Douglas Rushkoff on President Obama:

When there’s a big blackout in New York, especially during the summer, some people take it as a “cue” to start looting. It’s not that the blackout itself makes it significantly to break down store fronts; it’s not that the police are so very busy with the blackout. The lights going out is a cue to behave differently – to release the hidden potential for vandalism and long-repressed rage.

Likewise, the election of a black man to the presidency is a cue that something has changed. As my friend, Ari Wallach explained to me on my new radio show last night, it’s a kind of “shock and awe.” There’s a thoughtful, progressive and black president-elect on the cover of the New York Post. The cognitive dissonance this generates is an opportunity to reprogram. It’s what advertisers and social programmers try to do in pretty much every communication they make. It’s as big a disconnect and reconnect as 9-11 was, only constructive instead of destructive. A narrative is broken; another is born.

I had that same thought…on the morning of September 11, 2001 I realized that one event could change things for the worse and I felt concerned for the fragility of the narrative of who we are.   Likewise with Obama’s election I still feel the fragility in the narrative, but I’m encouraged that single events can have positive impacts too.

One last point about Obama for now…I was talking with my friend Dyane, a social entreprenuer and rapper from South Central LA about George Bush’s legacy.   He asked the question, what will Bush be known for>   In no time at all we had the answer: he was the last white President of the United States.

Delayed at the Vancouver Harbour by a beautiful fog bank this morning.   Turning to my feed readers, here’s what friends have been noticing this week.

• The Mars Lander Phoenix bids farewell via Metafilter
• The New York Times I want to read.
• Rob Paterson on why the current market crises may not be a blip
• Dustin Rivers, who always writes illuminating posts on the deep history of my region, is appearing on a panel about First Nations – South Asian relations in the Vancouver area.
• Jeremy Hiebert muses about Manufactuared Landscapes.
• Jon Husband, from one of his periodic trips to Europe, muses on top-down organizing systems in France.

To Be of Use

By Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

I’ve had a Toshiba laptop for a could of months now running a 64 bit version of Vista.   Loved it until last week, when it suddenly started crashing and freezing up for no reason.   Restore doesn’t work.   All the fixes I’ve tried have only staved off the annoyance, but it still keeps happening.   I have tio hard reboot several times a day.

They must have called it Vista because you get to gaze out your window so much while it crashes and reboots.

Sucks.   I’ve finally gone off Microsoft.   The OS was the last piece of sotware I used by them.   Ubuntu here we come.

Thanks Microsoft.   Your products are unpredictable, heavy and come with no support.   And they don’t do what they say they do which is OPERATE as a SYSTEM.   Sayonara.

I’m here in Battle Creek, Michigan working with 17 very interesting people who together are planning the 2009 Food and Society Gathering, sponsored by the WK Kellogg Foundation.   This is a repeat gig for Tuesday Ryan-Hart and Tim Merry and I, although last year we worked with Phill Cass, Toke Moeller and Monica Nissen as well.

Tuesday and I have been working over the design of this gathering all day today, preparing and chaging and shifting things, going over and over everything, making allowances for shifts in time, for different arrivals and so on, and tonight we’re set.   It brings home to me the importance of design.

This fall almost all the work I have done has consisted of design conversations with groups who are hosting meetings.   In every case, I have worked remotely with a team of people to co-create the design for our time together.   We have been very thoughtful about building in lost of breathing space in agendas, using processes that invite emergence and co-learning and paying close attention to sharing hosting and leadership around.

What I am learning as I do this over and over again, is how much time it takes to get it right, and what the payoff is for nailing it.   In my experience I have found that even designing short gatherings well and co-creatively takes at least double the actual time allotted for the meeting itself.   If you imagine being an athelete or a performing artist, the analogy is accurate; rehearsal takes time.   Even a five minute performance takes months of planning to do beautifully.   With this gathering, a 2.5 day conference on the food system with up to 600 people, hosted within a few days of pre-meeting activities, the design will take 4 days of face to face time with 21 people, and an additional 12 hours of webinars all together.   We’ll also meet as action teams virtually over the next six months in smaller aggregations to work on the design.   And that’s not logistics and invitations, just process design.

The payoff, I have noticed, is a gathering that is co-owned and co-hosted by a team of people who are highly invested in the process.   In fact the intensity of doing this work results in friendships that last beyond the work itself and often spin off into other ventures.   Quality is born in relationship and relationship takes time and undivided attention.   In the grand scheme of things, 5 days of work together isn’t a lot, but if we are to pull off this 2.5 day gathering again, every minute spent in quality counts.