Humanize the Earth!

Looking back: 2007 Travel

FYI - I live in Chicago

• February: Portland, OR for http://RecentChangesCamp.org
• February: Gulu, Uganda for Localizing Global Change conference
• March: Branson, MO vacation with my folks
• March: Northamton, MA for the Smiffenpoofs Spring Jam
• April: Canton, OH for the LoveTrain conference
• May: Punta de Vacas, Argentina pilgrimage for 3 days of spiritual inspiration
• May: Richmond, VA for my cousin’s wedding
• June: Red Bluff, CA for the ceremonial opening of Red Bluff Park
• July: Portland, OR for a week of work with AboutUs.org
• August: Portland, OR for a vacation with my love
• October: Portland, OR for a week of work with my newly full-time job with AboutUs
• October: Montreal, Quebec for WikiSym
• November: Portland, OR for a week of work with AboutUs
• December: Franklin and Rochester Hills, MI to see family for holidays

Wow, what a year!

Sure this was a wiki because then Andreas could have just fixed my mistake instead of having to leave a comment about WikiSym.  How could I forget that?!

WikiSym 2007, day 1

I’m in Montreal, near the end of day 1 of WikiSym, waiting for the Wiki Film Festival

including a trailer for a documentary on Wikipedia, “Truth in Numbers“. Other screenings include initial footage from “The Wiki Way,” “OpenFrame” (a documentary on RecentChanges camp in 2006 that everyone should watch), and a relevant selection from my absolute favorite group of videographers … CommonCraft’s “Wikis in Plain English.”

During my wait (everyone else is off napping or quick early dinnering or something or other), I checked out Twitter, which I’d signed up for long ago, but never used because I didn’t understand it and it seemed annoying. I updated my status, saying that I was waiting for the film festival, and then was shortly “followed” by Kevin Makice who’s not here, but wants to know what’s happening. So I posted a new status about writing a blog post, this blog post. Feels strangely and confusingly recursive to write about this process.

Anyway, today. Actually, let’s start with yesterday. It was a really early morning in Portland, OR for an 8:10am flight to Chicago. The flight was delayed and we missed our connection. Which meant a 5 hour layover in Chicago, where I live. But the CTA is eliminating slow zones this weekend so isn’t running trains all the way downtown, and it seemed like more hassle than it was worth to leave, so Ward and I took a nap on the lawn outside the hotel and had a pretty good dinner to kill the time. We got to Montreal pretty late, especially given my role today as open space facilitator, which required setting up and such.

So I got up really early to find room 510d and get set up. And the hotel conference rooms all had names, not numbers. That’s strange, I thought. The hotel calendar doesn’t list us either. Why am I paying over $200/night to stay here again? Anyway, the person at the front desk suggested another place it might be, and I looked it up online, and sure enough, she was right. So off I went down the street, found the place, and it’s huge, seemingly stadium size. After a really long walk inside the place, I found our breakfast setup (I wanted to have the open space set up before having breakfast), but no one around and our room locked. Bummer. Within a minute or so the room was opened and I went to work arranging chairs and making posters and such. All of my internal work and deep breathing seemed to go out the window as I started succumbing to the stress of the whole thing. It wasn’t too bad internally, but I did wonder if this was worth doing (open space inside a traditional conference, where things just aren’t set up well for doing open space).

In any event, “Whenever it starts is the right time” and “Whoever comes is the right people”, but the 8am start time coming and going wasn’t a problem for me. Once we seemed to have a good number, we began, and people filtered in throughout the opening itself, and then the morning. As usual, all I had to do was sit down and shut up for people to quickly move to the center to post topics. The whole thing then self-organized, as it always does, as I went to get myself checked in for the conference itself. When I got back, conversations were well underway. Some of them even go documented throughout the day. Very cool!

One of the most interested conversations of the day that I was involved in was over lunch, with Alain Desilets and Mark Bernstein about locations for next year’s WikiSym, co-location, and some issues and opportunities around a possible co-location with WikiMania. This is purely hypothetical, so please no jumping to conclusions.  Lots of interesting ideas about the nature of academia and publishing, and expense of certain conferences versus what it can do for one’s career to publish there.

Not sure what else there is to say at this point, as it’s much too long already, and I’m tired, and the film festival is supposed to start in 10 minutes, so I’ll leave it there, and if you have questions, feel free to leave a comment or a trackback and I’ll see what I can do.

She’s Geeky: An Women’s Tech (un)conference

In February this year, I had the pleasure of working with Kaliya, co-facilitating Recent Changes Camp Portland. She now announces She’s Geeky: An Women’s Tech (un)conference:

I am producing another unconference this fall. It is for women working in technology called She’s Geeky. It is October 22-23 in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum.
…
We have three simple goals with the event.

• Exchange skills and learning from women from diverse fields of technology.
• Discuss topics about women and technology.
• Connect the diverse range of women in technology, computing, entrepreneurship, funding, hardware, open source, nonprofit and any other technical geeky fields.

