Hmmm. I was once half-jokingly called “optimistic to the point of uselessness” which is a badge I wear with some pride as my fool’s marker. Optimism has been on my mind today. I’ve just been turning over these words: optimism, hope, faith, responsibility, trust. No reason, no particular cause to examine these ideas, just a little synchronicity in blog land that got me musing a little. Partly it comes from a bunch of work I am doing in which people in various walks of life are dicovering their emerging futures, and it’s partly about some of the blogs I am …
Under the poles I have put some photos up from the Open Space I did in the Fort Rupert big house last weekend. Enjoy!
Reading Adam Kahane some more and thinking about listening: If talking openly means being willing to expose others to what is inside of us, then listening openly means being willing to expose ourselves to something new from others.” — Adam Kahane, Solving Tough Problems p.73 It is a truism to say this, but I’ve been pondering the deep implications of this statement and what it means for a practice of listening and opening that becomes a leadership skill. It is almost impossible to describe what it is like to listen from the heart. We easily talk about “speaking from the …
Gabriela Ender, the creator of OpenSpaceOnline has a new eBook available from her site talking about how OSO works and its various applications. You can download the eBook for free here. Among the international Open Space practitioner community, there is general consensus that Gabriela’s software is the closest thing in cyber space to participating in a face to face Open Space Technology meeting.
Fort Rupert First Nation, BC I’ve just read “Blindness” by Jose Saramago. It’s a harrowing story of a human dystopia that is brought on by a nearly complete plague of blindness that sweeps through the entire population. It is like a modern day Kafka tale that, as the blurbs say, sums up the deepest horrors of the twentieth century. In the book, society quickly breaks down as everyone becomes blind and human morality and ethics follow suit. More frightening though is the resignation of the bands of people who wander around the city trying to find food, unsure of where …