I’m on the road, currently in Columbus Ohio, working my way through a two week road trip that has taken me to Ontario to visit family and to New Brunswick where I was part of a remarkable hosting team for the Art of Hosting Working Across Divides. It was a timely gathering for 70 people from government, civil society, and social enterprise to come and learn how to work with differences. In Canada’s only bilingual province, language is a massive difference between people, and New Brunswick has a multitude of language cultures. There are 34 local French accents alone in …
On the Art of Hosting email list last month, there was an inquiry posted by Monica Nissén asking about scaling the Art of Hosting as a leadership practice through levels of engagement. By “Art of Hosting” Monica means the four fold practice, which is the basic framework for leadership that gives our community a coherent centre of practice, around presence, participation, hosting others, and co-creation. Monica asked whether hoping these practices would just go viral in a networked way is enough, and I replied with the following, tracing a couple of long term projects I have been involved in that …
Some interesting links that caught my eye this week. Why Black Hole Interiors Grow (Almost) Forever Leonard Susskind has linked the growth of black holes to increasing complexity. Is it true that the world is becoming more complex? “It’s not only black hole interiors that grow with time. The space of cosmology grows with time,” he said. “I think it’s a very, very interesting question whether the cosmological growth of space is connected to the growth of some kind of complexity. And whether the cosmic clock, the evolution of the universe, is connected with the evolution of complexity. There, I …
Since October 2011, when I first lay on the floor and listened to Tuesday Ryan-Hart teach at the Art of Social Justice in New York held thirty-five blocks from where Occupy Wall Street was just getting started, I have been intrigued, challenged and enamoured by her work on these issues. She has been working hard for the past 8 years to articulate a model of power, justice and relations that can deeply inform the Art of Hosting community of practitioners, certainly in the North American context if not elsewhere in the world. Tuesday’s work has made me a better person. She …
Its that time of year when we are getting ready to invite people back to Bowen Island for our annual Art of Hosting. Since 2004, folks have travelled from all over the world to come to this gathering. Over four days and three nights, we will be diving in with each to explore powerful tools for participatory leadership, engagement and hosting conversations. Our team this year consists of myself, Caitlin Frost, Amanda Fenton and Teresa Posakony, four long time Art of Hosting stewards who have extended their practice into other related fields. These are some of my closest colleagues in …