Open Source Open Space: Michael Herman, a colleague of Chris Corrigan, has a comprehensive guide to everything you would ever want to know about Open Space, and how to create Open Space events. Please respect the site’s generous copyright. I especially like this ‘elevator speech’ from Harrison Owen: At the very least, Open Space is a fast, cheap, and simple way to better, more productive meetings. At a deeper level, it enables people to experience a very different quality of organization in which self-managed work groups are the norm, leadership a constantly shared phenomenon, diversity becomes a resource to be used instead of a problem to be overcome, and personal empowerment a shared experience. It is also fun. In a word, the conditions are set for fundamental organizational change, indeed that change may already have occurred. By the end, groups face an interesting choice. They can do it again, they can do it better, or they can go back to their prior mode of behavior.
Open Space is appropriate in situations where a major issue must be resolved, characterized by high levels of complexity, high levels of diversity (in terms of the people involved), the presence of potential or actual conflict, and with a decision time of yesterday. Open Space runs on two fundamentals: passion and responsibility. Passion engages the people in the room. Responsibility ensures things get done. A focusing theme or question provides the framework for the event. The art of the question lies in saying just enough to evoke attention, while leaving sufficient open space for the imagination to run wild.
Deadly C. Difficile Bacteria Blamed on Overuse of Antibiotics & Heartburn Medicines: The Washington Post’s Rob Stein researches the growing number of outbreaks of the virulent C. Difficile bacteria, which is resistant to current antibiotics, spreads easily through contact with people, clothing and surfaces, and is thriving in people taking Prilosec, Prevacid, Pepcid and Zantac heartburn medicines. Millions are now infected with the bacterium, which has killed an alarming 7% of those infected. Quote for the week is a song lyric from the irrepressible Sam Phillips (Gilmore Girls fans will know her as the writer of that series’ background music). Her song “I Need Love” is one of the most powerful artistic works I’ve ever heard — it gives me shivers every time I hear it. This is from a song (a waltz, you can ‘hear’ the 3/4 rhythm in the cadence of the lyrics) called Reflecting Light: Give up the ground under your feet
Hold on to nothing for good Turn and run at the mean times chasing you Stand alone and misunderstood And now that I’ve worn out, I’ve worn out the world Cartoon by Mike Luckovich in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution |
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--- My Best 200 Posts, 2003-22 by category, from newest to oldest ---
Collapse Watch:
Hope — On the Balance of Probabilities
The Caste War for the Dregs
Recuperation, Accommodation, Resilience
How Do We Teach the Critical Skills
Collapse Not Apocalypse
Effective Activism
'Making Sense of the World' Reading List
Notes From the Rising Dark
What is Exponential Decay
Collapse: Slowly Then Suddenly
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Making Sense of Who We Are
What Would Net-Zero Emissions Look Like?
Post Collapse with Michael Dowd (video)
Why Economic Collapse Will Precede Climate Collapse
Being Adaptable: A Reminder List
A Culture of Fear
What Will It Take?
A Future Without Us
Dean Walker Interview (video)
The Mushroom at the End of the World
What Would It Take To Live Sustainably?
The New Political Map (Poster)
Beyond Belief
Complexity and Collapse
Requiem for a Species
Civilization Disease
What a Desolated Earth Looks Like
If We Had a Better Story...
Giving Up on Environmentalism
The Hard Part is Finding People Who Care
Going Vegan
The Dark & Gathering Sameness of the World
The End of Philosophy
A Short History of Progress
The Boiling Frog
Our Culture / Ourselves:
A CoVid-19 Recap
What It Means to be Human
A Culture Built on Wrong Models
Understanding Conservatives
Our Unique Capacity for Hatred
Not Meant to Govern Each Other
The Humanist Trap
Credulous
Amazing What People Get Used To
My Reluctant Misanthropy
The Dawn of Everything
Species Shame
Why Misinformation Doesn't Work
The Lab-Leak Hypothesis
The Right to Die
CoVid-19: Go for Zero
Pollard's Laws
On Caste
The Process of Self-Organization
The Tragic Spread of Misinformation
A Better Way to Work
The Needs of the Moment
Ask Yourself This
What to Believe Now?
Rogue Primate
Conversation & Silence
The Language of Our Eyes
True Story
May I Ask a Question?
Cultural Acedia: When We Can No Longer Care
Useless Advice
Several Short Sentences About Learning
Why I Don't Want to Hear Your Story
A Harvest of Myths
The Qualities of a Great Story
The Trouble With Stories
A Model of Identity & Community
Not Ready to Do What's Needed
A Culture of Dependence
So What's Next
Ten Things to Do When You're Feeling Hopeless
No Use to the World Broken
Living in Another World
Does Language Restrict What We Can Think?
