San Jose, CA

We’re planning a gathering of the good food movement, so naturally, the pursuit of good food is everything.  Since arriving here yesterday I’ve eaten in three places, all of them good for various reasons.

First, the Grill here at the Fairmont is crazy expensive, but if you cover your eyes and just order, the food is good.  I had a cabrese salad with buffalo mozzerella that melted in my mouth and some lamb chops cooked on the rare side of medium rare (which is how I like them).  Lamb was good, but the side order of creamed spinach was heavy and unpalatable.  Not to quibble but at 35$ for that entree, you expect a little beeter on the veg.

Today, lunch and espresson at Cafe Trieste near the hotel.  Good espresso, mellow taste and well made shots.  Had a heavy cream of brocolli soup and a nice salad.  My mate Tim had two orders of the quiche and reported good things.

Best of all though, tonight we hiked through the San Jose State University campus and ate at the Naglee Garage.  they’re a small place with seasonal food and all cooked in good time.  Tonight I had a winter salad of squash and pear and pecans, a cornish game hen with a maple glaze and a side order of kale, squash and bacon.  Lovely all round and capped with a desert of choclate and vanilla bread puddings which got shared around our table.  Worth a visit if you’re downtown here and only a mile or so from the hotel.

John Engle writes about some of the work done by his colleagues in Haiti where last year 48 school hosted Open Space meetings to bring teachers and parents together.

In partnership with Concern Worldwide, our colleagues did open space meetings in 48 schools during the last two months. These meetings were organized so that parents could talk with teachers, which is very counterculture, about education of the students. It was an effort to integrate parents into the life of their children’s school and to help them in the critical role they play in their children’s formation. It was an opportunity to acknowledge and honor the parents as key stakeholders.

Virtually no schools in Haiti are free. Teachers are poorly paid and schools operate on shoestring budgets and are forced to close if fees are not paid. Often, parents failing to pay their children’s school fees, which is very common, is more about feeling alienated by teachers and principal than it is about economic hardship.

Of the 48 schools, 29 are in remote areas. 19 are in a very poor neighborhood in Port au Prince, historically known for violence. There were more than 3,000 participants in all during the last two months. More than 12,000 children go to these schools. Thus far, the outcomes of these meetings are extremely positive. Some of the stories like parents feeling heard and paying past due fees on the spot are quite powerful.

I can see doing the same thing in Prince George around the establishment of the Aboriginal choice school.

San Jose, CA

I’m in San Jose this week to help host a Core team retreat for the folks planning and executing the 2009 Food and Society Gathering, which will be here in April.  Here’s how I got here today.

