From the excellent The Blog of Henry David Thoreau:

In an era where measurement leads to management, and therefore it’s measurement uber alles, this quote reminds us that things have their most powerful place in the whole only in relation to their natural settings and scales. In organizations and communities it seems that something measureable becomes more important than those things we cannot measure, and we inflate those things to absurd dimensions to the exclusion of the synergy that arises from the tangible and intangible elements working together.

Today at an Open Space I kept saying that the muber of people present was 53. Some folks corrected me, but the truth was that the number present kept changing as people came and went, but I was trying to make a point. Fifty three is a prime number. Prime numbers are good numbers to use to estimate a group’s size in Open Space because they are not easily divided.

Ha ha.

Matt made me do it…

These are my URL ABCs:

• A is for artofhosting.org/ – The website for a set of emergent facilitation approaches, supporting training by Toke Paludan Moeller
• B is for blogger.com – My home away from home
• C is for chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot – My home away from Blogger
• D is for dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/25/133951/651 – Jeez…how did I get so sidetracked?
• E is for en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-04-18/Lucene_search – Very excited that Wikipedia search got fixed
• F is for fns.bc.ca/ – Home of the First Nations Summit in BC
• G is for gmail.com – Checking email
• H is for haloscan.com/comments/salishsea/111441125579757903/ – Comments on a recent Parking Lot post about the Olympics logo fiasco
• I is for ifilm.com – Check out Mr. T’s rap about his momma.
• J is for jackzen.com/ – My pal Jack Ricchiuto’s blog
• There was no K…we need more URLs staring in “K”
• L is for livingeconomies.org/BALLEBC/marketplace/searchIndex.cfm?pageId=883&parentPageId=879 – BALLE is a great organization. I’m on the advisory board of the BC chapter
• M is for maps.google.com – Who doesn’t have this one? Best Google invention since Pigeon Ranking
• N is for ncf.ca/~ek867/wood_s_lot.html – The unparalleled Mark Wood’s wood s lot, hosted by my first ISP, National Capital Freenet in Ottawa
• O is for openspacehalifax.ca/ – Worldwide Open Space facilitator gathering in Halifax this summer
• P is for parl.gc.ca/ – Fat lot of good my MP’s email address did me. He didn’t listen anyway…
• No Q? Huh.
• R is for reclaiming.com/ – Dr. Martin Brokenleg’s site
• S is for sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=sm8parkinglot – Ok, Ok, a vanity link.
• T is for theobvious.typepad.com/blog/2005/04/three_wise_men.html – Euan Semple and friends
• No U…can’t believe it…
• V is for vancouver2010.com/En/default.htm – I stole the logo from here for my post trashing it
• W is for washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38308-2005Apr8.html – Probably wandered here from MetaFilter one rainy day.
• X is for xe.com – Convert roubals to rupees
• Y is for yahoo.com – Well, yeah.
• Z is for zmag.org/ – I’m a radical at heart!

I discovered that I have been linked at Declan’s blog, STV for BC – Vote Yes!, which encourages us to vote yes for the shift to a single transferable vote system of electing government. Declan’s blog is the one that was getting all the attention from Elections BC last week.

Also, following up on the Olympics logo story, Marja-Leena send me a link to this article quoting an Inuit Elder on inuksuit (the proper plural) and why what the Olympic Committee has on it’s hands is not infact, even an inukshuk. As if the goofy smile wasn’t a hint.

More coverage here

Michael is a great friend and colleague and one of the most important lessons I’ve learned from him over the years is this notion of living life as a practice of invitation. Today he posts a really nice example of how he might respond to a request to help create an invitation. I quoted this post today in a conversation with Dave Pollard who is crafting an invitation for his current initiative, AHA!

It’s great advice, elegantly offered.