A graph showing cetacean sightings in Átl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound from 2001-2018 Here in Átl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound, the return of cetaceans over the past 20 years has been truly incredible. Having been hunted to extirpation from this part of the world in the early 1900s, a single Humpback Whale made a stunning return to our inlet in 2001. Along with the Humpbacks came hope of a renewed and recovered inlet, washed free of the massive pollution problems caused by a century of logging, wood processing and mining. The explosion happened in earnest in 2010 when Pacific Whitesided Dolphins returned to Howe Sound by …
A little piece I’ve just written about Harrison Owen’s work on High Performance Systems for an Art of Participatory Leadership workbook on the connections between Open Space Technology facilitation and leadership for self-organization. From the moment Open Space was formalized as a meeting method in 1985, its creator, Harrison Owen, saw massive potential for the process to inform organizational design and leadership. Watching groups of 100 or more people self-organize a conference over multiple days was simply a microcosm of what could go on in organizational life. It offered a radical view that perhaps there was a different way to …
A sign at the government wharf in Tofino, BC reserving parking for Elders from the Indigenous communities of Clayquot Sound. Yesterday I was on a call with one of our Complexity Inside & Out participants who was getting started with Participatory Narrative Inquiry and NarraFirma. Like I do with everyone, I pointed him to Cynthia Kurtz’s websites on these topics and then walked him through an installation of the NarraFirma WordPress plugin. My friend wanted to use PNI to gather stories related to his family. He comes from a big family who have regular reunions at which more than 100 …
I was reflecting today with a friend on the nature of the world right now. We were discussing some of the story collections I have from the early part of the pandemic when I was running Participatory Narrative Inquiry projects with organizations seeking to understand the effects of the pandemic on their services. It’s hard to remember that time, and it’s very hard to remember the “before-times,” as people call them. But reading these stories reminded me of what we all did together all of a sudden. It was meant to be a short-term intervention in our lives. It wasn’t. …
Via Scott Thomas (@ScottGL1 on twitter) comes a very interesting note on a US weather service forecast from yesterday: I live on a small island located in a steep-walled inlet that opens onto an inland sea on the Pacific Coast of North America. Our island is medium-sized, about 12 km long and 8 km wide. Part of it sticks out into the Strait of Georgia, which is part of the larger Salish Sea that exists between Vancouver Island and the mainland. Part of our island sticks into Atl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound, an inlet that leads from the Strait 45kms inland to the …