Tag: Miscellany

Finally catching up on details after MeshForum in Chicago. Shannon Clark and company did a brilliant job of birthing something very cool. What’s more, I think they did something that is especially challenging in birthing something new and different and diverse without succumbing to the temptation to let it slide into one old category or another, just for the sake of the “numbers.” As a result, it was small and brilliant. I was glad to be there and am glad to be part of the ongoing conversations that will become next year’s conference. A few links for the record…

• Yellow Arrow – an amazing experiment that is suggesting the world as a global sort of performance art installation via the ‘yellow arrow’ sticker that becomes a digital ‘tag’ for things in the physical world. place the tag in the physical world and record it online via cellphone, find a tag in the world and retrieve via cellphone the stories of others who’ve already been there.
• WorldChanging – weblog of Jamais Cascio and friends. Jamais told a fascinating story as his presentation at the conference.
• Chicago Craft Mafia – organized by Mark Smithivas and friends to represent crafts from glasswork to soapmaking, seems to be part of a larger network of local economy, all of which I find very heartening.
• i.c. stars |* – a learning program that teaches technical skills to young adults and then turns them loose for the benefit of community organizations. this kind of technology, social action and economic activity seems so very right.
• Also got a much better understanding of what’s happening with Flickr and del.icio.us. Looks like sCNN is going delicious as soon as I can find time to set it up.
• Need to check out blogdex.com to see what that is all about, moving more and more in the direction of diversifying and diffusing my sources of news about what’s happening in my world. guess that would be diversifying and diffusing my world!

This from Shannon Clark of JigZaw and MeshForum. I’ve added it to the new “Special Invitations” section of the PeaSoup sidebar, too.

Starting next week (May 24th 2005) and continuing at least for the next few months I have decided to work from Café Mud in Evanston on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I invite each of you, when and as you wish, to join me at Café Mud and work.

Café Mud is at 1936 Maple Ave, just 1/2 block west of the Foster Ave Purple line el stop and in a part of Evanston with fairly easy street parking. They have free wifi, large concrete tables, plenty of electrical outlets, and are relatively quiet during the daytime.

This is an open invitation, please feel free to share with other consultants and entrepreneurs. My plan is to take the purple line express in the morning, get to Café Mud around 9am and leave Evanston around 5pm on the purple line express back into the city.

The goal is to work, but to also have friends and associates present and in the same physical space. I anticipate that some of us will break each day around lunchtime and grab lunch together somewhere in Evanston.

See you at Café Mud, when I’m back on that side of the pond, in August.

I’m restructuring again here. Inside and out. And thinking about the mix of what I give attention to now.

I’m just finishing six months of volunteer work in a meditation center, grounding, in cooking, housekeeping, maintenance, and basic reception (space holding) duties. Grounding in community too, as resident volunteer. And still, never giving up on all of the reading, creating, connecting and consulting conversations that happen online and on the phone, usually at great distance.

Restructuring now means teetering on the edge of a very interesting organization that just might want a big chunk of my London time, and on the edge of a number of personal connections, old and new, in Chicago, that could bear business fruit. And then there are the community connections, like smallchange and ubumama, and a couple of listserve communities. Learning anew how to balance all of the information flow and connecting at distance, even local distance, without losing ground right here, in body, in home away from home.

Years ago I remember a Wall Street Journal advertisement saying that the average reader spent 51 minutes with the Journal each day. Add in some other reading, conversations that have moved from phone to email, a bit of blog posting, and it seems fair to devote at least a couple of hours to keeping up with the distant cloud of people, ideas and connections. Seems also fair, to devote a balancing equivalent to body and home space, cooking, cleaning.

Maybe local community connecting comes into this, too? Dinner with friends? Time with a partner? Somewhere this must cross into third and fourth or more balancing spaces. No matter which and how many, for now it seems enough to notice where base is, what base is. Do I rely on all of this wording and information to clear myself or ground myself? Do my blogging and emailing and other scribbling habits and projects make me who I am, or make me more clear and present and available as the local body who I already was?

