Tag: Miscellany

Some years ago an Institute of Noetic Sciences article connected Amazonian shaman inner visions of ladder-like structures to the scientifically determined structure of DNA. Now we have these new formulations of the Mandelbrot set that look an awful lot like Tibetan thangka paintings and visualizations. Marvelous.

Thanks to PureLandMountain for this.

Thanks to SmartMeetingDesign for this…

…[in a recent interview] Stephen Covey (age 71, author of the 7 Habits, currently willing to come speak for you at $65.00 per appearance) …declared management of people superfluous. One manages money, stocks, portfolios, and the like, not people. Give people purpose and a course, and then stop interfering with them.

The interview ended with this quote: “In most organisations there is a lack of trust, and most employees are powerless. In this era of knowledge-workers we still use the industrial model of control, in which we treat people like objects. It is as if we are still practising bloodletting, although we know all about bacteria and how they work.”

When I asked the pizza-guy for pen and paper to write this quote down, he smiled at me and said ain’t that a good interview or what?.

Makes me think about all of the folks who’ve studied Covey’s books, taken the courses, and heard his speeches and wonder what the world will be like when they really dig into this new message. And will the next generation of management super gurus start where Covey leaves off? Now that’s what I call inviting.

Really enjoyed the latest SuitWatch from Doc Searls. Here is how it starts…

It’s the Fifties all over again. I’m not talking about the conformist Eisenhower Fifties, with its poodle skirts and tail fins. I’m talking about the rock & roll Fifties, when the music business got blown up and consumer electronics was born. Now, almost five decades later, we’re seeing the music business getting blown up again and the consumer electronics business right along with it. The first explosion is obvious, but the second one isn’t.

I hadn’t really grasped what Apple and iPod are doing. Makes me want to buy some shares. MotleyFool pointed out earlier this week that they’ve got about $12 in cash per share. So at $22 price per share and $0.99 per song, the actual operations are now selling for about ten songs per share. Maybe we can blow up financial analysis, too.

George Nemeth quoting Accidental Conversation guru Jack Ricchiuto at last night’s Ryze meeting in Cleveland…

The only time I’ve seen more people introducing someone new to someone else was at the Chicago Company of Friends.

George took that as a compliment to the Ryzers that attend the mixer and a goal to aim for. As one of the early organizers of the Chicago CoF cell, I take it as an excuse to grin. And it makes me wonder when Jack was here.

Here’s my map. I’ve seen hundreds of miles of Arkansas from a towboat down the Mississippi River, but never set foot there. Dad detoured a few miles into Alabama once so I could cross that off the list if I really had to. I think I’ve been to South Carolina, but I can’t remember anything about it just now. Closest I’ve come to Idaho is 30,000 feet.

Create your own visited states map. Thanks to DocSearls and Gretchen.

Sorry for the bother, but I think this new feed will work better than the one I’ve been using, especially with handling of titles. Old one is same as Wytheville Comm College. New one is the built-in Atom feed at Blogger.com. If this switch is a bad idea, somebody please tell me quick! …otherwise I’ll cut the old one soon. Thanks.

Jon Husband’s Wirearchy is quoting from The Support Economy email group discussion springing from the Shoshana Zuboff and James Maxmin book by same name. This is the first I’ve heard of the phrase, the book or the list. I think I’m going to like all three. Surely this is some of what I’ve been fishing for as the space beyond command-and-control, dominance-seeking hierarchy, local-global and us-them distinctions.

Language like support, mutuality, and changing from the inside out is very much in line with what I’ve been thinking about recently in terms of compassion, bodies, markets and OpenSpaceTech. The notion of corporation and economy as support is totally in line with the SomaticOrganization story we started spinning last year. The first of many connections to be made here.

Quotable

I will act as though what I do makes a difference. –William James

via Wirearchy

Connecting with Truth

My friend and colleague ChrisCorrigan of Bowen Island BC Canada making some nice connections, as usual… this time connecting blogging, community radio and living in truth.

