Just back from my own personal blogwalk with Seb Paquet who popped over the Bowen for the afternoon. We went for a stroll down to Cape Roger Curtis, which is the soutwestern headland of our island sticking out into the Strait of Georgia. Surrounded by tugboats and logbooms, a lighthouse and a craggy arbutus tree, we talked about blogging, the shift from a socity of experts to a society of co-creative learners and other assorted and interesting topics. It was great to meet Seb, who joins the ranks of bloggers who have pitched up here on Bowen for a walk and a talk (including people like Rob Paterson, Ashley Cooper, Christy Lee-Engle, Jon Husband, Michael Herman, Cody Clark and Fred First’s son Nathan!).
Seb and I shared the observation that meeting bloggers we like in person has never been surprising. It has always resulted in an extension of our friendship into the real world, convincing us that blogging is not just an ethereal exercise but in fact a real world practice of trust building.
Seb has lots of interesting things to say and great ideas went shooting back anbd forth between us all afternoon But the one that is sticking at the moment is the idea of blogging as a new form of currency, which is something I haven’t heard or noticed before. He used the example of Suw Charman who is staying at Jon Husband’s place during Northern Voice and how, without the relationship established through blogging, it would have cost her a lot more to stay in Vancouver during the conference. This is not to say that blogging is a transactional activity but rather that it does have real world value, in the social and economic spheres. Micheal will groove on that idea.
I was sorry not to make Northern Voice but I wasn’t even supposed to be here this weekend, so when my job got postponed I seized the opportunity to stay home, watch Blackadder, drink tea and enjoy the spring-like weather with the kids. Having Seb around was a lovely bonus.
Ahhhh.
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The Northern Voice blogging conference was going on yesterday just over the water from me in Vancouver. I’m not there, electing instead to stay here on Bowen Island and get a weekend of nothingness in. There has been a lot of travel lately.
However I kept up with the goings on through Nancy White’s blog which has set new standards for conference blogging in terms of pure output.
I’m also due to receive an oral report of the goings-on from Seb, who will arriving on Bowen this afternoon to join my family for a walk down at Cape Roger Curtis.
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Apropos of my post a couple of days back on vision and action comes a nice quote from Flemming:
The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done — that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.
–Buckminster Fuller
That’s one to save for sure.
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The Indian Rope Trick, whereby a “fakir” suspends a rope in mid air and has an accomplice climb it, provides a rich ground to examine the enduring nature of mental models and other stories we force ourselves to believe. The New York Times > Books >This whole piece is worth the read but here’s the money shot:
So…perhaps the true secret of the Indian Rope Trick is the way the supple human memory combines events we’ve really seen with legends we’ve only heard, and shapes them into the best possible story to tell our grandchildren.”
What’s interesting to me is to look at why we have need of such a story? What does a belief in that story give us?
Good questions for all the stories that imbue our lives with meaning and richness, true or not!
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I was being interviewed today for an article on Open Space Technology and something blurted out of my mouth that I thought was worth keeping, or at least investigating a little more.
We talk about Open Space being fueled by passion bounded by responsibility. I said in the interview that everything that has happened, everything that surrounds us, owes its existence to someone bringing together passion and responsibility.
And everything that we don’t have lies out of reach as long as there isn’t enough passion and responsibility working together to create it.
What do you think? Am I just talking smack here?