For now, I just keep an eye on this balance between the daily information cleaning and clearing and the equivalent attention to body, home and spirit. Let the rest fall somewhere in between as the undifferentiated flow of working and living.

The weblog for UbuMama, a worldwide safe motherhood project, is finally taking shape. This is one of several community/technical projects I’m giving time and attention to these days.

[UbuMama is] …a Zulu word for motherhood, and an arts-based project dedicated to bringing mothers’ stories of giving birth in the developing world into public view, to honor the lives of mothers and to increase the commitment to saving the lives of women dying in childbirth.

Each minute, a woman dies from complications experienced during pregnancy and childbirth. More than 500,000 women die each year and 99% of these deaths occur in the developing world.

Almost all of these deaths are preventable.

Some good background on the project and resources links added yesterday. Looking forward to stories and images from around the world, as this movement gets born.

Dan Bassill posted yesterday on the need to connect so many different groups and efforts and datasets all focused on youth issues in and beyond Chicago. I offered this…

i hear a lot of networks overlapping in this, dan, but can’t quite hear a statement of a central theme or task or purpose that might serve to link them all. wondering if you might be able to name/shop/test that theme and if we couldn’t organize a day or two in open space this august while i’m back again from london.

the group could be large or small, the venue could be available for free. i’d work at some kind of mutual donation rate, i give my work and participants make small gifts to a facilitation fund. if the few paragraphs of invite went out to the groups you’re talking about here, then the whole invite process could be free. and lunch could be on our own in the neighborhood. recall that three days at depaul’s egan center ran something like $30 per head. any interest? any theme/purpose statement spring to mind?

Hope we get to do something on this. Resources in the pot may be few, but with so many people involved in the same issues, resources in the pockets must be many. Think OpenSpaceTech as Stone Soup or Loaves and Fishes. Let’s Eat!

Last week at MeshForum, Jamais Cascio presented a fascinating story of how ubiquitous cell phone cameras and other tech advances would make privacy obsolete. Somebody will always be watching or listening, and probably storing our every move in some sort of digital and searchable archive, via “always on” cellular and other devices.

Later, it occured to me that this outer development of awareness and memory must parallel similar awareness skills being developed internally in our bodies and beings. Then support for the science of this comes via email today: scientists investigating “mirror neurons” that we use when we move and do things, but also use when we simply watch others do the same things. In short, science may be suggesting that we learn and empathize by reading minds.

The real trouble with this world of ours is not
that it is an unreasonable world, nor
even that it is a reasonable one.
The commonest kind of trouble is that it is
nearly reasonable, but not quite.
Life is not an illogicality, yet
it is a trap for logicians.
It looks just a little more mathematical
and regular than it is; its’
exactitude is obvious; but
its’ inexactitude is hidden;
its’ wildness lies in wait.

This is G K Chesterton, via John Mauldin’s weekly investing letter. After I went to business school, I went off to become a wilderness course instructor with Outward Bound USA. That leap began a long journey and practice which continues to attempt (and more and more often achieve) a mutual sort of marrying of the spirit, adventure, learning and uncertainty of wilderness expeditioning with the bottom-line, critical thinking, business results organizations need to survive.

Facilitating OpenSpaceTech meetings and summits is for me a direct and logical extension of my wilderness trips leadership. My practice of Open Space allows me to invite over and over again the productive gathering of the reasonable and all that is yet beyond reasoning, in business and community organizations. What we used to do in groups of 12 and 15, and call teambuilding is now possible in groups of 120 and even 1500. I call that “organization building” — and it’s every bit an expedition!

Tomorrow is the 14th anniversary of my last salaried paycheck, my own personal open space for the depth of life and the business results that pay the bills. The daring has made all the difference. I offer a big, universal sort of “thank you” to the many many friends and family and colleagues who’ve supported this grand expedition. On we go!

this morning i was playing in and around a bit of recurring tension in head, noticing that eyes and controlling with eyes are connected not so far from jaw and controlling with words and story. when i somehow relaxed brain-brainbase-speech-eyes more than usual, the sensasation was that everything that i think/thought was real, was me, was solid and true became wet, slippery, clear, running away through my fingers, flowing… and then i sort of snapped back after but a few moments of this sort of knowing not very much or not as much as i usually think i do. it was fun. i recommend it. if relaxing brain is just too weird, try yawning 108 times in one sitting or napping. aaahhhh….

i’m on the plane today to chicago for MeshForum. come join us there, for a different kind of shift, finishing with Open Space on wednesday.

Got this the other day, regarding Bucky Fuller and the purpose of life:

My name is David and I am a student from Cleveland, Ohio conducting a research paper on the philosophy of the purpose of life. I have a few questions I would like to ask concerning the topic. Thank you for the time and appreciation.

1. What is your personal answer to Fuller’s own question, “What, if anything, could be done by a penniless, unknown man working on behalf of all humanity?”
2. Is the true purpose of life a precessional effect, not a direct goal of life?
3. Does it take an entire lifetime to achieve the true purpose of one’s life?
4. Is it true that no one will ever fully know his true life’s purpose?
5. Do you believe in fate and why?
6. What is your interpretation of “life is complex but simple at the same time?”
7. Are there any tips for attaining the true purpose of life?

I’m still working on my answers and will post when finished. In the meantime, post your own answers for David in the comments to this item, if you like.

Found in a book I was going to leave for the Jamyang Center library today:

When we have developed our own inner purity, inner compassion and inner love, we can then see the reflection of this purity and loving-kindness in others. But if we have not contacted these qualities within ourselves, we will see everyone as ugly and limited. For whatever we see everyday in our outer reality is actually nothing more than a projection of our own inner reality…

Lama Yeshe, Introduction to Tantra: A Vision of Totality. My first thought is to keep it and read more. My second thought is that I could work on just this one point for the next forever.

A couple of days ago I posted a bit about invitation, riffing on some online discussions and also my work with a global consulting business here in London. I’m still rolling around in my set of opening questions, still learning and refining the ways I talk about the things to be considered and addressed in the process of writing an invitation and opening a space in organization.

Here’s the latest list:

Invitation

I love this image for movement, decentralization and my own work in OpenSpaceTech and the world…

When I was trying to explain the new paradigm of a movement and the relevance of decentralization in this world, Jayeshbhai promptly summarized it — ‘Just like a banyan tree.’ Indeed. Banyan tree starts with a root but when any of its branches hit the ground, they become roots too. In a short period, it’s impossible to figure out the original root, and it’s also very difficult to remove a banyan tree.

From a remarkable blog by Nipun Mehta, who’s walking and blogging his way through India with his partner Guri. Thanks to Christopher for catching this one for me.

I have been around the world teaching OpenSpaceTech as a practice in invitation. This is an excellent example of the opportunity for such practice. Harrison Owen posted this to the OSLIST email group…

My Inbox is a rich source of adventure. This little note from a CEO for example:

“XXX Inc. has a highly skilled team of ~100 people doing great work and we are also attempting to manage a company that differentiates ourselves by maintaining a unique company culture. We want to define, defend, and enable these values to be who we are, what we do, and how we behave as a collective organization. Building trust and allowing diversity, debate, and protest to flourish in an organization of high achievers is a difficult thing. I’m searching for ways to provide openness, healthy dialog, and a supportive atmosphere for these stellar people to deliver all they are capable of (collectively) to improve the lives of thousands of people living with cancer.

Basically I’m looking for techniques, methods, tools, and or simple ways to create an open environment of trust within a growing organization. My Dilemma: How to create a communication environment that’s open, listens, hears, understands, and is responsive? I am looking for practical executable methods to model these value behaviors within a for profit business enterprise. I want to work for a cause and I want those that join the company to be equally as committed to a similar standard. As companies grow and become successful it can be easy to become complacent or to compromise on these values. I’m looking for ways to help prevent organizational entropy, human dysfunctional politics, divisiveness, unhealthy behaviors, and the like within the work environment at all levels of the company. This value system requires a lot from management team and the organization, as well as asking a lot from our employees. But I believe that building on such a foundation and supporting our human capital in such a way we will ensure our success as a transformational company.”