…was reflecting on the fact that my training for this happened in my community radio days at Trent Radio in Peterborough, Ontario. There, when one is putting together a late night improvisational jazz show, one is never sure if there is anyone actually listening to the broadcast. The act of radio then becomes a private performance in a potentially public space, and causes one to think carefully about what is being put out on the airwaves, even if absolutely no one is listening. It can be hairy (not to mention confusing) and was a good training ground for the kind of play between the individual and collective spheres that blogging encourages…

…walked up the street and met Jon “Wirearchy” Husband for sushi. I haven’t seen him in a while and we talked at length about the process of making meaning in the world. It was a beautiful conversation. It made me realize that living in truth is actually an act of courage and it is so hard because we must differentiate ourselves from the culture that tries to interpret the world for us…the news anchors that cry, the pop musicians that embody emotion and trick us into believeing their version of coporate sanctioned dissent, the sports commentators that tell us how it feels to be a fan. All of this stuff is the current we swim against as we head upstream to find our own truth in the world…

Send warm thoughts Chris’ way this week as he’s on the road in the coldest reaches of Saskatchewan… -52C recently, before the wind chill. Brrrr.

Open Space Radio Interview — Tune In!

…Wednesday 2/4, 10am Pacific/12noon Chicago time… Andrew Geller’s People Rise Up radio show will be all about OpenSpaceTech. It will be broadcast live online and on Oregon community radio station KBOO-FM. Yours truly is the sole guest for the 30-minute show.

To listen to the live webcast, go to there a little early and download the streaming tool (free) they use. Andrew says it’s really quick and five minutes ahead should be plenty of time… unless you’re still dialing-up like I am (20 minutes early!). See you on the radio!

Start it forth, in Estonian!

My friend and colleague Mikk Sarv in Estonia sent this, with his thanks for my setting up an Estonian-language wiki web at OpenSpaceWorld.ORG, where we now have links to some OpenSpaceTech materials growing in 16 languages. That means quite a large percentage of humans can now begin to discover about this way of working and being in organization. Wow.

Mikk says this was sung by chief Visak-Vo-o-yim of Pima Indians or River People, O’odham from Arizona:

SONG OF THE WORLD

I make the world and lo!
The world is finished.
Thus I make the world, and lo!
The world is finished.
Let it go, let it go,
Let it go, start it forth!

He says it suits well also for wiki’s, and I think he’s right!

As you sow, so shall you reap?

…from the statement by Governor Marc Racicot, Chairman, Bush-Cheney `04, chastising John Kerry for his comments about the President’s National Guard service:

…A man seeking the presidency has an obligation to get the facts straight…

President Bush has agreed to support an independent inquiry into the prewar intelligence that he used to assert that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction…

…David Kay, (former US chief weapons inspector in Iraq) who resigned his post nine days ago, testified Wednesday that “we were almost all wrong” about Iraq’s weapons programs. He said it was unlikely that stockpiles would be found in Iraq.

Six separate panels — the House and Senate intelligence committees, a CIA internal review team, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the newly refocused CIA-led Iraq Survey Group and an Army team — are already investigating the prewar intelligence process.

Deficit in Perspective

CS Monitor reporting 40 years of budget deficit data from the White House Office of Management and Budget. Curiosity led me to add color to their chart — red for Republican presidents and blue for Democratic presidents. Crude but interesting, I think.

Also noted… healthcare entitlement spending, projected to account for 9% of federal outlays in 2010, might reach 18% by 2050. Another good reason to stay healthy!

