Michael – Page 15 – Michael Herman's Blog (2003-2016)

December 28, 2005December 29, 2005

Cultivating Grassroots

Chris Macrae has an interesting (and complex) web of blogs on sustainability, grassroots, value, trust-flows, globalization and more. This is an interesting entry point: Searching 30000 Grassroots Projects for Humanity by 2010.

Some of the projects listed are not what I would expect in a list of “grassroots”, but maybe the definition is up for review, toward a marriage of corporate and community activity. I guess my own definition still revolves around local, individual responsibility and action, driven and directed by personal passion rather than organizational strategy. Even if organized strategies do emerge.

Grameen Bank would be an example of local, personal initiative snowballing to the level of global organization. Their core work is still driven by and grounded in personal responsibility for local lending and administration. I’m less clear about whether the activities of private citizen and former president Bill Clinton qualify as grassroots efforts, even as I suspect they do much good. And what of experiments like SmallChangeNews.org? Is there a minimum threshold for initiative?

Catalytic Communities is something that absolutely qualifies as a genuine, and effective, grassroots effort. Let’s not forget that they still need a few dozen supporters by Saturday, 31-December to pledge $10 per month to cover core funding for 2006. Please join us in pledging, if you can.

technorati:smallchangenews

December 24, 2005December 29, 2005

Small Change Feeds/Needs Global Community — Now Offers Free Trip

What a deal. Pledge $10 a month to support a fantastic community program, and if 199 others do the same, you could win a free trip to Rio. Doing good doesn’t get much better than this. What’s more, 133 people have already signed up, so only 66 more needed — but the deadline is NOW — December 31st!

The goal is to raise core funding for Catalytic Communities, founded by my friend Theresa Williamson, to serve some of the poorest parts of Rio and replicate their successes around the world. It’s as simple as $10 a month!

CatComm is developing, inspiring and empowering a global network of communities to generate and share solutions. CatComm connects communities through spaces both physical and virtual. The “Casa” model networking hub in Rio de Janeiro offers a space for face-to-face events and Web access for community leaders across that metro region. A Community Solutions Database and other online tools make searchable, detailed, community-generated solutions to everyday challenges available across languages and borders.

Join us, if you can, in supporting this good work — and if we reach 200 pledges, you might get to go see it for yourself, in Rio. This is SmallChangeNews at it’s best.

Please do link to this, and spread it around, if you can!

technorati:smallchangenews

December 23, 2005December 29, 2005

Harold Pinter: Upon Us All

Some days ago, I received from my friend Tim Reeves a copy of the speech delivered by Harold Pinter on the occasion of his recent receipt of the Nobel Literature Prize. Pinter is a famous british playwriter, born in London of jewish descent, and has long been a human rights activist. His biography and a bit of his speech…

…As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false? Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so…
…I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say… Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image… The first line of The Homecoming is ‘What have you done with the scissors?’ The first line of Old Times is ‘Dark.’ In each case I had no further information…
…A writer’s life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don’t have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection – unless you lie – in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician…
…I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory…

What have you done? Dark. Truth. Obligation. No further information. 2006. Is Upon Us…

technorati:smallchangenews

December 21, 2005December 29, 2005

Free Geek Chicago – Computer Recycling

This just in from David Eads and friends, who’ve started a computer recycling project called FreeGeek Chicago that gets old machines refurbished and distributed to poor folks who wouldn’t otherwise have access to a machine. Can you help them with resources?

The idea is to do something akin to Working Bikes but with computers — we take old systems and rebuild them into simple Linux based boxes that we sell for $50 for a full system (keyboard/mouse/monitor) and responsibly recycle anything that we can’t use. We’re also starting an adopt-a-computer program where people can come in to our space and we’ll teach them to tear down a system and build a new one, and how to do a basic Linux installation. Then they get to keep one of the systems they’ve built.

This is a great example of SmallChangeNews, ordinary folks using what they have (and can get) to meet the needs and make a difference for others. They’ve had lots of demand for systems, and lots of interest in building from geeks and others, but it looks like the donation stream is too thin to support the level of demand. Contact FreeGeek Chicago.org if you can help!

technorati:smallchangenews

December 20, 2005December 21, 2005

Edges of Practice

I liked these reminders that Peggy Holman sent to the OSLIST recently. I think they translate well, beyond the practice of OpenSpaceTech facilitation.

…[some] aspects I think are making a difference for me:
1. Defining the Law of Two Feet as “taking responsibility for what you love”. I no longer talk about the Law of Two Feet as passion and responsibility. While basically equivalent, there’s something very powerful about this framing — it is highly actionable for both individuals and groups.
2. Using silence in the plenary. Morning announcements, evening news, I always begin with silence. This is really subtle and yet I know it matters. It seems to connect people with themselves, each other, and the whole.
3. Time and diversity. These old friends really matter. Two and a half days or more. Time to cook is so vital when dealing with complexity. PLUS bringing together unlikely mixes of people — the whole system — prepares the soil for the unexpected. The more creative the definition of the system the better!
4. Setting bold intention. The more ambitious the purpose, the more the potential energy to transform it contains. It may seem obvious, but I often find myself coaching sponsors to be daring.
I think these aspects bring qualities to the work of creating a fertile field that up the likelihood for good things to happen.

