What’s in the Parking Lot? #1

Back when I began this blog I called it “Parking Lot” which is a term in the facilitation world used for the list of things that we need to talk about at some point but just can’t get to right now. Now that I’m returning to the blog world I thought I would make a regular list of the things that have been accumulating in my own parking lot. So each time that list reaches ten, I’ll share them here.

Here’s the first bunch.

1. My buddy Tenneson Woolf shares a stab at Slice of LIfe writing, which is intriguing.
2. A surprisingly gripping scene from Mad Max 3 called The Tell of Captain Walker, in which an oral history in a post-apocalyptic world is recited. (h/t to What’s The Pont who shared it as an example of oral history dynamics.)
3. Patricia Shaw shares a short and very clear talk on the characteristics of a good leader from a dialogic perspective. Again, surprisingly gripping and helpfully simple.
4. Matt Webb with a lovely meditation on online identity.
5. My foodie neighbours Rob and Laurel went to India about ten years ago to spend six months documenting their learning about Indian food and they kept a great travel blog which has many many excellent recipes. Long before there were great food blogs, there was this great blog about food.
6. Interesting paper published in Nature which studies how virtual engagement affects brainstorming and idea generation. There is much that is good about moving online but it does seem to come at a cost. And now that cost is being researched. (h/t the MeetingsNet blog).
7. In a short twitter thread, Professor Emily Bell traces some of the jurisprudence behind the Supreme Court of the United States draft decision overturning abortion rights, and finds it rooted in the opinions of Matthew Hale, a 17th century English jurist who executed women for witchcraft and whose decision have been used to justify marital rape. Just in case you thought the pending decision wasn’t medieval enough on its own.
8. Thomas Piketty reimagines socialism as a participatory and intersectional recalibration of power: Long LIve Participatory Socialism! (h/t Allison Creekside on twitter).
9. Manali Shah shares a short but moving piece on the activation of our sense as we return to in-person meetings.
10. My friend Sonja Blignaut discusses thresholds in writing and in a lovely podcast interview. It’s lovely to hear her voice flowing and expanding into the ideas and practice that have long been adjacent to the organizational complexity work that she has been doing for so long. Poetry, reflection and life, all coming together.