Sunday Open Thread – May 20, 2007

Posted on May 20, 2007 by Dave Pollard
robert weber cartoon
What I’m thinking about, and planning on writing (and podcasting) about soon:Vignettes:

My writing is a reflection of what I’m doing and what I’m becoming, and as a result much of the future subject matter of this blog will be the results of my Let-Self-Change activities. Two of the skills I want to learn are paying attention and better story-telling. The best way to deepen one’s skills is through practice. My practice, paying attention and telling stories, often takes the form of vignettes, very short stories where I recount something quite simple but extraordinary that I’ve noticed by paying attention, focusing on and memorizing the details, and then deepening those memories by retelling these internalized accounts. Like good short films or poems, these vignette stories need to have a point: there has to be something important (usually not obvious, often ambiguous) about them. My holiday Monday post tomorrow will be my latest vignette.Improv: Another skill I want to learn is improvisation, the ability to adapt, to converse, to do things spontaneously and effectively without planning. That has a lot to do with listening and paying attention, and even more to do with practice. I’m not sure how I’m going to do this yet (any ideas?) but when I do, I’ll be documenting it.

Good Working Models of Social Networking: We are capable of replicating success by analogy if we have a good story to work from. But when it comes to good working models of wikis and blogs in organizations, I’ve found very few good success stories, and some of the ones I’ve investigated are suspect. Is social networking unable to make its case in big companies, or are the managers of big companies just not listening?

Blog-Hosted Conversations: I’ve now got the tools, thanks to readers’ advice, especially Lavonne and Johnnie Moore: Pamela for recording the Skype conversation, Audacity for editing, and the Internet Archive for hosting the big .mp3 files. Plan is for 30-minute conversations, once a week, on the subject of identifying and acquiring the essential skills and relationships we need to be models of a better way to live, and what those models might look like.

What are the skills you’ve been trying to develop, the changes you’ve been trying to bring about in yourself, the important conversations you’ve had recently?

New Yorker cartoon by Robert Weber. You can buy prints ofhis work here.
This entry was posted in Our Culture / Ourselves. Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to Sunday Open Thread – May 20, 2007

  1. lugon says:
    May 21, 2007 at 06:26

    Dave, google for “site:ming.tv improv” to find out about improvisating in theater.Apparently one specific skill is “don’t say no” to what the theater partner says or does, but rather accept it and move from there (explain it, react, look at consequences, etc). This would be the same as looking for “movement” in a “provocation” (in EdwarddeBono-speech). Ming’s link is http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-001327.htm

  2. Johnnie Moore says:
    May 21, 2007 at 07:32

    Hi DaveThanks for the link.Re Improv: If you can get to Calgary, I can’t think of a better even to go to than this one – would be fun to see you there!http://www.appliedimprov.net/blog/static/2007/01/november_2007_b.php

  3. Zane says:
    May 21, 2007 at 10:35

    …and again on the topic of improv…I have found two practices that are great for putting you in the moment and in relationship. One theatre practice is called Action Theatre and has been developed over a number of years by Ruth Zaporah, who is also a buddhist practitioner and an amazing woman. The beauty of her methods is to develop clear frames within which improvisation can occur. The other practice is called Contact Improvisation, a form of dance improv with one or more partners. This practice has taught me more about life, relationship, and trust than anything else and there are “contact jams” that happen regularly all over the world (a big one in Moab right now).I agree that improvisation is a critical skill for these times and I look forward to hearing more of your explorations…z

  4. Dave Pollard says:
    May 21, 2007 at 12:44

    Wow, great leads, guys, thanks. I’m really tempted to go to Banff in November, especially if I can Meetup with some people I’m overdue meeting with at the same time. Lugon: Interesting — I’ve corresponded with both Flemming and Tom in past, but had no idea either had any connection to Improv. Love the idea of “Yes, and…” conversations.

  5. Siona says:
    May 22, 2007 at 00:45

    Oh, wonderful! I was going to post a note about the “saying yes” aspect of improv, but lugon mentioned it already. Yes!I’d also recommend Impro. It’s an incredible little work.

  6. Martin-Eric says:
    May 22, 2007 at 10:00

    Try the debating club at your nearest university. Debating requires a surprising amount of adaptability and spontaneity. It also mimics everyday life quite well: we tend to prepare ourselves well and then the unexpected shatters our plans. Debating works that way. You carefully construct your team’s position on the issue being debated and then, someone in the opposing team will bring a totally unexpected perspective that forces you to rethink your whole strategy on the spot and without the possibility to consult your team members.

  7. dave davison says:
    May 22, 2007 at 16:27

    Dave: the Topic of Bloghosted Conversations has been my mantra since you first posted on the subject – and,since you asked, I have been actively exploring the integration of blog-hosted conversations with Social Networking tools,so this comment covers two of your highlighted items.I have always felt your “guidance” in this exploration, and would really enjoy sharing with you what we have learned.We have connected with a number of aggregators of audio and video recordings and found a way to “atomize” these aggregations so that we can accomplish two goals:1. provide quick and easy access to the key “sound bites” of larger recordings through making them searchable by the use of popular tags, full text transcriptions,ppt slide titles and and GUI visuals.2.jump-start conversations between authors and readers of popular business books to enable peer production of new case studies based on the book’s memes, orchestrate the conversations through visualizing their flow,filter the good stuff and add it to the archive.Ours first trial of ConversationBase is an application of Don Tapscott’s Wikinomics – and we should have a prototype demo available online soon. we would really love to have your critique when we can invite you to our test workspace.As you say, it isn’t easy to find case studies of success in big corps of social networking tools, but we hope to address this gap and begin to fill it.Wikinomics distills readily into 4 main principles and serves as a convenient “platform” for teaching and monitoring these principles.You have the best eyeballs and access memory for criticizing our prototype, poking holes in it and perhaps finding ways in which it may be useful in your quest to Save the World.

Comments are closed.