I especially like the first one. Open Space is most definitely, and essentially, about taking responsibility for the things we love… and then letting the rest of the clutter fall away.

December 20, 2005December 20, 2005

‘Tis the Season

…and perhaps nothing better to stir up some Christmas memories than a short stack of kids’ letters to Santa. Tales from a time when Christmas was/is really important. With thanks to Ashley.

December 16, 2005December 16, 2005

OpenSpaceWorld.ORG

It’s a whole new world at OpenSpaceWorld.ORG… enhanced by photos, weblog, new resources archive formatting in wiki, and the convening of a new group of co-conspiring authors to keep the whole place going and growing. It’s been a ton of work these last two weeks, but it really has become quite a nice looking and useful place. Please have a look!

December 9, 2005December 9, 2005

Leadership Experience

I’ve spent the last week or so totally immersed in the redesign and expansion of OpenSpaceWorld.org. The new site will debut in another week, but the learning is already going live.

After 6.5 years of building and managing the site, mostly solo, I’ve created a wordpress-based weblog and am inviting a number of others to co-author and ultimately co-manage the site. Working at the edge of this shift, it’s clear to me that I really don’t want to “let go of control.”

What I do want to do is share my experience and expand awareness. I know much about the site, how it’s built, how it runs, what is possible. It’s this awareness that I really want to expand, to invite others into. I have no need to control decisions, but I do have some sort of inner drive to share what I see and what I know. Then we, whoever comes into the working group, can make decisions together.

So often we criticize a leader’s “need for control” without distinguishing a (perhaps deeper) need for sharing experience and knowledge about the work. Notice that the latter (sharing) requires that a leader’s experience be met by a follower’s respect and attention, while the former (criticizing) implicitly assumes that the leader has nothing special or advanced to share. Of course, the sharing also requires that leaders actually do bring some depth of experience.

All of which has me wondering… Is the churning and flattening of organization crushing experience, eldership and learning? Are we inviting expanding awareness or just working to stay in control? What’s your experience?

December 2, 2005December 2, 2005

Open Space Conference Seeds Sprout

Three years ago, I designed and facilitated an Open Space track of the Agile/XP Universe Conference for programmers here in Chicago. Nice to hear that some of the seeds sewn there have begun to sprout. This report came in recently…

Yesterday, I opened space at the PNSQC conference in Portland OR. (Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference) Ellen Gottesdiener (copied on this email) opened space in July at the Agile 2005 conference, also software-related. In both of those the OS ran concurrently with other sessions. Here in the NW we are planning another software-related regional conference (XP Fest NW) for next spring to be all Open Space, all the time.
The first time I saw Open Space in a conference setting in 2002, Michael Herman opened it for the XP/Agile Universe.
It’s not the ideal way to facilitate Open Space, [conference tracks] but it makes for a more enjoyable and rich conference, IMHO. The more conferences I attend with Open Space tracks, the more impatient I get with powerpoint presentations. Another thing I’ve noticed in conferences that regularly include Open Space…the senior folks and “gurus” tend to show up there and become more accessible than in more formal sessions.

I’d agree with Diana. Better to run the whole thing in Open Space, but sometimes the tracks are a necessary bridge to that. Go, Diana, Go! And perhaps the coolest part about Open Space is that somebody can see it once or twice and then just dive into the leadership for themselves. It helps to have a couple of good looks at it, but after that, it’s just a matter of Practice!

December 1, 2005December 1, 2005

King’s Cross via Heart Feed

This turned up in my new Open Space Aggregator yesterday. Recall that Open Space runs on principles like “Whoever comes is the right people” and “Whenever it starts is the right time.”

Normal news aggregators like Bloglines require us to plug in lots of addresses and then they feed us *everything* from those places. Euan once swore off the things, claiming an affinity for context, as I recall. I’m now attempting the same, opting instead for a folder full of bookmarks, because I just don’t like the push of all those feeds.

Instead, when I think of someone, or have a moment to wander down the virtual hallway of the home office here, I scroll down that list and pick somebody. I read down their latest, and then maybe swim out horizontally through some of their links, blissfully unaware of all those other postings everyone else has piled up for me to read.

Whatever I click is the right blog, the right posting, the right link. Thanks to Andy Borrows for this, my first discovery! Open Space Aggregator. Heart feed. Aaaaahhhhh…..