AboutUs.org

A few days ago, I wrote: finally, a use for spam! where I talked about wanting to work and live in a do-ocracy. Today I started reading Naked Conversations, about business blogging, and it occured to me that I haven’t written about my work at AboutUs.  AboutUs is a small company based in Portland, OR, that’s attempting to do it’s work as a do-ocracy, and teach the world that the world wide web is a two-way medium, and even more than that, is a place for collaboration.

Until today, when I had an idea about a way for AboutUs to get better, I’d make a wiki page about it, or talk about it in the company IRC channel, or I’d attempt to make the change myself.  It occurs to me that company employees (I’m a part-time contractor) could be communicating with each other and the public by blog as well.

AboutUs already does a fantastic job and communicating openly with it’s users, fans and critics (see ConcernsPage, for example), and yet the potential is there for much more.

Some things I’d like to see AboutUs doing:

• Publish a feed of some sort about technical changes to the site.  I’m pretty sure page names are no case-insensitive as of last week, but haven’t seen an official (or unofficial) announcement.  Maybe this could be a blog or wikipage with an RSS feed?
• For projects (see OurWork for a list of projects) that can stand to move slower, even just a little bit slower, put less staff resources into them on a weekly basis.  This slower pace, along with a clear list of tasks that staff thinks need to be accomplished on the project, allows visitors to the site to get involved and help.
• Encourage employees to blog, even just once a week or less, about what’s currently exciting them at work, or anything they like.
• I’ll write more when I think of more.

I really love the work that we’re doing and am excited to be working in this kind of an open organization, with such a great culture, and I am excited to see that culture evolve and get even better.

finally, a use for spam!

This website is set up so that anytime someone comments for the first time, I get an email asking me to approve posting it. The bulk of these comments are spam, that I mark as such, and you never see them. Annoying, to say the least. And yet today, this spam was actually useful! The spam comment was on this post: response to Tree’s Always in Open Space from October of 2005. Without using the word, in that post, I was talking about do-ocracy.

In my housing co-op, I want those most interested in gardening to do the gardening, and not worry about consulting with those that don’t care so much. Same with creating an organizing scheme for the basement. Hopefully everyone will participate in keeping things organized, but not everyone needs to create the scheme.

This is one of the reasons I feel I need to let go of my day job of 6 years. It’s not a do-ocracy. About two months before I wrote that post, I made my five year plan to leave the job. In June of 2006, I wrote about my five year plan again, though it had changed to a 3-4 year plan (with year 1 nearly finished). Here we are just a little over a year later, so just about to finish year 2, and my current thinking is that I’ll be done before the end of 2007. Anyway, interesting to look back and be reminded. Thanks spammer!

Conference Location Decided!

I’m very excited to have the Conference right here in my neighborhood. The full (updated) invitation:

July conference in Chicago on neighborhood leadership - join us!

Gulu, Uganda open space conference notes

I haven’t quite decided how to organize my notes from the conference in Gulu. I’m thinking maybe general notes in this post with links to the notes about each day, backdated for their respective date. We’ll see how it goes. :-)

• 120+ people, 95% African (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zambia)
• About 20% of the people did not speak English well enough to feel comfortable participating in English
• three days (typical open space conference I go to has people arriving the night before, then 2.5 days and leaving that final day, so 3 nights - this one everyone arrived to the conference in time for lunch and we opened the space and had one session that first day, then did two full days and a half day+, spent a fourth night and left the place the following morning)
• breakfast/lunch and water were provided by the organizers
• The venue was outdoors, with the main circle taking place in an open (no walls) thatched-roof structure. Breakouts were under old UNICEF tents or in the shade of other thatched-roof structures, or in a brick building that usually serves as a night commuter dorm.
• Gulu is in Acholiland, which is currently under a ceasefire (expires this week) while peace talks are trying to settle 21 years of war.
• The circle itself was a bit chaotic, with people filling the center sitting on the floor on grass woven mats. There was usually a 2nd row of some kind as well, just outside the thatch-structure, under shade of a neighboring tent or building.
• Very interesting flocking effect I hadn’t really seen before. Each time-slot had 10+ sessions posted on the agenda but typically had between three and five sessions actually take place. The bigger sessions kept getting bigger and not only physically crowded out where other sessions were to happen, but were such a big “draw” that even conveners of other sessions didn’t try to go to their own session.
• Sessions were documented on flip-chart paper which was then posted inside the internet cafe space where all could go read. I never actually saw these, kept forgetting. I was told these were posted online by participants (Day 1) (very incomplete partial session notes).
• My day-specific notes:
  • Day 1 + hospital experience
  • Day 2
  • Day 3
  • Day 4

Overall impressions:

• The decision to have “Acholli-day,” where only the people of that tribe set the agenda went remarkably smoothly, with no complaints. People were totally fine with focusing locally (in Gulu) when giving no other options. This led immediately into the “gift” process which was surprisingly (to me) non-contentious and with very high energy.
• There was a lot of talk throughout the week about the responsibility of governments or others not present. There were also pleas for outside help, but these invariably led to people talking about what “we” can do. Very interesting cross-pollination among Africans from different places/circumstances.
• Logistics: The organizing team did an amazing job of coordinating transportation and lodging in this fairly remote place. Their very hard work greatly simplified the lives of attendees. I’m not sure the event could’ve happened at all if those details had been left to attendees. At the very least, days would’ve been lost dealing with these details.

