WikiVanning Portland -> Oakland

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October 15, 2005 at 1:07 am | In technology, co-ops, meaning in life, open space, travel, friends |

I arrived in Portland last night for WikiVanning to WikiSym in San Diego starting on Sunday. I’m now in Oakland after a very full day. Too tired to try to synthesize other than to say that the connections are amazing on so many levels. Here are the notes.

Edited to paste in an email I just sent to the OSList (open space technology practitioners):

I’ve never had a day quite like yesterday.

I live in Chicago, flew to Portland, OR Thursday night and yesterday, spent from about 8am until 11pm in open space with 3 other people without the normal “breaks” for meals and such. Clearly a lot of times meal times at a conference are continuations of the sessions and topics from the conversation. This felt different. Let me back up. We’re on our way to WikiSym, a conference (non-open space) in San Diego that starts Sunday. We wanted more face to face time in open space so we decided to do this drive.

So leaving Portland, we got out some mailing labels and put our topics on the dashboard of the van! We drove to Eugene, about 2 hours away, and stopped for brunch at the Walnut Street Cooperative, a house where 9 people live. The brunch was hosted by two people and several others also joined in (those here are the right people!) and there were some really amazing conversatons and beginning friendships and collaborations there. After brunch we wanted a photo of all present so someone went to get another housemate to take it. When he found out who the travelers were and what we were doing, he asked if we had 5 minutes to hear about his stuff. We agreed and he blew us away for another 20 minutes and Peggy Holman’s name came up as one of his collaborators. Connections!

Then back in the van, just stops for bathroom and fuel (we had provisions with us in the van so didn’t need to stop again to eat) and we worked through topic after topic from the dashboard. I’ll have to get a photo of the dash uploaded, but in the meantime, here are our notes: http://wiki.wikisym.org/space/WikiVanning

Humanize the Earth!

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