The Value of Conversation Manifesto Nobody Knows Anything
If I Only Had 37 Days
The Only Life We Know
A Long Way Down
No Noble Savages
Figments of Reality
Too Far Ahead
Learning From Nature
The Rogue Animal
How the World Really Works:
Making Sense of Scents
An Age of Wonder
The Truth About Ukraine
Navigating Complexity
The Supply Chain Problem
The Promise of Dialogue
Too Dumb to Take Care of Ourselves
Extinction Capitalism
Homeless
Republicans Slide Into Fascism
All the Things I Was Wrong About
Several Short Sentences About Sharks
How Change Happens
What's the Best Possible Outcome?
The Perpetual Growth Machine
We Make Zero
How Long We've Been Around (graphic)
If You Wanted to Sabotage the Elections
Collective Intelligence & Complexity
Ten Things I Wish I'd Learned Earlier
The Problem With Systems
Against Hope (Video)
The Admission of Necessary Ignorance
Several Short Sentences About Jellyfish
Loren Eiseley, in Verse
A Synopsis of 'Finding the Sweet Spot'
Learning from Indigenous Cultures
The Gift Economy
The Job of the Media
The Wal-Mart Dilemma
The Illusion of the Separate Self, and Free Will:
No Free Will, No Freedom
The Other Side of 'No Me'
This Body Takes Me For a Walk
The Only One Who Really Knew Me
No Free Will — Fightin' Words
The Paradox of the Self
A Radical Non-Duality FAQ
What We Think We Know
Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark
Healing From Ourselves
The Entanglement Hypothesis
Nothing Needs to Happen
Nothing to Say About This
What I Wanted to Believe
A Continuous Reassemblage of Meaning
No Choice But to Misbehave
What's Apparently Happening
A Different Kind of Animal
Happy Now?
This Creature
Did Early Humans Have Selves?
Nothing On Offer Here
Even Simpler and More Hopeless Than That
Glimpses
How Our Bodies Sense the World
Fragments
What Happens in Vagus
We Have No Choice
Never Comfortable in the Skin of Self
Letting Go of the Story of Me
All There Is, Is This
A Theory of No Mind
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Reminder (Short Story)
A Canadian Sorry (Satire)
Under No Illusions (Short Story)
The Ever-Stranger (Poem)
The Fortune Teller (Short Story)
Non-Duality Dude (Play)
Your Self: An Owner's Manual (Satire)
All the Things I Thought I Knew (Short Story)
On the Shoulders of Giants (Short Story)
Improv (Poem)
Calling the Cage Freedom (Short Story)
Rune (Poem)
Only This (Poem)
The Other Extinction (Short Story)
Invisible (Poem)
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Speaking Grosbeak (Short Story)
The Only Way There (Short Story)
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The Opposite of Presence (Satire)
How to Make Love Last (Poem)
The Horses' Bodies (Poem)
Enough (Lament)
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My Other Sites
I read your blog all the time, it is always quite fascinating. I signed into “yakalike”, a firefox extension for chatting live with other visitors to a website, but did not see any other yakkers on your site at the time, maybe in the future. Anyway, thanks for all the interesting reading.
“instead of making a to-do list push you. Work on an ambitious project you really enjoy, and sail as close to the wind as you can, and you’ll leave the right things undone.”I couldn’t agree more… but I can’t seem to follow my own beliefs. it’s danm scary to work on an ambitious project you love when it’s not clear if anyone else loves it or that it will amount to anything before your money runs out. How do you know if it is something “less important” to the rest of the world (which pays -and hands you- your bills) or eventually “more important”. I need an article about *that*! :) It’s a question of how long “doing nothing” is “nothing” before it becomes “something more important”, or how long it takes for “doing something more important” to become “doing nothing” because there are no results.
Theresa: I can’t find the “yakalike” extension for firefox anywhere — can you point me to it?Kevin: This is an extremely important question — thanks for posing it. I’m mulling it over and will do a post on it shortly.
Yakalike appears to have been “dug to death” by its fans at digg.com. It is not accepting new registrations right now but if you have it downloaded you can use the temporary user function. I tried to find the location from which I downloaded it but it seems to be down or swamped with requests. There is a new program out today called quickchat, I haven’t tried it yet, it seems to be a copy of the yakalike program and the owner is hoping to work with yakalike on creating the next version. So here is the address of quickchat as copied from my address bar: http://quickchat.dnsalias.com:1245/index.phpThis is a truly brilliant idea that I hope will allow people to exchange thoughts and observations, in real time, about they are reading.