• Left BOwen Island last night on the 6pm ferry in the teeth of a southeasterly gale that drove sleet into the skin on my face.  Rocky ride across the Queen Charlotte Channel, but uneventful otherwise.
• Grabbed a cab that arrived as I did and shared it part way with a lovely Finnish woman returning from a visit on Bowen.  It was snowing so hard in Vancouver that cars and buses were stuck on all the hills so we drove around looking for clear and free aterial roads to try to get me to my mother in law’s place in South Dunbar.  At one point it felt like we were just looking for the clean streets.  I remarked to my Persian accomplice that we were driving rather like Nasruddin, who seaches for his lost key under the lamp, because it’s light there.  The driver and I share a good laugh and some excellent conversation about Iran, Canada and Sufism.  The ride is an enjoyable 1.5 hour crawl.
• Retire for the night but up at 4:45 to find a cab.  Get to the airport and it’s a disaster.  Lots of lines for all kinds of things, but mine are pretty manageable.  Check in for 30 mins, US customs is 45 mins (with a secondary approval for my work visa) security is a mere 15 mins.  IN Vancouver if you are an Air Canada elite member they give you a fast lane for security…looks like the regular lane was close to 45 mins long.  Lots of folks rescheduled on flights that were cancelled last night.  They were all tired and cranky, and it was kind of funny to see a planeload of sourpusses heading to Maui.
• Flight gets delayed an hour once I’m through, so it’s into the lounge, where Air Canada has replaced the formerly excellent espresso machines with slow inefficient machines with too many choices that appear to download your coffee.  And then you get half a cup.  Went to Starbucks and bought something close to real espresso.
• Boarded at 8:20, took off at 11.  Combination of a flight attendant stuck in the snow, delays at the SFO end of things and other stuff which I missed because I fell asleep as soon as I hit my seat.
• Arrive in SFO at 1:00pm, figure I’ve burned enough carbon for one day so I opt for train to San Jose.  Two minute Air Train ride.  20 mins on the BART and an hour and 20 mins (including wait times) on the Caltrain.  Arrive in San Jose at 3:39, walk the mile to the hotel, in my room at 4:20.   Cost me $7.50 cents not including the Subway sandwich I wolfed down for sustenance.
• So I’m here at the Fairmont, a luxery hotel in the middle of a strange city.  My first time in Silicon Valley, so passing through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale and Mountainview was cool.  Passing by Redwood City was cool too, as my dharma teachings come from there.  One tip for the Fairmont…Internet access is $13.95 a day but if you sign up for their loyalty program when you check in, it’s free, and they give Aeroplan points and other useful perks.
• Waiting for mates to arrive, then I’ll see about dinner.  Any recommendations, leave them in the comments.

God willing and this storm lets up, I’ll be bound for San Jose at 8am tomorrow morning, arriving in San Francisco at noon.  No promises to be able to meet up with any Bay area friends, but if you get this, I’ll be staying at the Fairmont (no it’s NOT my usual digs…).  Call me there at (408) 998 1900 and we’ll see what’s possible.  Be nice just to say hi, and who knows, I might have time.  Leaving Friday morning.

John Dumbrille on our recent efforts here on Bowen Island:

That self governance will be better enabled using web tools is probable. After all, there are economic drivers (’more for less’) propelling it. But probable success factors are all about money and efficiency and intention, spirit and design. Thinking the litmus test is - does this BOWEGOV etc help people come home to themselves. How to measure this may be ‘happy’ indices, or, put another way - ’spirit of giving/sharing’ indices.

I am dedicated to the face to face.  Inasmuch as these tools bring us into generous relationship with each other, I say yay!  And they do that in spades.

We`re living through a mighty big snowfall here on Bowen Island, the likes of which haven`t been seen for at least 40 years.  As a result there is much handwringing about what other people should be doing about things like keeping the citizenry informed about the current road conditions and such. Most of our municipal government officials are on holiday and there have been no official releases of information since before the snow started falling on December 16.

As a fan of passion bounded by responsibility, I decided yesterday morning to set up a weblog which provides a space for the crowd to get to work.  The idea is that people will visit to check on road conditions and while they are there, leave a comment about how things are in their neck of the woods.  It’s a gift exchange and so far it’s working marvelously.  Yesterday, up for half a day, the blog had posts from 7 people describing conditions on most of the major roads on our Island.  Today with a massive snowfall (30cms) ongoing since early morning, we have had reports from 16 people covering all of the major routes on the Island. Even the bus company folks wrote to announce schedule cancellations.

A group of us were also up late last night tweaking the blog and working on a Google maps mashup creating a road status tool that users can colour when conditions deteriorate.  Stu Cole is leading the charge on that one.  Also, one islander, Boris Mann created a FreindFeed home for some of the Bowen Island eGovernment iniatiatives that John Dumbrille and Peter Rawsthorne have been musing about.  Richard Smith, James Glave and Brad Ovenell-Carter are looking into a wifi mesh and a webcam network across the island.   James Glave and the One Day Bowen crew are hosting the development pages for these projects at the Bowen 2020 wiki.  Most of the development chatter has been happening over twitter.

