Harvested this week:
- Jeremy Hiebert reflects on the life and death of Oliver Schroer.
- Alex Kjerulf finds a beautiful film about passion for work – in a specialty soda store.
- Mushin is building a mind map to look at reall community building.
As summer begins to close here on the west coast of Canada, I’m starting to head back to work, digging into to 20 or so projects that will unfold in the next nine months, which will take me across Canada, the US, Hawaii, Estonia, Denmark and Australia. And as I look ahead to my work year that is restarting, I notice that this is the tenth time that I have done this.
Indeed ten years ago this day, as a precocious 31 year old fed up with travel (ironically) and the various despairs of working for the federal government, I quit my job and hung out a shingle. August 31 was my last day of employment. My first contract was a retainer with the BC Assembly of First Nations, working with Chris Robertson and the then vice-chief Satsan (Herb George). Chris and Herb were (and still are) both enamoured with Open Space Technology and were wondering how we could use it for various organizing around Aboriginial rights and title. That retainer – for which I will always be grateful – gave me a start in the freelance world that was all I needed to build a pretty solid little practice. Since then, I have facilitated literally hundreds of gatherings from two person retreats to international conferences using a variety of participatory methodologies.
In the ten years since I went out on my own, I have been anything but lonely. I have worked with people from various communities of practice, including Open Space, World Cafe, Genuine Contact and most deeply, the Art of Hosting. I have, in the words of song writer Dougie MacLean “moved and kept on moving, proved the points that needed proving, lost the friends that needed losing and found others on the way.” It has mostly been an incredibly rich journey,working with tiny communities and huge coporations, young and radical youth and wise Elders. I have friends and colleagues in dozens of countries on every continent, and count myself lucky to be in their embrace.
There is no way there was a strategic plan in place when I left my job ten years agao. I have mostly survived by holding questions, opening myself to learning, and reminding myself that I don’t have to be the expert all the time. I could never have said that where I started ten years ago would leave me here, typing a blog post outside my favourite cafe on my home island.
I have met and worked with literally tens of thousands of people over the past ten years and as I sit here and picture many of them, I feel immense gratitude for their patience, trust, support and deep friendship. Thank you to you all (and please leave a comment here saying “you’re welcome!”). My partner Caitlin and our two kids are foremost among them, for it was to spend more time with them that I originally left my job, and if there is to be one regret, it’s that travel takes me away from them too much these days. So that’s my edge to work on for the future.
And who can know what I’ll be writing about on August 31, 2019, in my 51st year, as I catch myself surprised at all that has happened.
The week that was of webby goodness:
- ANAblog continues with their series of Mercury Prize nominees, with full length sounds samples.
- The Onion with the best analysis of US health care reform.
- Geist magazine posts a photo essay of dying British Columbia towns
My friend Kenoli Oleari on the possibility that the conversation can be changed:
We are finding that there are lots of opportunities for public meetings, town halls, task forces, etc. as well as a lot of dissatisfaction with the way things are done. People fear new approaches, but we are finding if we don’t buy into those fears, rather working with them to stay focused on outcomes and the best way to achieve what they want, that there is some degree of receptivity. In many cases people do care about good outcomes and let this desire assuage their fears. There is certainly huge gratitude when they see the amazing results they had never imagined.
We are also finding that little process tweaks can have huge impacts on the quality of results.
In the Art of Hosting world we call this “chaordic confidence” the ability to stay in the heat and fear of chaos and uncertainty and hold space for collaboration and participation to unfold.
You know, truth has been in short supply in the American “debate” over health care reform. Today now everyone is quoting the outgoing and incoming presidents of the Canadian Medical Association using the word “implode” to describe our system.
So here is my last input to the American debate, as if facts and truth matter. Read the speeches of the CMA Presidents. It is true that they are shilling for more private care, to make more money, have more opportunity and maybe some of them even believe that patients will be better served by choice.
But nowhere do they say anything about abandoning universal care. In her inaugural address this week, the new president, Dr. Annie Doig, said this:
Canada’s physicians have always stood four-square behind the principle that no Canadian should do without needed medical care because of an inability to pay. That is an irrefutable fact. Canada’s physicians also stand four-square behind the principle that all Canadians must have appropriate access to the care they need. That, too, is an irrefutable fact.
Even the outgoing president who took a pretty hardline in favour of more private care said this:
Start by building a patient-centred culture that ensures that the patient has unfettered access, with no financial barrier, to continuity of care dispensed at the right time. In concrete terms, this means that when the patient arrives at the hospital, doctor’s office or other facility, he or she is seen quickly. And it means that when a patient requires surgery, he or she receives it within an acceptable timeframe.
In the United States right now people are actually debating this point. We might have differing opinions on this, and radically different ways of getting the job done, but no serious leader in Canada would question equal and fair access of all patients to the care they need, regardless of their ability to pay. That is universal health care. It means that people get cared for, and not that 10s of millions of people don’t ever get care because they are afraid that they can’t afford it.
So, understand this. In Canada the debate is about coping with rising costs, making services more efficient and ensuring that everyone gets the care tey need. It is not about fundamental access. It is a debate that is alive in every country in the world. But it is not the same debate as the one going on in the States right now. And using single words like “implode” from a rhetorical speech that actually supports improving universal health care to oppose Obama’s plan is like quoting Einstein in a divorce settlement: sure you’re both talking about “relativity” but the similarity ends there.
Good luck my American friends. I hope the level of discourse returns from its dive into the ridculous soon. And I hope no one gets hurt before it does.