Tag: Miscellany

This came last weekend in JohnMauldin’s weekly markets and investing report…

…the Williams Inference Center, which sifts through mountains of reports and data looking for disparate anomalies which taken together may tell us of some new trend. They have a good track record of drawing attention to trends before they become mainstream… shared some of their current thoughts, like a slowdown in US business around the world, due to unfavorable world opinion / reaction to Iraq; that individuals will overtake corporations as the drivers of change; that there will be a surge in demand for genetically modified grain crops, especially in India and China, etc., where the middle class is rising & restrictions are few; and growth in low-cost sensor technology (such as ‘radio-tags’). They also mention that Saudi Arabia (the major source of U.S. imported oil) — not Iraq — will present the most problems in the Mid-East: big debt … handful of aged, ruling families … shrinking middle class and declining per-capita income. Any problem there could easily & drastically impact U.S. oil interests.

Mauldin was attracted to this item, because the Williams folks went on to say that the rise in the use of the color pink was an indicator of increased denial in society, denial of economic and other problems, like the wave of pink in fashion was the psychological equivalent of rose-colored glasses.

That’s interesting, but I’m much more interested to see this emerging shift in power from corporations (and my guess is larger, more rigid, hierachical and/or bureaucratic organizations in general) to individuals as the drivers of change. I’m heartened to see this shift listed in the company of these other “harder” economic trends, as it’s totally in line with my own sense of things, my years of Open Space Technology practice, and with the most recent ideas I’ve been cooking about a GivingMarket.

Lately it feels more like these ideas have been cooking me, but slowly I’m starting to make some sense of them. I’m working to get my latest notes, understandings and possibilities posted in the Giving Conference. Perhaps the rising power of individual purchasers, organizers, and givers will burst onto the scene, stunning everyone in pink, with all the power and effect as would an economic shock.

Clearly there are some powerful people-to-people markets already. And while these may be run by some large organizations, nobody is really in charge or in control of the mass movements within them. More and more, it seems, we really do live as individual decision-makers in so many Open Space marketplaces.

As a result of the Giving Conference, Ted Ernst and Susan Kerr have taken the blogger’s plunge. Lenore Ealy started blogging just before the conference. A number of other conference participants were blogging veterans. Among the latter, Chris Corrigan is doing a nice job of blogging The Gift, by Lewis Hyde.

Perhaps someday we’ll be free of email and we’ll all just bounce around the blogosphere, meeting and talking and working with friends — like a room full of colleagues at an Open Space conference — everything moving, everyone learning and contributing, and nobody really “in charge.” In the meantime, it’s nice to have a little Giving Conference model of that world up and running, and captured here.

As so often happens after OpenSpaceTech meetings, where apparently nothing is really “happening,” there is a flurry of individual conversations still taking place… and all kinds of tiny actions, old habits and new moves, large and small, are all being informed by the talking, learning and connecting that started during the conference. The trick, it seems, is to not try to control it or otherwise make it conform to some single personal or pre-determined agenda or purpose. As long as we all just keep feeding the flurry, it grows on.

Gerry Gleason has set up a GivingCommunityEmailList for conference participants and others interested in giving-related issues like those addressed at the conference. Lenore Ealy posted to the new list this commentary on post-conference action:

I learned a tremendous amount at the Giving Space conversation. I came home and immediately took some new initiative with my own projects, such as getting my web designers working on converting the front page of thephilanthropicenterprise.org to a blog rather than a static page (which I hadn’t been updating at all). What happens there will grow from my ability to engage one or two more people in various smaller projects that I am already working on to make them better.

I have to strongly resist the desire to be everywhere and do everything. Priorities are important and help us actually get some things done. And it thrills me to proceed working on my own small space in the world better informed about what others are doing, how I can link up with them when desirable, and to have confidence that I’m not alone out here and that there are other projects that might attract my time and energy at some point that would be even better uses of these resources under my scope of responsibility. That might be enough.

Somebody else has started a ConferenceResults page and I’ve added some stuff to it, though I notice that the time I spent documenting actions and results on this new page actually took time away from actually taking more actions, in my case adding a bunch of new clarity and next steps to the BetterWorldProjectStoriesOnlineGivingAuctionMarket page (impossibly named so as not to get too stuck on a name that must be temporary!). Hoping to get my notes posted today or tomorrow. And so the movement(s) continue(s)…

Continuing with the post-conference sorting and sifting of shapes and ideas, powerful possibilities and immediate next steps. Found this in the notes from the LivingInTruth session. Cliff Adams linked to this letter to a young activist, penned by Thomas Merton in February, 1966…

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.

This is just the place I want to be working from as we move forward with BetterworldProjectStoriesOnlineGivingAuctionMarket and other things coming out of the conference.

We covered a lot of ground at the Giving Conference this past weekend. On all scales. Debbie Gleason posted this in the conference proceedings on one end of the scale…

…the UnGame. It involved picking cards, reading the card out loud and then responding briefly to what was being asked on the card. The person answering a question was the only one allowed to speak. The object was active listening, only. No injecting other comments by relating similar experiences or anything additional. Sometimes there were comment/question cards, and then, after answering a question on the card, you could ask a question of someone else. That was the only way you could ask a question of someone for clarification. Otherwise, you just had to take things just as the person presented them before you. No judgments. No opinions. Just listening.

I found this to be a beneficial exercise because it’s very difficult not to want to interject your own comments into what someone else was saying. If you do that, you might change their meaning, and you might not be actively listening but falling into a pitfall of anticipating what you might say, instead. Much as I have always thought of myself as an active listener, I found that I am too busy with my own thoughts and how I might respond to a given question or comment. It was an interesting exercise in setting aside ego and paying strict attention in the moment.

Wish I’d been around for that one. I must have been off working on the other end of the scale. See our notes on the BetterWorldProjectStoriesOnlineGivingAuctionMarket that would aim to achieve a new level of global grassroots funding support for active citizens everywhere.

All in all, it was a phenomenal few days that look like they’ll have many hearty ripples. Thanks to all who joined us in Chicago and to the many who brought and continue to bring their attention to this work!

It’s the morning of day two here at the Egan Center. The room is all reset and we’re ready to continue what we started yesterday. Proceedings are being posted directly to the Conference Wiki site, and are starting to show up there. We have a remarkable mix of people, philanthropists, advisors, activists, facilitators, writers and healers who’ve come in from far and wide, New Jersey to Dallas to Vancouver. Stay tuned…

Christy Lee-Engel, whose Bastyr University group placed Open Space invitations in the cookie bins in their cafeteria, and who later used OpenSpaceTech in her classroom, is reporting more progress this week…

in the past few months I have been invited to some “Open Space conversations” that students have organized on their own, usually off-campus at one of their homes. I haven’t been able to attend any of them yet, so I don’t know what parts of the OST format they’ve adopted, if any–and I guess it doesn’t matter so much. It is exciting to me that they have felt some effect from their experience of Open Space and are choosing to participate in further opening.

As it should be! …the Space Opens and just keeps going ang going and going… Way to go, Christy!

What’s your passion? What’s your gift? And are you giving it as fully as you would like? Are you fulfilled in your giving? Does it express and achieve what you want? Do you sense there must be more? Would your own life be richer if you could just bring your gifts to the world? Could you give and accomplish much more if you had the right partners, could find the right people?

Please join us! …as we Open a Space for Giving to Flourish. Come make new connections with other givers of time, talent, passion, of financial gifts large or small — givers of hope, vision, leadership and opportunity. Give others the chance to give your own efforts and projects new life. Find models, mentors and mutual interests. Create Hubs, Nodes and Networks. Share resources and stories. Make new friends and forge new alliances. more invitation…

See also… ChrisCorrigan blogging the Tools of Democracy in anticipation of his coming to Chicago for the Giving Conference next week.

Things here moving very quickly now. I feel lucky to be working with some fantastic people, on what seem like important issues for all of us. Here are some of the peaks rising now on the horizon…

The GivingConference gathering momentum, as a remarkable group of people are committing to join us that event in July. Connecting philanthropists, financial advisors, community activists and organizers, and online publishers… for Giving to Flourish.