Everything we are doing is gift based, and we are hoping that the municipality will steal it (or better yet , post links to all of this on their infrequently updated web page.  What amazes me is what a small group of us can do, in responding to a need, in so short a time using freely available tools.  We’re lucky that this has happened while we have had a little time, being snowbound and all over the holidays, but when there is a need, it’s amazing to see what can come of it.

If you have anything to add to our efforts or tools we should know about, post them in the comments or visit the Bowen2020 wiki and join the effort.

When we are hard on ourselves, or hard on others, isn’t it interesting how it is those small moments that define character?  Most of the time we are fine, everything is alright, things are calm.  Even in war, soldiers spend most of their time in tedious inactivity punctuated by bursts of frightening violence.  Cities are not in a constant state of crime.  Governments work perfectly fine most of the time.  It is the small aberrations that we notice and these then colour everything.

When you become aware of how much fear you don’t have, how much violence ISN’T happening, how much struggle ISN’T going on, you can take on fear, violence and struggle in context without a story that your whole life is like that.  It’s like becoming aware of how much space there is inside an atom or between stars.

Presence is fine.  Presencing absence is awe inspiring.  We are mostly made of space.

The Friday “From the Feed” returns for 2009.  Great finds by other people:

• John Dumbrille blogs Clay Shirkey talking about egov and citizen engagement.
• George Nemeth retweeted Valdis Krebs‘ link to a list of great ambient recordings from 2008.
• The Tyee publishes a great series of 10 new ideas for the new year
• The Edge posts its annual question edition: “What will change everything?”
• Jordon Cooper and Stowe Boyd on the best windows desktop and web apps of the year.  I love posts like these.  If you have others, add them in the comments.

Another year is drawing to a close and I’m feeling very tired and very excited about what the year has been like. Taking a cue from Viv, here is my end of year post.

In general 2008 was a year of teaching and travel. For the first half of the year I was on the road for 120 days, visiting places throughout British Columbia as well as Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia and southwards to Washington, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, New York, Michigan and Georgia. Most of the teaching I did was with my mates in the Art of Hosting community of practice and we taught on Whidbey Island, on the Navajo Nation,

2008 began with a trip to Maui with my family in what has become a standard mid winter family retreat. We ind this to be a precious time to turn everything off, shut the office down and give two weeks of undivided attention to our kids. Following that, I returned to do some amazing community planning work with the Quinault Nation in Washington State, and a great Open Space with the Urban Aboriginal Strategy in Regina, where the windchill was -55.

One highlight of February was working with Jennifer Charlesworth and Thomas Ufer at the BC Federation of Child and Family Services annual meeting, That work has morphed into an offering Jennifer and I are doing at the Authentic Leadership in Action Institute this May in Victoria.

Later in February was a return trip to the Navajo Nation to run an Art of Hosting and support the Shiprock Health Promotion folks in some planning.

In March I worked a little with the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transition Team, a project which has since suffered a fatal blow by political forces that we underestimated. I also went to Georgia to begin a project with Native Public Media looking at the impact of Native American radio stations. After a year of raising funds, that project will kick start in the spring. March was also the hardest professional time for me. A facilitation project I did with Fisheries and Oceans went sideways in a stakeholder meeting, and lots of lessons ensued.

In April, the work of nine months with the Kellogg Foundation came to fruition as Tim Merry, Tuesday Ryan-Hart, Monica Nissen, Toke Moeller, Phil Cass and I hosted the 2008 Good Food Gathering for 550 active participants in the US Good Food Movement. This was a huge project and we had a good time in Phoenix, and we worked our butts off. Tim and Tuesday and I are returning to design and host the 2009 gathering with a great core team of 20 or so people.

May was a month of teaching with as Art of Hosting in Florida and an Open Space training with Tenneson Woolf in New York City. The New York trip was brilliant and the whole family came to take in museums, Broadway shows and street festivals. The New York Art of Hosting circle hosted our trip there and Nancy Fritsch-Egan, Angela Amel and Kelly McGowan set up enough work that we were able to make it a busman’s holiday.