November 30, 2005November 30, 2005

Opening Space for the Infinite

The relative quiet of winter settles in, even in the center of this big and windy city. Newly wireless, freed from my desk chair, I find myself exploring the theology of Paul Tillich from my living room couch.

…since things in existence are corrupt and therefore ambiguous, no finite thing can be (by itself) that which is infinite. All that is possible is for the finite to be a vehicle for revealing the infinite…

Recently I discovered that Tillich was in fact a central teacher for one of my own central teachers (and friends), Harrison Owen, originator of the Open Space Technology approach to meeting and organization. Thanks to Ashley for uncovering these connections via email.

All of which has me returning and reviewing, this evening season, my own work and practice, in Open Space and beyond, as finite version and vehicle for the infinite. I notice that these two inform each other, how I see is what I see. Body as vehicle of perception. Training as vehicle of understanding. Practice as vehicle for confusion. Patient, persistent, opening, visioning, offering, grounding, as vehicle for…

I teeter on, in the open space between doing well and doing good.

November 29, 2005December 29, 2005

Support CatComm at PledgeBank

PledgeBank is doing this year, in grand style, much of what a number of us have been working on since last year, in small ways, as SmallChangeNews. Theresa Williamson, an Omidyar Network friend and colleague has posted this there:

“I will set up a $10 monthly donation to CatComm (or $120 annually) but only if 399 other people will too, and only if one philanthropist will match our joint donations dollar for dollar.” — Theresa Williamson, Founder and Executive Director
Deadline to sign up by: 31st December 2005 So far… 39 people have signed up, 360 more needed
Meeting this pledge will make CatComm permanently sustainable! It’s as simple as $10 a month! Catalytic Communities’ mission is to develop, inspire and empower a global network of communities generating and sharing solutions.
CatComm connects communities through spaces both physical and virtual. The “Casa,” our model networking hub in Rio de Janeiro offers a space for face-to-face events and Web access for community leaders across that metro region, while our Community Solutions Database and other online tools make searchable, detailed, community-generated solutions to everyday challenges available across languages and borders.

Theresa and CatComm are doing some really fantastic work in Rio. We could use more of her model up here in the States and elsewhere around the world. This funding will help make that possible. Please support CatComm as you are able!

technorati:smallchangenews

November 23, 2005November 23, 2005

Giving Thanks

…from Jill’s parents’ place in Dallas this week. This is one of my favorite times of the year, when things still do get a little quieter, making space to take stock, give thanks, and revisit what is most important for the coming weeks and months.

In sorting things out last night, I notice that I am in working conversations with more people, seeking to do good things in more and more different kinds of places, than ever before. There is more clarity about practice and more good company than I can ever remember. There are more questions and confusions and uncertainties, too — but lately, these are not the obstacles that they have been in the past.

I’m grateful for all of the good people who are finding me these days, new clients and colleagues inviting me into their work and organizations, friends old and new supporting me in life and work. Grateful, too, to be back in Chicago, making a home with a partner, with plans for a wedding, and possibilities beyond. Life is plenty.

Wishing you same… and unplugging ’til next week.

November 20, 2005March 13, 2006

Read!

My niece, Tess, in my sister’s lap.

November 18, 2005December 29, 2005

Donors Choose

The DonorsChoose mission is to improve public education by building an online marketplace where teachers describe and individuals can fund specific classroom needs. DonorsChoose envisions a nation where students in every community have the resources that they need to learn.

The small-scale giving opportunities at DonorsChoose was part of the inspiration for my ongoing SmallChangeNews experiment. I found them again today via Mort Meyerson‘s philanthropy page.

technorati:smallchangenews

November 16, 2005November 16, 2005

Corporate Merger in Open Space

Snippets of a great corporate open space story by Kenny Moore, author of the CEO and the Monk: One Company’s Journey to Profit and Purpose.

Meetings were held, discussions were had and individuals were identified: somewhat akin to the Spanish Inquisition…
The fact that there were almost 400 people in this newly combined I/T department and that they were intimately responsible for the $1 billion savings, all seemed to make the CIO a little edgy, and on occasion, apoplectic. I believe someone also let it slip that his future career was somewhat connected to fixing these “minor personnel issues” as well as delivering on the one billion bucks.
“If you’re truly looking to fix this problem, you’ll need to do something like an ‘Open Space’ to turn this situation around.”
With executive alacrity, he barked: “Well, then, we’ll do it.”
“Do what?” I replied. “Why, we’ll do an ‘Open Space.'”
Plans proceeded quickly. We booked the entire facility, using the Grand Ballroom as the central gathering point for the crowd of 400.
…the gory details…
One off-site event does not a triumphant merger make. Our future success, as a corporate community as well as a global one, does not reside in offering bribes, incentive plans or clearly articulated measurable goals. It lies elsewhere. It dwells within. Confronting people with their freedom is what’s required.
Inviting, convening and listening need to replace commanding, legislating and critiquing.