In August I’ll be in Colorado Springs to open some space for a series of events as the UnseenCostsOfWar symposium gets ready to go on the road, creating community connections and supporting military personnel all around the country.

In September, I’ll open space for the Faith in Place Taste and See conference here in Chicago, connecting spiritual and food practices. Then it looks like we’ll do another Open Space Training and Practice Workshop, this one in Asheville, NC.

In October, I’ll be in Kathmandu, Nepal, leading the third Imagine Nepal event in as many years, in Open Space Tech, focusing on creating peaceful and prosperous futures for Nepal. This is pencilled out as a three-day conference and one-day training workshop, blending Appreciative Inquiry and Open Space Technology practices. My thanks to the Open Space Institute USA for their generous funding of my travel costs on this one.

After some time on retreat, there is some chance that we will convene the first-ever Open Space on Opening Space in the United States. As OST has run around the world, American practitioners’ attention has often been dedicated to international conversations and conferences. This is a chance to renew our own practice here in the States. We’ll start with a conference call on July 14th and see if it doesn’t have the legs to become a two-day conference.

Then in November, it looks like I may be leaving for almost a year in London. I have a homebase, but have not yet settled work arrangements there. So if you or good people you know are in London, and have some interest in the kinds of things that show up in this website… Peace, Giving, Compassion, Open Space, Organization and Community Development, and the like… I’d sure be glad to make their acquaintance.

Looks like there will be a number of things to be back here in Chicago for, throughout that year, so it’s not as if I’m leaving town altogether. And the plan for now is to be back here permanently by the end of next year.

Finally, a note of congratulations to my sister Theresa and her partner George who will be married this Sunday… and to my brother Mark and his bride, to be wed in August.

It may be a bit slower around here in GlobalChicago bloggerland, but rest assured that it will be for lack of time, not lack of news!

This from ChrisCorrigan, who ran our two-day practice workshop in Nelson, New Zealand earlier this year…

…a couple of friends there are working on a Maori translation for openspaceworld.org and as a start my friend Kiley Nepia has coined a Maori translation for Open Space Technology along with a proverb. Kiley writes:

“I have made up a translation of the word Open Space Technology which is TE PUNA ATEA KORERO. PUNA is like a pond or pool, fountain eg puna matuaranga fountain of knowledge. ATEA means space and comes from the concept of marae atea which is the forecourt in front of the meeting place this is where discussion takes place. KORERO means to speak have dialogue etc. TE PUNA ATEA KORERO is a pool which gives people unlimited space and movement to come together to discuss things. The other reason I choose the word Puna is that it suggests that’s it is fluid and not rigid.”

The whakatauki or proverb he offers is: Where there is a fountain people will gather. Where people gather they will talk and great things will happen.

My own personal rendering of this image allows for a pool of unfathomable depth. Anything can happen.

In democratic countries, knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on it

Sometimes you just can’t tell. It seemed like such a good idea when I met up with my friend, mentor and colleague Harrison Owen in Melbourne, late 2002. We put the Practice of Peace on the calendar for this month. More than a year later, I went for some months promising an invitation to those who emailed to inquire. Along the way, I even talked with Harrison and others about postponing or just blowing it off altogether. Finally when old friends and total strangers started sending me checks, I got an invitation mailed out. More checks came in and last week twenty of us gathered at the Carleton Hotel in Oak Park for the Practice of Peace workshop. Surprise.

This is where words really run out for me. (Surprise, again!) I told the group on the morning of day one, that clearly this workshop wanted to happen. And we’re still, a week later, perking on all the reasons why. We expect our experiences to inform and invite our work, and only some of the ways have yet come clear. It seemed to touch all of us quite deeply and I’m grateful to be receiving some marvelous notes and reports as people return to local life. There is a real sense of going forward more together than ever, in spite of everything we don’t and can’t yet know. As much as ever, we are living in Open Space.