He asked for comments and reflections in advance of a meeting with this CEO.

I said this:

almost always i find that the first few paragraphs or minutes of a conversation with a new contact or client — when they give this sort of snapshot of who they are, where they’ve been, and what they want next — is the perfect, most honest invitation.

these are the clearest pictures they can give, simple and clean, understandable to an outsider, and with all the honesty that is sometimes withheld, for all kinds of reasons both cultural and personal, from insiders.

my first question is then “who’s needed to create such an organization?” my second question is “how soon can we get them together?” maybe the third question is “what would we need to do to make sure that you (the ceo) lives to tell about it?”

seems to me that as long as we see culture and environment as something that is created by one person, sometimes a chief and other times a “bad apple” troublemaker, or some small group of same, we will always work to hard and always fall short. as soon as we turn the task over to an invited group of everyone, the job is already done, the environment is shifted, and we’re right there in it doing the real work in a whole new way.

as ever, the leap is in beginning.

More and more, I’m beginning with some simple lists, especially when I don’t have an opening shot like the one above. This list works pretty well for small projects and whole organizations, immediate crises and long-term strategy:

• best things we’ve ever done,
• current conditions that matter,
• things we know we want/need to do/have/create now/next,
• people needed to get it done,
• resources and supporting structures available to leverage,
• sacred cows, dead mooses and other lines not to be crossed,
• potential meeting dates,
• potential meeting places,
• how we’ll know it’s really working

Is there any other way to get things done quickly and easily in organization than pencilling these things out, inviting everyone, and opening some space for all of their work to move?

Oh, yeah, we could pick one person to tell everyone what to do, and the we could keep on doing exactly what we’ve always done, until that one person figures it out and tells us otherwise. But how long might that take??? Let’s go!

I’ve been firing up the Small Change News Network again, coming out of the full-time meditation center volunteer mode now. Moving into team blogging mode there soonly. Sorry this post doesn’t rhyme for “Poem in Your Pocket Day.”

I read John Mauldin’s weekly markets and investments letter. Last week he digested a ten-year geo-political forecast by stratfor.com, “private, quasi-CIA intelligence service” and makes connections to global markets. The letter and forecast touch on the breakup in China, market breakdown in Russia, collapse of the dollar, and the growing pains of “moderate” Islam. Fascinating stuff.

There is wisdom in not reading news of big stories that we can’t act on. A lot of crime news would fall into this category. A lot of political commentary too. I use bits like Mauldin’s letters to orient myself in the big world so that I can act, invest, vote and converse more effectively in my own small and local worlds.

Thanks to Dan O’Connor for the initial tip on Mauldin.

I’ve been living a rather simple, but busier than you’d expect, sort of life for the last five and some months. I’ve been mostly resident here at Jamyang, in the upstairs cell block of a 135-year-old courthouse turned meditation center, just across the Thames from central London. Primary duties have been cleaning, receiving, and cooking.

My neighbors in the three other upstairs cells are all transients. Many are monks or nuns or volunteers working for just a few days. Some other staff and volunteers live in bigger cells downstairs. In my time here, the four-member volunteer team has come from Spain, Columbia, Holland, Russia, England, Germany, Canada and the USA. The cell renters upstairs in my hallway have come from many more places.

This is a building where monks robes look pretty normal, and second-hand working and travelling clothes are common. When I go out of here in suit and tie for a meeting, it gets noticed. Yesterday, Grace Davis, one of the upstairs visitors, asked me about where I was going last week. As I explained my work, a lightbulb goes on and she says, “That sounds a lot like this thing called Open Space.”

Turns out that after I went around the world running OpenSpaceTech training and practice workshops in 2002, one of my partners, Brendan McKeague, an irishman now rooted in Perth, Western Australia, ran around that continent doing some more trainings. Grace, and english woman with connections down under, attended that training. So strange and wonderful to trip over one’s own lineage halfway between home and Oz!