We`re living through a mighty big snowfall here on Bowen Island, the likes of which haven`t been seen for at least 40 years.   As a result there is much handwringing about what other people should be doing about things like keeping the citizenry informed about the current road conditions and such. Most of our municipal government officials are on holiday and there have been no official releases of information since before the snow started falling on December 16.

As a fan of passion bounded by responsibility, I decided yesterday morning to set up a weblog which provides a space for the crowd to get to work.   The idea is that people will visit to check on road conditions and while they are there, leave a comment about how things are in their neck of the woods.   It’s a gift exchange and so far it’s working marvelously.   Yesterday, up for half a day, the blog had posts from 7 people describing conditions on most of the major roads on our Island.   Today with a massive snowfall (30cms) ongoing since early morning, we have had reports from 16 people covering all of the major routes on the Island. Even the bus company folks wrote to announce schedule cancellations.

A group of us were also up late last night tweaking the blog and working on a Google maps mashup creating a road status tool that users can colour when conditions deteriorate.   Stu Cole is leading the charge on that one.   Also, one islander, Boris Mann created a FreindFeed home for some of the Bowen Island eGovernment iniatiatives that John Dumbrille and Peter Rawsthorne have been musing about.   Richard Smith, James Glave and Brad Ovenell-Carter are looking into a wifi mesh and a webcam network across the island.   James Glave and the One Day Bowen crew are hosting the development pages for these projects at the Bowen 2020 wiki.   Most of the development chatter has been happening over twitter.

Everything we are doing is gift based, and we are hoping that the municipality will steal it (or better yet , post links to all of this on their infrequently updated web page.   What amazes me is what a small group of us can do, in responding to a need, in so short a time using freely available tools.   We’re lucky that this has happened while we have had a little time, being snowbound and all over the holidays, but when there is a need, it’s amazing to see what can come of it.

If you have anything to add to our efforts or tools we should know about, post them in the comments or visit the Bowen2020 wiki and join the effort.

The Friday “From the Feed” returns for 2009.   Great finds by other people:

• John Dumbrille blogs Clay Shirkey talking about egov and citizen engagement.
• George Nemeth retweeted Valdis Krebs‘ link to a list of great ambient recordings from 2008.
• The Tyee publishes a great series of 10 new ideas for the new year
• The Edge posts its annual question edition: “What will change everything?”
• Jordon Cooper and Stowe Boyd on the best windows desktop and web apps of the year.   I love posts like these.   If you have others, add them in the comments.

Another year is drawing to a close and I’m feeling very tired and very excited about what the year has been like. Taking a cue from Viv, here is my end of year post.

In general 2008 was a year of teaching and travel. For the first half of the year I was on the road for 120 days, visiting places throughout British Columbia as well as Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia and southwards to Washington, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, New York, Michigan and Georgia. Most of the teaching I did was with my mates in the Art of Hosting community of practice and we taught on Whidbey Island, on the Navajo Nation,

2008 began with a trip to Maui with my family in what has become a standard mid winter family retreat. We ind this to be a precious time to turn everything off, shut the office down and give two weeks of undivided attention to our kids. Following that, I returned to do some amazing community planning work with the Quinault Nation in Washington State, and a great Open Space with the Urban Aboriginal Strategy in Regina, where the windchill was -55.

One highlight of February was working with Jennifer Charlesworth and Thomas Ufer at the BC Federation of Child and Family Services annual meeting, That work has morphed into an offering Jennifer and I are doing at the Authentic Leadership in Action Institute this May in Victoria.

Later in February was a return trip to the Navajo Nation to run an Art of Hosting and support the Shiprock Health Promotion folks in some planning.

In March I worked a little with the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transition Team, a project which has since suffered a fatal blow by political forces that we underestimated. I also went to Georgia to begin a project with Native Public Media looking at the impact of Native American radio stations. After a year of raising funds, that project will kick start in the spring. March was also the hardest professional time for me. A facilitation project I did with Fisheries and Oceans went sideways in a stakeholder meeting, and lots of lessons ensued.

In April, the work of nine months with the Kellogg Foundation came to fruition as Tim Merry, Tuesday Ryan-Hart, Monica Nissen, Toke Moeller, Phil Cass and I hosted the 2008 Good Food Gathering for 550 active participants in the US Good Food Movement. This was a huge project and we had a good time in Phoenix, and we worked our butts off. Tim and Tuesday and I are returning to design and host the 2009 gathering with a great core team of 20 or so people.

