Live blogging from the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies conference here in Vancouver. Last night we got opened up with a welcome from Musqueam Elder Delbert Guerin, and then heard keynotes from Judy Wicks, one of the founders of BALLE and the proprietor of the White Dog Cafe, and Jim Hightower, who needs little introduction, and anyway any introduction you could give him would be too long. So just check his site.

This morning, we have a panel with Michael Schumann, Michelle Long David Korten. So on we go…stay tuned and I’ll report in.

I’m sitting in front of an agenda wall here at the International Conference of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. On the wall is an agenda created by something like 40 youth who gathered here to talk about sustainability issues, action and change. The proceedings are being posted at the BALLE youth forum wiki, and we encourage you to show up there and join in the conversation.

We’ll be here live and online until 4pm PDT (North America) and the wiki will stay live for the youth to use as a support tool. If you have anything to add, please do so, especially links, resources and more ideas to build on what we’re talking about.

Here’s an ambient track to start your week. This is called “Hermit Thrush” from a San Francisco-based outfit called Airking. Minimalism may not be your cup of tea, but as I’ve been talking a little about the combination of nature and technology, I thought I would blog this piece.

The piece features a loop of a lush synth chord, one that contains a suspended fourth, giving the feeling that there is something to resolve. Over this are some heavily modified samples of a hermit thrush call (click here for .wav file of such) and some synth fills that mimic the call and some of it’s elements.

My work with group processes has always moved towards what comes to us most naturally. This is why my facilitation practice seems to culminate in Open Space Technology, where the natural and pervasive dynamics of self-organization can take over. Being a conscious part of a self-organizing system requires that we remember how to be a part of nature again. And so the four practices of Open Space – opening, inviting, holding and grounding – become essential for creating a container in which people return to their most basic and intuitive processes – conversation, choice, collaboration and contemplation – to help move them forward. When a group is truly ready to come back to what has always been Open Space, one finds reactions of astonishment and surprise that work could really be this easy and this deep, all at the same time.

It’s worth looking at what we are as humans – parts of the vast whole that holds us – and remember that our very oldest teachings tell us how to live within this enfolded context rather than futilely struggle against it.

Port Alberni, BC

I was speaking with a client the other day about an Open Space event we are planning. The theme of the event has to do with slowing down communities, to get a handle on the pace of change. We were reflecting on one of the pre-conditions for a good Open Space event being urgency. We had a good chuckle at the notion that, in these communities, there is an urgent need to slow down! I love the creative tension of this paradox.

We build in time for ourselves personally to slow down and reflect and sometimes we do the same for organizations. But it’s rare that communities do this. I love working with communities where we build community-wide reflection into the life of the community. If you live in a place, like I do, where development pressures threaten to drive the agenda for how the whole community will evolve, then you can appreciate the urgency for slow.