June was another month of travel and teaching. Teresa Posakony, Tenneson, Tatiana Glad and I worked a lovely Art of Hosting in Cochrane Alberta, and then I joined my dear friends at Tim Merry’s place in Nova Scotia for a week of retreat with our Art of Hosting friends. Following that a number of us headed to the Shambhala Institute where Toke, Monica and I presented an Art of Hosting module. I turned 40 in June as well…

July and August were spent resting although we went to San Fransisco to attend Open Space on Open Space and in August our family went to the Okanagan for a retreat which included a weekend of traditional music performance in Princeton, BC.

Highlights for September included working with the Canadian Union of Public Employees and hosting an Art of Hosting on Bowen Island, which was the first time I have taught with my partner and spouse Caitlin Frost.

This whole autumn has been less travel, but more projects, and lots of conference calls and design work. In October I got out a little and helped set up a national network on urban Aboriginal economic development with a kick off meeting in Ottawa. That project continues to grow and gain momentum.

In November I finally got to teach with my friend Peggy Holman, and we delivered a lovely appreciative inquiry training for a dozen public servants in Victoria. Tuesday Ryan-Hart and I also traveled to Battle Creek Michigan to host the first meeting of the 2009 Good Food Movement Gathering core team.

December was the culmination of two big projects. The first week consisted of work with the school district in Prince George, running four community engagement gatherings to establish an Aboriginal choice school in Prince George. Following that I traveled to Boston and worked with the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education running a coaches retreat alongside a great design team with my co-host from PEJE Sharon Haselkorn. I was struck by the similarities in both of these projects.

As a facilitator in my practice I explored questions of collective leadership, connection and relationship and spent time working on a very good design tool which has been very helpful for many of the clients I have worked with this fall. I also began incorporating more graphic facilitation into my work and did some brilliant stuff with the best guy I know, Steven Wright.

Most importantly, I think I have made good on my promise to “never work alone.” In the past these end of year posts thanked my clients and I had relatively few partners. This year, it’s all about the folks I worked with. Here are the fine folks I got to work with this year, helping to serve our best to the clients and communities that asked for our help:

• Sono Hashisaki

• Gabriel Shirley

• Tracy Robinson

• Steven Wright

• Tenneson Woolf

• Teresa Posakony

• Christina Baldwin

• Ann Linnea

• Thomas Ufer

• Steve Ryman

• Tim Merry

• Toke Moeller

• Monica Nissen

• Phil Cass

• Tuesday Ryan-Hart

• Tatiana Glad

• Cheryl dePaoli

• Zrinka Glavas

• David Stevenson

• Jennifer Charlesworth

• Derek Evans

• Roq Garreau

• Bob Wing

• Chris Robertson

I think that’s everyone! Clearly making progress on the goal of working together.

So thank you friends, colleagues, readers, stumblers, clients and all. See you in 2009.

Van Jones - my inspiration for 2009
Photo by luxomedia

I’ve blogged about Van Jones before, but last night I listened to a podcast of a talk he gave at a Social Change Forum at Hollyhock on Cortes Island earlier this year.  With a powerful mix of humour and truth telling, he describes the confluence of social justice and environmental justice and calls for a new politics that transcends dualities, us vs, them thinking and win/lose outcomes.  He also make a powerful point about how our absolute reliance on deliverables, outcomes and achievables makes us liars, as we pretend to be able to tell our donors, funders and stakeholders how we will shape the future.  Van makes a powerful point that when we tell the story that we are successful, and hide that fact that half the time we don’t know WHAT we are doing, we prevent the ability to learn from one another.

The world is a complex, chaotic and changing place, and what is needed now is not winning against but winning over.  We need to invest in prototypes not pretend we know the solutions.  We need experiment, relationship and integrity.  That is the new politics of activism - it is the new politics period - and it is what I am committing myself to here at home on Bowen Island, and in my work in the world for 2009.

Happy New Year and see you out there.