The proceedings notes we compiled are not private, but I’m inclined not to post them publicly, either. I’m not sure they would mean anything to those who weren’t there. That said, if you’d really like to see them, just email and I’ll send them along.

For the last several months I have been doing more of two things that make me feel stronger and happier. I’m eating more crisp fresh organic veggies and I’m tooling around the city on my bicycle whenever errands and meetings allow it. Today, I packed a fresh lunch and rode a couple of miles, literally right down my street, to have lunch with Clare Butterfield and talk about our work.

Clare is connecting food (growing and buying) with household energy consumption (electricity and oil), and faith practice (churches and congregations). She shared with me what she’s calling our “duty of inquiry” — our responsibility to look into and understand where our food and energy come from, and where our habits and rituals are leading us. I love Clare’s work for it’s clarity and caring and groundedness — and the way she lets those dimensions inform each other. I also appreciate that her approach does much to inform my own next steps. On top of it all, she handed me a check for The Giving Conference and I’m thrilled that she will be with us for that in July.

Also, save September 10th for the Faith and Food Conference and visit FaithInPlace for details, as they become available. We came up with some very interesting variations on the OpenSpaceTech approach to support broad and deep participant engagement to leverage the wisdom of several major speakers — and set up lots of ongoing congregational conversation. More on all of that as the designs emerge.

Rain is cooling my jets a bit today… having been riding a tide of energy and action these last couple of weeks, been just too charged to sit in the seat long enough to make any sense here, much less be sipping from the RSS fountain.

From my box here on the 11th floor, I can look north for several miles… and currently see almost nothing. It’s hign noon and it looks like dusk. Lightning crashing, thunder booming, and walls of water blowing through the neighborhood, filling up the gutters and the streets and the Lake.

It’s a bad day to go out to buy flipchart paper. And the sort of day that makes one really appreciate simple things, like windows and roof, sweater and couch.

I find myself full of joy today following an evening of making and remaking connections with some of the more remarkable people I know. A few of us put out an invitation to gather and explore together our questions about: CorporateCompassion: Dissolving Differences and Cultivating Mutuality.

About twenty folks took us up on the offer. We gathered in OpenSpace with bodies, ideas, relationships, business issues and human spirit all in play. We remembered that mutuality, the practice of allowing other(s) to be as real to us as we are to ourselves, is the ground out of which compassion, joy and some other essentials naturally (and quickly) arise.

The seeds of at least one next step, another gathering, are sprouting already as RadicalProfit. Have a taste of our evening if you like, or simply sip the joy of the first days of summer, if you can find it, into the details of where you are right now.

A while back, I mentioned Christy Lee-Engel’s use of OpenSpaceTech in her classroom teaching and university adminstration work. Here is a bit more from another of her spaces…

“movement,and the space to move in, is the common center”

Last term, I had a class of around 50 students, more than half of them new to me. As I launched into my explanation of the objectives and parameters and expectations, etc. of the class, my colleague who was sitting in and I noticed that the students looked a little drab. So we decided to talk to them about how they were feeling, especially in terms of how healthy they felt in that moment (the course is called The Determinants of Health), one thing led to another, some students wanted to rearrange the room so we were in a circle, some didn’t, some wanted to discuss it and vote…

I invited them to just stand up. That movement thing. In a few moments we were in a big circle, and indeed some of the Bigger/Deeper stuff did come right up. Including some of the students being very angry with me that it didn’t turn out the way they wanted! I had already introduced the principles of Open Space and most of the folks took them right to heart, but one or two of them are still mad at me! I don’t mind too much–part of inviting that Bigger and Deeper stuff to come on out.

Thanks for posting this comment, Christy! All good, and all true! …and yes, I have been busy, mostly internally I think. So much so that apparently even simple blog entries could not escape the gravitational pull of the movements underway. [grin] It’s good to be back!

Please join us for The Practice of Peace… an intimate and advanced Professional Development program on June 7-9, 2004 in Chicago (Oak Park, IL) with Harrison Owen and Michael Herman.