May was a month of teaching with as Art of Hosting in Florida and an Open Space training with Tenneson Woolf in New York City. The New York trip was brilliant and the whole family came to take in museums, Broadway shows and street festivals. The New York Art of Hosting circle hosted our trip there and Nancy Fritsch-Egan, Angela Amel and Kelly McGowan set up enough work that we were able to make it a busman’s holiday.

June was another month of travel and teaching. Teresa Posakony, Tenneson, Tatiana Glad and I worked a lovely Art of Hosting in Cochrane Alberta, and then I joined my dear friends at Tim Merry’s place in Nova Scotia for a week of retreat with our Art of Hosting friends. Following that a number of us headed to the Shambhala Institute where Toke, Monica and I presented an Art of Hosting module. I turned 40 in June as well…

July and August were spent resting although we went to San Fransisco to attend Open Space on Open Space and in August our family went to the Okanagan for a retreat which included a weekend of traditional music performance in Princeton, BC.

Highlights for September included working with the Canadian Union of Public Employees and hosting an Art of Hosting on Bowen Island, which was the first time I have taught with my partner and spouse Caitlin Frost.

This whole autumn has been less travel, but more projects, and lots of conference calls and design work. In October I got out a little and helped set up a national network on urban Aboriginal economic development with a kick off meeting in Ottawa. That project continues to grow and gain momentum.

In November I finally got to teach with my friend Peggy Holman, and we delivered a lovely appreciative inquiry training for a dozen public servants in Victoria. Tuesday Ryan-Hart and I also traveled to Battle Creek Michigan to host the first meeting of the 2009 Good Food Movement Gathering core team.

December was the culmination of two big projects. The first week consisted of work with the school district in Prince George, running four community engagement gatherings to establish an Aboriginal choice school in Prince George. Following that I traveled to Boston and worked with the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education running a coaches retreat alongside a great design team with my co-host from PEJE Sharon Haselkorn. I was struck by the similarities in both of these projects.

As a facilitator in my practice I explored questions of collective leadership, connection and relationship and spent time working on a very good design tool which has been very helpful for many of the clients I have worked with this fall. I also began incorporating more graphic facilitation into my work and did some brilliant stuff with the best guy I know, Steven Wright.

Most importantly, I think I have made good on my promise to “never work alone.” In the past these end of year posts thanked my clients and I had relatively few partners. This year, it’s all about the folks I worked with. Here are the fine folks I got to work with this year, helping to serve our best to the clients and communities that asked for our help:

• Sono Hashisaki

• Gabriel Shirley

• Tracy Robinson

• Steven Wright

• Tenneson Woolf

• Teresa Posakony

• Christina Baldwin

• Ann Linnea

• Thomas Ufer

• Steve Ryman

• Tim Merry

• Toke Moeller

• Monica Nissen

• Phil Cass

• Tuesday Ryan-Hart

• Tatiana Glad

• Cheryl dePaoli

• Zrinka Glavas

• David Stevenson

• Jennifer Charlesworth

• Derek Evans

• Roq Garreau

• Bob Wing

• Chris Robertson

I think that’s everyone! Clearly making progress on the goal of working together.

So thank you friends, colleagues, readers, stumblers, clients and all. See you in 2009.

Van Jones – my inspiration for 2009
Photo by luxomedia

I’ve blogged about Van Jones before, but last night I listened to a podcast of a talk he gave at a Social Change Forum at Hollyhock on Cortes Island earlier this year.   With a powerful mix of humour and truth telling, he describes the confluence of social justice and environmental justice and calls for a new politics that transcends dualities, us vs, them thinking and win/lose outcomes.   He also make a powerful point about how our absolute reliance on deliverables, outcomes and achievables makes us liars, as we pretend to be able to tell our donors, funders and stakeholders how we will shape the future.   Van makes a powerful point that when we tell the story that we are successful, and hide that fact that half the time we don’t know WHAT we are doing, we prevent the ability to learn from one another.

The world is a complex, chaotic and changing place, and what is needed now is not winning against but winning over.   We need to invest in prototypes not pretend we know the solutions.   We need experiment, relationship and integrity.   That is the new politics of activism – it is the new politics period – and it is what I am committing myself to here at home on Bowen Island, and in my work in the world for 2009.

Happy New Year and see you out there.