A smart observation on the deep architecture of good design: One conclusion so far is that the possibility space for change opens up when we connect different people who can begin resonating together around shared stories, opportunities, and dreams. It’s a process of liberating people from the confines of clusters of sameness and ideological colonialism so they can move toward more diverse connections and pragmatic alignments. As it turns out, the fusion of difference and resonance is a powerful approach because in that space, people move away from trying to change each other, which opens the space for the possibilities …
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So we had our little learning village today with the kids at Aine’s learning centre which my partner, daughter and I designed. We explored these questions of what kind of inner climate is needed to engage around questions of climate change and the kids followed the energy. They got really interested in what kinds of things they could say to the global leadership meeting in Copenhagen. They wanted to convey a sense that, yes this is a serious issue, but how you choose to meet together matters. They were dismayed and discouraged by the prospect of a lot of angry …
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From How We Drive, the Blog of Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic: I was intrigued by this line from a new paper by John N. Ivan, Norman W. Garrick, and Gilbert Hanson titled “Designing Roads That Guide Drivers to Choose Safer Speeds”: The aesthetics or “beauty” of a road environment has also been investigated in relation to traffic safety. Drottenborg (1999) studied the impact of speed on streets that appear as “beautiful” due to the blossoming of cherry trees along the streets in Lund during springtime, and similar streets that lack such beautification. She found that the free-flow mean speed decreased by …
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Today John Inman had a great post on using the world cafe for a five hour strategic planning session with a non-profit. His process works as follows: First I asked that the whole system be in the retreat. We had board members, a customer, grant writer, community member, and contractors. 1. Introduction in group setting 2. Introduce the process 3. Pose the question 4. Three cafe tables with three people each, start the cafe 5. Three rounds of conversation each 20 minutes 6. Returned people to original table and asked them to capture the main themes at each table. 20 …
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Why conversation for reconciliation is important: this story about neighbourhood dialogue in a gentrifying Portland, Oregon neighbourhood contains this sheer nugget of wisdom: “The one who strikes the blow doesn’t know the force of the blow,” Mowry says. “Only the one who has received the blow knows its force.” That quote serves to me to point out why reconciliation efforts led by the striker don’t really heal. I think a little about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission here in Canada which is supposed to look at the residential school experience in a way that hears the story. But it is …