The old is falling apart, a new world’s emerging. Though nobody knows the moment. Seems everything’s in motion, but where are we going? Clearly we could use some Space. And Now. Open Space… to gather and talk, to work and learn, to solve and resolve our most important questions and issues related to:

• Promoting excellence and learning
• Engaging people in transformative shifts
• Generating new revenues and assuring profit
• Enhancing innovation and developing new products
• Building a collaborative workplace or network
• Focusing on assets and opportunities over problems
• Inspiring and inviting people to do best work
• Opening communication and connecting movements
• Strengthening leadership and effectiveness
• Healthy growth in organizations and communities
• Getting things done — in spite of everything!

If you work with people, manage projects, convene meetings, lead changes, organize conferences, or teach essential skills… there is something in this for you. Please join us! And please do share it with colleagues who would want to know that this is happening. Full Invitation

The OSLIST conversation about preparing for Open Space Technology continues. Here’s one of my own contributions there…

One of my latest descriptions of Open Space Technology is this: it is fundamentally a decision and a commitment on the part of leaders and sponsors and facilitators to movement. Seen from this place we can always ask ourselves whether the work we do in the prep time is making movement more or less easy, more or less possible.

Some see a preparatory focus on the “givens” as getting in the way of movement. Others note that in corporate groups it helps for folks to hear that this or that is open for movement, that movement is allowed and expected. Some simply say, “Let’s get moving together now” and organize an “open” planning session with leaders and sponsors. Others prefer to let the movement go as it will/can and deal with givens as limits that tend to pop up in the discussion of the Theme or Question. Sometimes the discussion about what is happening now, current conditions, usually experienced as limits, can help surface the Bigger or Deeper Question that is not being addressed directly. All in all, I’m hearing that movement, and the space to move in, is the common center. Not particularly surprising, I think.

In terms of moving through meeting preparation then, I find that many “givens” or what I sometimes think about as “forms of focus” are necessarily embodied in the people who will come. The invite list. If you want discussion and ideas, invite talkers. If you want decisions, invite the decisionmakers. If you want action, invite those known for doing. If you want it fast, invite the bottlenecks. etc. I think in many cases if I fish around the edges of who should be there, who could be allowed to be there, then most everything else gets handled in that question. As we expand or simply clarify the invite list, we take care of naming and testing lots of “givens,” too. And in the end, those invited are certainly the ones who decide what this event will be. So they really do embody the whole of it…

In this way, you see, OpenSpaceTech serves to focus what and who the organization already is… and literally invites movement on the most important issues and questions. What more could we ask for?

The NYTimes reporting today that 20 million people visit Wal-Mart each and every day. If it was a separate country, it would be China’s 8th largest trading partner. Some say their low-cost business model has cut American inflation by 1 percent, saving American consumers millions. They are the pinnacle of technological control married to massive markets. Every penny counted and accounted for. The temperature of every one of their 3,500 stores controlled from headquarters in Arkansas. Also despised as promoters of over-consumption, falling wages, and benefits packages that many employees can’t afford.

The Times article suggests that Wal-Mart is the defining corporation of this era, following in the footsteps of the Pennsylvania Railroad, General Motors and Microsoft. They point out that Wal-Mart’s success derives from it’s ruthless attention to consumption and the consumer. The company gives consumers what they want at the lowest price possible, which leads the Times author to conclude that the efforts to oppose Wal-Mart can never succeed if they continue to be predicated on having ordinary Americans see themselves as something other than consumers.

The key question must then become: Consumers of what? Wal-Mart has built a huge operation that is stunningly effective in serving consumer demands. They don’t do education, they just respond with ruthless efficiency. If consumers demanded healthier, more sustainable products, this machine could be driving down the costs and ramping up the availability of those products. They will never lead demand, but they must respond to it. Even in the face of this apparent economic might, America is still an economic democracy. And as long as we vote for junk, degradation and bad health, our Constitution says we are entitled to as much of it as we can fit in our supersized carts.