Gulu, Uganda Open Space - Day 4

This post was typed on 2Mar, but back-dated to appear on its day of the conference.

Gulu, Uganda Open Space - Day 4 (Thursday)

• Morning news today was again very late. Days 2 & 3 had an hour scheduled for morning news so starting 45 minutes late was no problem. Today, we had no such buffer, so everything simply got pushed back by a late start.
• We went right into a panel discussion where each of the proposal champions from the previous day gave a brief summary of their proposals and then we opened things up for questions.
• The champions included 5 of the 7 strongest English-speakers from the Acholli community.
• Very few questions were used to satisfy curiosities about points not addressed in the proposals. Most of the questions were used to express opinions, sometimes in question form.
• There were two poultry-raising proposals, one soap-making, one water, and one savings-led microfinance. All pretty amazing on only $5000. All 3 mzungus were in the microfinance group, but I have no idea if that fact was known by the larger body, or if that different kind of education had any affect on the proposal’s quality.
• Only the Acholli people voted. This amounted to more than half the conference, as it turned out. More than 65% voted for the microfinance.
• The plan coming into the day was to do the panel from 9:00-10, a re-opening for “future” and a session from 10-12 and then closing circle from 12-1. After the panel, it was 12:00. We decided to push back the end of the conference, which I’m not sure any participant even noticed.
• The re-opening asked people to issue invitations (post topics, but not on the wall, just hold the paper where they are and convene the session by walking with the paper when we all disburse) for any conversations that still need to take place about how we work together as we all leave this place. What else needs to be planned or decided?
• After about 45 minutes I left the session that I convened. I was feeling that it was over and feeling like the closing circle ought to begin, to keep closer to our pre-arranged ending time.
• When it’s not over, it’s not over. Not only were the other conversations not done, the session I had left was also apparently not done. No worries. I just continue to ring, feeling calm and peaceful and knowing that when they’re ready to wrap up, they will. I love the bells for their gentleness. A more perceptive facilitator might’ve known without ringing that it wasn’t yet time for the closing, and my lack of perception didn’t hurt a bit. The bells might’ve even served to re-focus a group on their task, knowing that time is now (seemingly) very short.
• Eventually the “poof” did happen and we passed the bells for the closing. In a group of 120, this takes quite a bit of time, and people seemed to enjoy. I used a technique I learned from Kaliya Hamlin where I announced before passing that people could pass without speaking, and that the bells would go around the circle twice, with those speaking the first time asked to pass, and those passing the first time invited again to speak, if they wish. I really like this second chance and several people responded to that chance and did speak the second time around.

Gulu, Uganda Open Space - Day 3

This post was typed on 27Feb, but back-dated to appear on its day of the conference.

Gulu, Uganda Open Space - Day 3 (Wednesday)

• During morning news today, we invited only the Acholi people to set the agenda for 2 timeslots this morning.  Acholiland is where the conference is taking place and the topics posted by Acholi people (many non-English speakers) seemed to be crowded out during days 1 & 2 and this afternoon needs to focus here (see below), so we went against all of my open space instincts to ask only certain people to post topics.
• More than 16 topics were posted in the 2 timeslots.  I again had to scramble to add breakout spaces to the agenda-wall, as on day 1.
• Roughly half (or a bit less) of the posted topics actually happened, but those that did seemed very lively, with attendees from everyone very interested in Acholi-specific issues.
• A field-trip to an Internally Displaced Persons camp around lunch-time pushed back the afternoon a couple of hours.  “Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.”
• The Omidyar Network had pledged $5000 to the Gulu community, in a manner to be decided by conference participants.  Christina talked over various ways this might be done with some of us and then decided to split people into five groups, with each one making a proposal, to be voted on by the Acholli members.  Given the language issues, the groups were chosen by color, rather than numbers or names.  The three non-black participants all ended up in the black group. :-)
• Since the IDP camp trip pushed back the afternoon, time was very short.  Because “When it’s not over, it’s not over,” we simply pushed back evening news and let the proposal-writing come to it’s natural conclusion.  Evening news began with the presentation of the 5 proposals.  Guessing from the length of the shadows, we finished at least an hour later than usual and scheduled.
• That evening was Peace Tiles with 200+ Night Commuter children.  In the dark.  Wow.  The headlights from a car was the only light and yet there was fairly organized chaos for hours as these kids cut and glued and painted and created.  Some kids created true works of art while others were just facinated with layering color after color of paint on the whole tile.  One feeling I had watching these kids was of kittens, the way they all pile up and lay on top of one another, with very close physical contact among all of them.