewide ballot.

His plan works like this: Once approved by the people of the state, they will gather $10,000 in donations. That achieved, they’ll set up an 800 number to collect 1000 subscriptions for $10 each. Subscribers will commit to convening conversations of 8-12 neighbors and friends. Others will sign-up as communicators, to download and print materials for their groups.

While they are gathering subscribers, volunteers and elected officials will work with the State Auditor to produce a set of opinion survey questions that will form the basis for small group conversations throughout the state. After the conversations, participants will answer the survey questions and submit to the State Auditor for statewide tabulation.

It’s a revolutionary invitation to community conversation and feedback mechanism for federal, state and local governing officials. The Washington Association of Churches is supporting the petition and ballot initiative, giving it a good chance at succeeding.

See also, Dick’s State-of-the-Union Project, which invites and supports similar dialogue programs in schools, using the State of the Union address as the basis for students expressing their own opinions and listening to the opinions of others. It’s up and running and ready for classroom use.

Posted on

Unimagined Capacity

I lunched at RecentChangesCamp with Jon Ramer and Jair. Our storytelling is well summed by this bit from Jair’s site:

You have — within you — the fuel to thrive and to flourish, and to leave this world in better shape than you found it. Sometimes you tap into this fuel – other times you don’t. But the sad fact is that most people have no idea how to tap into this fuel or even recognize it when they do. Where is this fuel within you? You tap into it whenever you feel energized and excited by new ideas. You tap into it whenever you feel at one with your surroundings, at peace. You tap into it whenever you feel playful, creative, or silly. You tap into it whenever you feel your soul stirred by the sheer beauty of existence. You tap into it whenever you feel connected to others and loved. In short, you tap into it whenever positive emotions resonate within you. — Barbara Fredrickson, Positive Emotions & Psychophysiology Laboratory @ University of Michigan

Jon mentioned some conversations he’s been having with others about “Unimagined Capacity.” He tells remarkable stories of people discovering this unimagined power. It seems to me that we need more conversations about this. When was the last time you discovered some unimagined capacity in yourself or your people?

Posted on

Gathering of Friends

can you join us on bainbridge island, off seattle, on thursday, february 9th? the theme of the day is practice. so far, we are expecting about 15 people for a full day of learning and connecting.

i’ve been thinking lately about open space practice in terms of opening heart, inviting attention, supporting connection, and grounding the energy. i offer that as some slim subtext. anything that falls into one or all of those buckets is fair game and the rest of the plan is all open space.

email if you’d like to join us. we’re doing a simple, potluck and pizzas sort of lunch.

© 1998-2020 Michael Herman. All Rights Reserved.