If we want to change the world, then we must change our minds — at the check out stand. We need to be more creative, more healthy and more awake and alive in our pursuit of happiness. And once we manage that, as people, I would think that an operation like Wal-Mart could become a priceless national treasure.

…and I finally had time to call Rowan Hamilton, a teacher and practitioner of naturopathic medicine in Vancouver, BC. Here are some of the things we touched on in what turned out to be a remarkable conversation…

• A student of his is now in Duluth Minnesota and is working with large, corporate-type businesses to set up naturopathic clinics inside of the companies. This sounded to me like homeopathic organization, as it brings in a tiny bit of wellness and well-being information into the org and seems to have the potential to impact healthcare costs, employee health and well-being, and also the well-being of the business as a bigger body entity itself. In homeopathy, the more diluted the tincture, the more powerful the effect.
• In talking about Open Space Technology, I mentioned some of my ideas about death and release and we came to understand OpenSpaceTech as a way to invite the whole group or organization up into the cockpit of this ‘reality’ and look out together into the future. We noticed that Open Space lets us gaze out from the leading tip of the organization into the vast expanse of the future we’re flying into, and let’s us do it with others rather than in isolation from our seats and side windows, even though ‘otherness’ and separation don’t actually exist in that Space we’re looking into. That future is totally unscripted, until we impose our lines and stories on it. In that way, we can choose over and over again, to make less and less of these divisions between ourselves and others.
• We talked about his having given everything away to friends and family and left his home in England with a suitcase and a bicycle. He shared the story of another guy he’d met while hiking in the Grand Canyon. The guy had noticed his unhappiness with his wife and kids, his own body and his hometown of Bozeman Montana… and left. He packed a bag and hiked to the Canyon in Arizona where he found a job running supplies by muletrain in and out of remote villages. The Law of Two Feet writ large, i.e. if at any time you find that you’re not learning or contributing, you have the right and the responsibility to go where you need to in order to increase, maximize even, your own learning and contribution.
• He shared the story of a colleague who now lives on a self-imposed annual budget of $3,500 USD. He makes more than this, but gives the extra away. One of the things he does is teach some courses, one of which is a three-month residential in the backcountry of western Canada. He takes 30 students, for 3 months, to live in the woods… grow and find their food, live outside, the works. And after three months they leave the place without any footprints at all. Now that’s living lightly.
• Along the way we also noticed that it’s possible to change the shape of who we think we are in a direction away from physical things, clothes, body fat, houses, gear, policies, procedures, departments, equipment, and toys and carry more of ourselves as energy potential… and even shift further still to a space of awareness and noticing. Might think of this as the body equivalent of what is often talked about as a continuum of doing and being. As we get ‘lighter’ in rigid, heavy, physical ways, we have more energy available for applying in the moments where it’s really needed. And as we relax that energy store, as well, we can get more and more clearly aware of when and where it really is necessary to act. Linking back to the homeopathy story, as we relax from doing into being, from physical stuff, to raw energy, to awarness, we dilute our ‘selves’ and can have greater and greater effect in the world.
• Finally, we marvelled a bit at the territory we’d covered in this, our first conversation, and noticed that more and more of us are finding more and more of us who understand the shifts and opporutunities arising in communities, economies and across national borders these days. Even as the US seems to be already deeply engaged in WWIII, it also seems to be getting easier and easier to organize genuinely positive changes in the direction of generalized well-being on the planet. Interesting that these things seem to be happening in tandem.

Bonus Point: After I finished with Rowan, I went off (on my bicycle) to the Green Drinks sustainability gathering where Terra Brockman of the LandConnection and other panelists were talking about organic food for city folk.

• Terra had brought wild leeks, called ‘ramps’, to sell for $10/pound. Now these things grow wild in the woodland areas around her central Illinois home and a local farmer had harvested 3500 pounds from just one tenth of an acre. Do the math on that one, for one natural springtime’s yield. The moral of the story: there are more ways to make money on the land that plowing everything under for seas of corn and soybeans! We can be lighter on the land, too!

And as I rode home through a quiet downtown just after 10pm, a bank sign read 67 degrees. All Good Springing.