So it seems that we are having a federal election here in Canada. I’m a little interested in democracy and as I\ve had two phone calls today, I thought I might as well keep some notes here about my experience with the local candidates. Today John Weston’s comapaign called me. Weston is running for the Conservatives here in West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country. So I’ll admit upfront that I’m prejudiced here – I haven’t ever voted Conservative, and that isn’t likely to change in this election. I did however find the experience …
I’m working a lot with communities of practice these days, or more precisely, teams and groups that aspire to becoming communities of practice. In seeking to be simple about the process of moving from a group to a deeper community, I’ve been designing meetings using this map, to ensure that we give equal weight to work, relationships and co-learning. In my experience, when we do that we set the conditions for a group to become more cohesive and to discover new learning and emergent solutions to the issues on which they are working. This is a design tool, a …
I have a stack of books I am working my way through this summer, and they are all written by friends. I think this is pretty remarkable actually. From the top down, here is what’s on my reading table: Finding the Sweet Spot by Dave Pollard. This one just arrived this evening, although I read a proof that Dave sent along. It’s typical of his writing, and will be a familiar tome for regular readers of his blog, How To Save The World. The book outlines a path for creating a life of sustainable work and enterprise using …
I awoke this morning and read two scary articles courtesy of the terror of my RSS feeder. First, Dave Pollard counted down the order in which his domino theory of outright planetary collapse may unfold. Then, I read Andrew Simms article on why we only have 100 months left before reaching the tipping point for runaway climate change. Neither of these scenarios are unfamiliar me, but something about waking up this morning and reading them straight off got my attention. I started thinking about what to do and started reflecting on some of the things that I …
In a post on reviewing academic articles, I was really struck by the way academics deal with surprises. Yes, I regularly check (some) references. If the author of a (history) paper I am refereeing makes a surprising claim – e.g., something that if true I might reasonably be expected to have encountered before, not just something I know FA about – I almost instinctively check to see what his/her source is, and if it’s something I have readily to hand, may actually go to the text to see if it supports what the author concluded. Usually it does, and I’ve …