A summery Friday here at the Lot. Here’s what tickled my eyes this week:
- El Cameron, my favourite flamenco singer. Full of duende this night.
- A brilliantly rendered story of the four quadrants of integral theory. This map is just so helpful in looking at so many sitautions. This particular presentation is a lovely use of web technology as well.
- So you want to speak Danish? Who wouldn’t… The first place to start is by mastering this phrase: rødgrød med fløde. If you can’t get it on the first or second (or 27th) try, have a look at this detailed pronunciation guide which tells how to make the porridge AND the phrase. When you’re done there, watch this incredible documentary about the demise of Danish. This note is required reading for anyone in the Art of Hosting community by the way!
- Boeing launches its new plane, the 787, this weekend: 07/08/07. Check it out now or watch it live on Sunday.
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- Kaliya Hamlin is getting really noticed for her work promoting Open Space in the tech community. The whole idea of unconferencing has jumped the shark, but there is still an art to doing Open Space. It’s easy but not simple, and Kaliya has been a great guardian of the essence of the process as it grows into the tech world in a big way This article from the Business 2.0 blog is another piece of good attention being thrown her way. Actually there are a rash of articles out these days on Open Space, including one in a publication called Meetings and Incentive Travel, that quotes my Canadian mates Diane Gibault, Michelle Cooper and Larry Peterson. Add to that this very useful short film on Open Space, and you could safely say that our beloved process has truly tipped.
- And speaking of mates, Thomas Arthur comes through with a link he sent by Google chat which deepens the ida of Pattern Language, moving it into another level of “generative code” for building living neighbourhoods. This gets at something I was saying in Belgium, standing up for Pattern Language which I understand as a noticing about the world rather than a prescriptive recipe. It is very much generative code. Thomas’ link sent me running to check up on Kevin Harris’ excellent blog and I note he has been recently posting interesting things on third places, mass creativity and social interactions in public spaces. Kevin’s blog is in my “check once a month” folder, and it’s always rich.
- Last note for this week: While I was in Belgium a couple of weeks ago, the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transition Team held a monmumental celebration to mark the formal shift to an interim authority. What this means is that we are half way to becoming a full authority for Aboriginal child and family services on Vancouver Island. The celebration was held at the Snuneymexw longhouse near Nanaimo, and a really nice piece aired on TV about it (.wmv).
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Some notes and stuff from my trips around the web:
- Passion bounded by responsibility is one of the tenets of Open Space. To see how powerful this is in action, you should go and visit WikiClock. Very simply, it’s a clock that shows the current time if you update it to do so. It’s a ridiculous notion, until you realize that it actually works. And if you still don’t know what a wiki is, Viv McWaters has come across a video that might help you understand it a lot better.
- Jack Ricchiuto has discovered something about appreciative leadership in Aboriginal communities that has long formed the basis of my practice: “he understanding is that childhood traumas cause our souls to fragment. The work of healing is to enable the reclaiming of these parts of our souls – like wisdom, love, and courage – that are ours to reclaim.”
- It still amazes me how intimate people can be in person after engaging with each other over time on weblogs. Since my lunch with new friends in London last weekend, Richard and Kevin have both posted interesting thoughts about this particular lunch on their blogs. If you still haven’t had the experience of meeting someone physically whom you have known only through a blog, I recommend it. It will blow your mind.
- One of the processes we used in Belgium for looking at ourselves was a systemic constellation. I’m quite interested in this methodology (here is a website for the community of practice) and would welcome anythoughts from those who have used it in organizations and communities about resources that are useful for understanding it in those contexts.
- Finally this week, a note on a great looking training offered by my friend Christine Whitney Sanchez in Colorado this summer combining Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, World Cafe and Polarity Management. It’s just one more offering on the kinds of things we teach at an art of hosting. You can also explore these ideas through a workshop with Myriam Laberge and Brenda Chaddock, which they call “Wise Action that Lasts.” (July 9-11 near Vancouver, BC) and of course you could also come to an Art of Hosting training, several of which are going on in Europe and North America this summer and fall.
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Some short notes about various things:
- Friends of mine in Estonia have started the White Tulip movement to bring peace to a deep seated ethnic conflict that is flaring up there at the moment.
- In the Ukraine, the 15th annual OpenSpaceonOpenSpace has just concluded and the photos are online. I was reflecting on how much easier it is to harvest from these gatherings now than it was when they began, or even six years ago when we hosted OSonOS in Vancouver.
- I haven’t plugged Redwire Magazine for a while. Redwire is published by indigenous youth in Vancouver, and it captures a raw spirit and energy of some powerful young leaders. You can read their issues online, or better still, subscribe for the real thing. Once in a while they produce a “Redwire mixtape” which is a CD of mostly rap and poetry. These guys are the urban native storytellers of our generation.
- In the true spirit of sharing his thinking and learning, Rob Paterson is musing openly about his reboot presentation, called is on the natural patterns of human organization. Here are parts one, two and three of that thinking, some of which had it’s origins in a yurt in Carleton, Nova Scotia, when Rob and Toke Moeller and I explored organizational forms with some other folks. That has spawned my thinking as well, and a post is forthcoming.
- Finally, Phil Cubeta has published a small set of links on developing true community, which I’ll have a peek at soon. I think these might actually complement some of the thinking Dave Pollard has been doing on designing for emergence.
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Starting a new regular type of posting. These are a series of short notes and thoughts, too small to warrant a post, but looking for a home nonetheless, and possibly becoming more. I invite your curiosity on any of this…queries may set me to growing these little guys into something more substantial.
- Conversations that matter is the home for the world cafe Europe blog. Good reading there.
- Dave Pollard on the distinctions between dialogue and debate. Dave wrestles with his conscience on this one and comes up with a finer grain analysis as a result. Interesting as usual, and deeply in tune with some stuff I’ve been thinking about lately regarding politics and conversation.
- Sitting outside by the fire last night, I realized why the human eye can preserve its night vision when it is exposed to red light. The dying embers of the fire that were keeping me warm did not in the least affect my ability to peer into the forest at the passing deer, or to scan the heavens for globular clusters. That seems like a useful survival tactic. I wonder what the 21st century eye is able to see that will preserve our species?
- You have to read this to believe it. The Sock-A-Month knitting club gets shut down by a bank after the gnomes suspect a scam. You see? If I didn’t have a little notes category, where would I have blogged this?
- Music at the moment: One-named Canadian singers Feist and Issa (formerly Jane Sibbery, new album forthcoming). My ten year old daughter is listening to Avril on her iPod. My goodness, they grow up quickly. (Psst, Alex, I snuck some Zero 7 on there as well. She loves The Pageant of the Bizarre!)