Latino Coalition Emerging in Open Space

Last week we ran an in-house sort of OpenSpaceTech/TrainingPracticeWorkshop for the Latino Coalition for Prevention to follow-up on the Latino Prevention Summit in Open Space last December. About half of the 100+ Summit participants returned for a seamless blending of continued work on the most important issues and projects raised in the Summit AND an advanced OpenSpaceTech learning program that invited and supported participants to plan and facilitate their own Open Space meetings and events going forward. WorkshopNotes

One highlight was seeing this organization literally working in two major directions at once — with a high level of unconscious ease. Several new topics were raised (continued divergence) while simultaneously other discussions sought to sweep together as many as five issues from last month’s Summit into one new project (convergence). No imposed agendas, no demands for concensus, no assumptions that many projects and directions could not all get moving at once, as long as some people cared and committed to pursue them. Very exciting, and business as usual, in Open Space.

Another highlight was the usual flood of learning comments like: “I’m a trainer, do a lot of trainings and facilitations… and this (workshop) is totally shifting everything I do.” And: “…so it seems like the only way to sustain the high level of spirit and action (from the Summit and Workshop) is to keep having all of our meetings in Open Space… even and especially our quarterly Coalition update sessions.” Exactly! And to run them for yourselves. OpenSpaceTech… it’s not just for breakfast anymore!

Since the Summit last month, the Latino Prevention Network has been actively restructuring itself to run in a kind of ongoing Open Space. They’ve reconstituted themselves as the Latino Coalition for Prevention, reflecting their growing sense of coming together and taking action. GlobalChicago is supporting their movement with a new wiki website in the GlobalChicagoGarden.

More Tight Weave

Penny Scott commenting on my reference to Bologna, Italy’s thriving cooperative economy, shares a link to the BC Co-operative Association. A model for our future? Other resources?

Plum Posting…

Cory Doctorow in BoingBoing, “I followed a link to William Carlos Williams’s poem ‘This is Just to Say’ this morning, and it froze me in my tracks. So much in just 12 lines. I want a plum.”

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Somehow the prunes I bought over the weekend just aren’t going to do it this morning! (grin)

Oh My Google

…today’s NYTimes on Google v. Microsoft. Go Google!

Google has been quietly developing what industry experts consider to be the world’s largest computing facility. Last spring, Google had more than 50,000 computers distributed in over a dozen computer centers around the world. The number topped 100,000 by Thanksgiving, according to a person who has detailed knowledge of the Google computing data center. The company is placing a significant bet that Microsoft will be hard pressed to match its response time to the ever increasing torrent of search requests…

…Google has embarked on an ambitious secret effort known as Project Ocean, according to a person involved with the operation. With the cooperation of Stanford University, the company now plans to digitize the entire collection of the vast Stanford Library published before 1923, which is no longer limited by copyright restrictions. The project could add millions of digitized books that would be available exclusively via Google.

Seems Google is also connecting with cellular services so that the whole web can be searchable from anywhere. Now just add voice activation and it all starts to approximate a direct line to an omniscient, if not omnipotent, God. Oh my boggle.

Local Living Economies

…Shared Vision magazine, the Vancouver BC sister publication of Conscious Choice here in Chicago, is running BALLE BC on their cover this month. BALLE is the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.

Last September, we did a two-day working session in OpenSpaceTech and have been cultivating a wiki website in the Garden to help the Vancouver group get started. So it’s great to see their progess and to see them getting so much good attention. The Chicago BALLE effort is taking shape more slowly. Hello Cleveland, are you guys next?

Invitation Resources

…I often refer to OpenSpaceTech as the skillful practice of invitation, so a big part of the OST resources section of this website is dedicated to writing invitations and collected samples. That section has just been cleaned up and some new perspectives added. OpenSpaceTech/InvitationWriting

Tight Durable Weave?

Noted recently in Inc. Magazine:

Fully 96% of the state’s businesses meet the U.S. Small Business Administration’s definition of “small” by having fewer than 500 employees.

Makes me wonder what percentage of all New Hampshire workers are working in organizations smaller than 500 employees. How might this compare with other places? And what effect does this have on the texture of community and the fabric of life there? Reminds me of the centuries-old cooperatives culture of Bologna, Italy.