Okay folks…having read Jeff Jarvis today (thanks for the pointer Johnnie) and noting the unconferencing angst going on out there, and noting also that people seems to be feeling around in the dark for some way forward, I’m here to offer what I can.
I am a facilitator and I specialize in Open Space Technology. There is hardly a better method of structuring a conference that mimics the social networking landscape that we call the Internet. I have run all kinds of conferences with Open Space, including using Open Space combined with speakers and other bits of inspiration. I’ve used Open Space in combination with other large group process like World Cafe. I’ve convened conference using Open Space that were supported by wikis and blogs and that had an online and real life for months afterwards.
If you are after building bottom-up, conversational and highly networked conference, it’s really a very simple thing to turn a traditional conference into an Open Space event that gives you what you’re looking for. I have been hearing about people wanting to do this for a couple of years now, but no one has called yet, so here’s the offer:
If you are serious about wanting to create an unconference, phone me or Skype me or drop me an email and I will talk your ear off for free and tell you everything I know about how to do it. I will even help you create the invitation and figure out the logistics. If it suits you to work with me after that, I’ll facilitate the conference for you as well and/or find others out in the world who will be eager to help you out for an obscenely reasonable rate. You will have, at the end of the day, a dynamic event, with engaged participants and you will bring it in at a huge cost savings over what you are budgeting for a full-on conference with panels and video conferencing and skirts on the tables and such. You will have a powerful, low cost, learning event.
In exchange for my free set up advice, I’ll ask you to share what we learn with others on our respective blogs. All I want to do at this point is make sure that the new kind of conferencing takes off and that we can learn from one another.
So I look forward to hearing from you.
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Good old whiskey river:
Mindful
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
– Mary Oliver
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
– Mary Oliver
Yesterday my five year old son and I went for a walk in a remote and wild part of our island to a point where the waves riding the southeasterlies up the Strait of Georgia break on a basalt reef littered with driftwood. And in that place, in that moment, with rain washing our faces and wind lashing at our ears, we talked about seeing with the close-seeing eye that watches where we step and seeing with the long-seeing eye that knows where we are in the forest. So turning, we made our way back through the trees with our close-seeing eyes and long-seeing eyes both tuned. We learned that it is important to stay aware of our feet below us and the turns in the forest path ahead of us, and that getting lost is a result of losing the manner of both modalities.
Such a trove of teachings in a simple, slippery path on a rainy day.
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Here’s an mp3 post for a rainy Friday afternoon, another contemplative moment.
This is Allegri’s Miserere, a stunning piece of choral music composed in the 1630s. It is so sublime that for a long time it was only performed once a year and anyone who wrote it down would be excommunicated for doing so. The story goes that Mozart (whose 250th birthday is today) broke the ban by hearing the piece, transcribing it from memory and then giving it away. In this respect Wolfgang may have preceeded Napster by a couple hundred years. Thanks to Wolfgang’s transgressions, this Miserere is now open source and able to be performed by any choir with a soprano that can hit that high C. For me, as one who is not a great fan of Mozart’s music in general, I consider this one act to be his greatest acheivement.
The piece is ten minutes long, so sit back, close your eyes and enfold yourself in the textures of it as it moves between plainsong and polyphony and as that soprano descends from heaven with the most heartstopping phrase in choral music.
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Before I took off to the Evolutionary Salon last week I blogged about Sarvodaya.
Today I have been scouring recent postings at the Sarvodaya blog and I find this, from Deepak Chopra’s comments to a Sarvodaya Peace dialogue:
Today we are shifting from the industrial age to the information age. Today wealth and power come from Information Technology. And Information Technology has become very powerful today. In a few years it will become even more powerful. It will be possible for anyone to have this kind of computer in their pocket and interfere with air traffic. It will be possible through handheld implements to make nuclear stations leak and cut off electricity. And when that happens we will make ourselves extinct because we have powerful technology combined with ancient habits.But Dr. Ariyaratne and Sarvodaya are giving us a new model and this is saying that we have to move from the age of information to the age of knowledge. And we have to move from the age of knowledge to the age of wisdom. When you saw those slides on the screen, you saw a model that was based on the wisdom of civilization. And this wisdom and this civilization say one thing and one thing only: that the future does not belong to the survival of the fittest, but that it belong to the survival of the wisest. Survival of the wisest will become the new criteria for evolution. It is a new civilization based on wisdom-based consciousness, a wisdom-based economy, and a wisdom-based power structure and leadership, the three pillars that you saw in the slide from Sarvodaya, which are economy, consciousness, and power. This wisdom therefore is the most important thing that we seek in our lives today. Two thousand five hundred years ago, the Lord Buddha said that the world is about interdependence; the environment, the forces of nature, and human consciousness are all part of one single reality. And today many scientists are talking about interdependent co-arising. But this interdependent co-arising gives birth to a field of consciousness that should make this change.
What can we do to nurture the evolution of the wisdom-based age? I am most interested in ways of being together in groups, communities, families and other aggregations, but also in what wisdom looks like in the structures that support those groups, structures like money, power, the natural world and information. Those of you that have read along with me for a while will know of my ongoing inquiry into philanthropy, decentralized governance, learning from the natural world and our stories about the natural world, and peer to peer ways of connecting. Where is your edge of inquiry around this question?
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Some upcoming learning opportunities in the British Columbia and Washington state areas…
News from my dear friend Peggy Holman that she and Steve Cato are offering their Appreiciative Inquiry facilitation training on February 1-3, and it’s not too late to register.
Toke Moeller is hosting a FlowGame at Aldermarsh on Whidbey Island in the middle of March, after which we are penciling in an Art of Hosting primarily with Aboriginal youth, but open to the public as well on Vancouver Island.
Michael Herman and I will be offering a retreat to support practices for Open Space faiclitation in April, during the week of April 17th here on Bowen Island. We’re almost ready to make a formal announcement and invitation, but if you’d like more details leve a comment or send me and email.
And tonight, Christina Baldwin is reading from her new book Storycatcher: Making Sense of our Lives Through the Power and Practice of Story at Ayurveda in Vancouver at 3636 West 4th Ave. from 6-8pm. That event is free, so if you’re in the area you shouldn’t miss the chance to hear Christina read. I might get down to that if I get a chance.
So with all this good hosting learning going on, here is a great hosting song to add to the playlist: