Humanize the Earth!

In a follow-up to my post about parking space performance art, west north writes:

Last week, The Space/Movement Project occupied a metered parking space as part of the Park Yourself performance art event, which temporarily liberated parking spaces all around town for human leisure activities. Once rid of the hulking, momentarily abandoned steel boxes (renting the space at absurdly cheap prices), parking spaces can become colorful, joyful extensions of too-crowded sidewalks—here, just as wide as the walk itself.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Chicago Conservation Corps leadership training orientation and met some cool people. Tonight I had dinner with Julie and some of her friends connected with Beyond Today in the North Center neighborhood. Beyond Today is a really cool local environmental group. Here are some of my take-aways from our dinner:

• There are people that form corporations so that people can invest their retirement money in real estate (can’t do it directly). Why don’t we do that in a neighborhood and form community-funded co-ops? We can! (hopefully)
• A community calendar is hard to maintain by hand. WikiMaas does a great job of it using a wiki. Cool.
• Hey, and why doesn’t Chicago have a city-wiki. Actually, it turns out that it does: WikiChicago.  Unfortunately, it’s not OpenEdit, which means you have to not only sign up for an account before editing or leaving a comment, but you have to verify an email address, which is really, really annoying and will no doubt reduce participation.
• When two people own a house and also rent to others, not only can they change their percentage ownership from 50/50 to 51/49 or 60/40 or whatever over time if one pays less rent than the other (by prior agreement, of course), but a renter can go perhaps become a partner this way as well.  From 50/50/0 to 49/49/2 over time?  And then 48/48/4?  And eventually 33/33/33?  Or more partners?  Maybe it doesn’t even need to be a co-op?  Can just be a partnership?  Lots of questions.  Cool stuff.
• Beyond Today is a really cool neighborhood organization.  They host green dinners, play soccer with neighbors in the park, organize protests against west nile spraying, have cool website, and much more.  And they can use some basic help that with stuff that I know about.  The wiki calendering above is one.  A wordpress blog is another.  I learned a lot from them.  I love the idea of them hosting related blogs by neighbors, and then having an editor or three distill ideas from those blogs down to very short blurbs for their mainpage, linked back to the source, of course.  Excellent idea.
• I want to show the Upward Spiral movie some more.

This WikiSym story that Gerard wrote about started with last year’s WikiVan story.  Remember that one?  Two solid days of rolling open space going to WikiSym last October and then two more days on the way back?  The conference itself was a bit of a letdown, to be sure.  Instead of trying to convince the organizers that adding an open space componant was a good idea (truthfully, we did try that), we decided to have RecentChangesCamp, a 2.5 day, by-the-book open space in February, hoping the WikiSym organizers would come and then be able to make a more informed decision.  That didn’t happen, but they heard enough good reports, I suppose, that they decided to try it anyway.

So the conference schedule grid simply had a column for each day that said “open space” in each time-slot.  As Gerard tells us below, we even had to carve out a time for an opening with everyone, which we did.  After Gerard opened, topics went onto the wall like mad.  Fantastic stuff!  The one complaint I heard was about the lack of available timeslots on day 2 (we only put day 1 schedule grid on the wall given all of the uncertainty Gerard describes).  Of course when I looked back on the wall later, indeed there were topics posted for day 2, no grid needed!

That first day’s energy was really fantastic, as usual.  Lots of topics being discussed all over the place.  Some of the paper presentations also interested me, but I never managed to get over to them, given all that was happening in open space.  At the end of the day, however, my assessment was that the energy wasn’t so much about “doing” anything as it was about theorizing and talking about interesting topics.  So given the lack of a plenary room for day 3 and this seeming lack of movement toward action that needed further planning, I recommended to stop after day 2 and Gerard agreed.  We did a closing instead of an evening news, with very good attendance, as there was no evening keynote or anything else distracting.

The two of us then met with the same group from the night before to talk it over and one of them was very strong in his opinion that we must not stop after day 2.  He felt that the 3rd day was really necessary for some of the magic of open space to happen.  Our conclusion was to defer the decision once more, with the provision of a plenary room one of the requirements.

For morning news (new opening) of day 2, I was on my own, as Gerard had a family event.  We didn’t have a dedicated time so I carved out some time from the coffee break after the morning keynote.  I invited people to bring their coffees into the open space room.  We had very low attendance, and very few topics posted (5, maybe?).  I had to exercise my facilitation by breathing technique for that time!

Interestingly, even with few topcis, there was action in the open space room and the hallways all day long.  People played (and taught) Go, others had all kinds of butterfly conversations and sessions not
posted, others used their two feet to enjoy the town.  At the end of the day, a plenary room for the following day was still not available, and given the apparent lack of energy, we decided to close there at the end of day 2.  Again, we had no dedicated time, but had to carve out from a coffee break, this time with a very popular keynote speech immediately following, where some people wanted to get good seats!  Again, very low attendence, as was fitting for the day.  Still, people shared very nice experiences.  We gave them the news about no formal open space on day 3, but assured them that they wouild create the conversations and future work that needed to be done without us just as well as with us, and bid the formal process goodbye.

I may have more to tell on this, but I’ll set it aside for now.
Gerard?  More from you?

Before I left work today I finished emptying my email inbox for the first time since I started work there over 5 years ago.  Tonight I did the same thing for my gmail account.  I’ve been reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done this week and it’s made quite an impression on me.  The gist of it is that our “stuff” when not organized, keeps our brain active.

For example, when reference material is mixed with personal coorespondence is mixed with impending crises is mixed with long articles I intend to read someday, I have to review all of those things all the time to make sure I’m catching the crises, and I’m never quite sure.  So my brain has to put energy into that worry and remembering instead of into doing meaningful work and being creative.

So both my email systems now have categories for “actions” that I can take, as well as stuff I want “to read” when I have the time, reminders about things “waiting for others”, etc.  This way I can review those different categories as often as I need to, but can stay on top of the actions I want to be taking on my various projects.  I still have lots more “stuff” I need to get into these various electronic systems or paper-based systems I’m also toying with, but it’s already a vast improvement.  Just having fewer messages in the inbox as I was clearing out gave me the emotional space to respond to some personal emails that have been waiting for a long time.  More to come, and easier to handle now that they’re in the “emails to send” folder.

Yay!

Each of these could be it’s own post, but I’m just going to lump them all together, including the ones I’m not going to write about now. link

• LocalNames and WordPress plugin

It’s still crashing the blog, so no news yet. Hopefully soon.

• Future of Wiki Conferences

WikiSym looks like it’ll be in Montreal next fall. I’ve been invited to be part of the planning committee. Recent Changes Camp is also in Montreal in May. There are rumors it’ll move to coincide with WikiSym, but we’ll seen. WikiMania bids are in. Perhaps Europe. Perhaps Asia. Perhaps Alexandria, Egypt.

• Opening Space at a traditional conference

I’m still punting on this one. I’ll link to Gerard’s initial post about this when I finally reply in full.

• Inviting others to build groups in the Humanist Movement

Punting on this one for now as well.

• Air travel and terrorism

If we (the West) were really in a war with “terrorists” we would’ve already lost. Air travel is so disrupted as to make it hardly worth going. On the other hand, getting us used to putting up with crazy delays, searches and inconviences could be very useful for governments that like their populations docile. Coincidence?

• BeyondYes, large-scale decision-making

Brandon CS Sanders and have started a new business called BeyondYes. We’re working on corporate structures and stuff now, but our principles line up, and we’re looking for people interested in hiring us now. “Hire us for what?”, you ask. Well, to help your group make decisions, of course.Let’s say you’re the WikiMedia foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia. You need to make decisions about what’s most important for the next release of the software. Maybe the way you’ve been doing it works pretty well. The community makes comments here and there, perhaps even well-organized, and the developers make recommendations based on those comments and their own inclinations and the lead developer makes the decision. Sounds pretty good. And what if that process is leaving people feeling as if they’re not part of the process? That’s where we come in. Using our process, we can help your community (including developers) make decisions that pretty much everyone agrees on.

Or let’s say you’re ICANN, the organization responsible for domains (one level above the companies actually selling domains to you, they decide if .com, .org, etc are enough or if applications for more, like .berlin, make sense). How do you satisfy all of your public and private consituencies around the world to make a decision? Right now your board takes all kinds of input and then votes on a plan. With out process, all of those consituencies can be directly involved in shaping the plan, both getting their own concerns heard and addressed, and helping to make sure the same is true for all consituencies.

Have another idea for a large-group decision that could use some help? Let me know and we can talk about what your goals are and see if there’s something we could help wtih.We are currently looking for our very first paying customer.

(thanks, Michael)

From Michael Maranda Chicago Community Benefits Campaign – Sept.’06

Context:    The City of Chicago is set to release an RFP for
city-wide wireless Internet.  Community groups are mobilizing to
make sure that the Digital Inclusion provisions of the RFP are
more than lip-service, and that appropriate community partnerships
are formed for the long term.    Community Technology is the path
to Economic Opportunity and Civic Empowerment.   Our time is now.
Please spread the word on the following appeal.  We can use
in-kind donations as well as cash.  We’d also welcome anyone ready
to roll-up their sleeves to build this effort.    We want to have
meetings in every community of Chicago.

From Mark Dilley comes this short video from zefrank. Zefrank is a darn funny guy. Today’s video isn’t funny. Don’t let the opening silliness throw you. Just keep watching.

SILO ON DISARMAMENT

Violence has so utterly lost the war that it will no longer be possible to violently impose unjust peace. Neither will it be possible for the truth to be violently twisted by manipulating the word “peace.” The wear of violence is about to cause the retreat of the invading troops, the return of the occupied territories and the weapons of mass destruction to be dismantled.

Silo is the founder of the Humanist Movement, and the link is to the brand-new website http://silo.ws, which shows 30 second TV spots calling for worldwide disarmament.  Check it out!

I just ran across Sarah Pullman and her site Yoga for Geeks | Unplugging, Unhunching, Expanding. I haven’t read much of either site yet, but she’s a geek for social change, and I dig that, so check her out!