I’ve been an autodidact all my life. My learning programs have had little to do with what I was fed in school or in the approved training programs of the various places I’ve worked. In fact, when I was with the Department of Indian Affairs, I tried to initiate a new learning program to foster leadership. I advocated giving every employee their $800 a year training allotment and allowing them to spend it on whatever learning program they wanted. If employees chose to take the government sanctioned filing training, that’s fine. If people wanted to spend the money on a …
Over the past few months, several people have been exploring the applications of Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language to endeavours other than architecture. Peter Lindberg has been concerning himself with the application of patterns to software development. The folks at BlueOxen have been looking at Patterns of community building and collaboration, Mike Lee blogged patterns of introducing change into organizations last summer, and Michael Herman and I took a shot at defining some patterns of Open Space Technology based on The Nature of Order. We’re not done yet. (I have to say that pattern languages have not helped the patternlanguage.com people …
From the Winter 2001 issue of Barrow Street: Balance by Jane Hirshfield Balance is noticed most when almost failed of- in an elephant’s delicate wavering on her circus stool, for instance, or that moment when a ladder starts to tip but steadies back. There are, too, its mysterious departures. Hours after the dishes are washed and stacked, a metal bowl clangs to the floor, the weight of drying water all that altered; a painting vertical for years one morning-why?- requires a restoring tap. You have felt it disappearing from your own capricious heart- a restlessness enters, the smallest leaning begins. …
Whale to human transformation mask (Haida) From Civilization.ca Harrison Owen, the guy who invented Open Space Technology, in replying to my post about stories, put some words around it � gave me the story in fact � and so I realize now that the reason I love practicing OST is that it really does invite an organization or a community to embody a new story about itself – or to rediscover very old ones. Harrison wrote: There used to be a day when the power of these deep stories was appreciated, but in recent times they are dismissed with the …