Month: February 2008

Online facilitator humor

In lieu of a Monday Video, I am going out of character and posting a Monday Joke. I am not known for either my love of or telling of jokes. But this one is a keeper.

There has been a humorous thread on the Online Facilitation list this past week, started by the wise and witty Rosanna Tarsiero. You can see the original trigger post here: Message: How many list members does it takes to change a light bulb?. Read the responses to see the additions! 😉

How many list members does it take to change a light bulb?

One to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed.

Fourteen to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently.

Seven to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs.

Seven more to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs.

Five to flame the spell checkers.

Three to correct spelling/grammar flames.

Six to argue over whether it’s “lightbulb” or “light bulb” … another six to condemn those six as stupid.

Fifteen to claim experience in the lighting industry and give the correct spelling.

Nineteen to post that this group is not about light bulbs and to please take this discussion to a lightbulb (or light bulb) forum.

Eleven to defend the posting to the group saying that we all use light bulbs and there fore the posts are relevant to this group.

Thirty six to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique and what brands are faulty.

Seven to post URLs where one can see examples of different light bulbs.

Four to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly and then post the corrected URL.

Three to post about links they found from the URLs that are relevant to this group which makes light bulbs relevant to this group.

Thirteen to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety including all headers and signatures, and add “Me too.”

Five to post to the group that they will no longer post because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy.

Four to say “didn’t we go through this already a short time ago?”

Thirteen to say “do a Google search on light bulbs before posting questions about light bulbs.”

Three to tell a funny story about their show dog and a light bulb.

AND

One group lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now with something unrelated they found at snopes.com and start the thing all over again.

(Photo by jagoLIVE)

What I missed at Northern Voice

The challenge of parallel sessions is you have to miss something, particularly if you are playing a lead role in your own session. Makes it hard to skip out. There were two sesssions I really wish I had not missed. One was Dave Olson‘s F*ck Stats, Make Art Dossier.

Apparently, Dave was on the same stream as our “Writing on Walls” session – tapping into our creativity. I’m glad the session was recorded and blogged. It was interesting to see that there were quite a few sessions that pinged on a central core of creativity.

I also missed Alan “cogdog” Levine’s preso on 50 Ways to Tell a Story. I’ve been following the evolution of this presentation since last summer and was looking forward to the “live” version, but I was deep in a conversation with Dave Pollard and one does not drop the chance for a great conversation. So Alan, know I was beaming you and I’ll look for Injenuity’s video.  (And I’m glad, Alan, you caught Scott Leslie’s “Trackback Love“. Geek poetry!)

(Photo by Robert Scales )

We don’t know what we are messing with

I mentioned yesterday that I led a session on drawing at Northern Voice yesterday. I invited people to be fearless, to draw and to share their drawings. But I forgot how that can trigger deep things in us. My friend Julie Leung pointed me a blog post about an experience of a person in that session, and I am shaken. The blogger has no comments on her blog so I am going to try this. First here’s a link to the post. Read it if you care about people. (and context) NorthernVoice.

Dear Meg

Meg, Meg, Meg

I want to both apologize to you and to thank you. First, apologize because I made light of something important and, as I understand it from your blog post, difficult for you. Second, to thank you for your bravery and what you helped me learn. I feel absolutely torn that we did not get a chance to talk about this and I invite that opportunity if you’d like to.

I learned two very important things as I took my flying leap into this experiment – and one was the reinforcement of the power that drawing can unlock things within us. The second was I need to be more gentle and loving when I offer the invitation to unlock whatever it is we have locked within us.

I feel like I have abused you. I deeply apologize. And I thank you so much for blogging about it and allowing me to learn this.

Nancy

(I found an email and sent the above to Meg)

As I read Meg’s post, I recalled the day I unlocked my inner artist as an adult. I was attending a weekend-long introduction to painting workshop at a local community college. “Beginners welcome.” We explored black and white. We mixed colors from the three primary colors. We painted with blindfolds and, important for me, with our fingers.

There I was in an old shirt, fingers swirling with acrylic paint feeling the roughness of the primed canvas. Our teacher invited us to think about our lives. I can still recall how my arms and fingers started pulling on their own, dipping into more and more red paint. The angry colors flooded the canvas. I did not know how angry I was, how I was holding all that anger inside of me. I was a nice young mom. I had a great job but I was working for a hurt, damaged man who did all he could to hurt and damage us, especially the women who worked for him. I used to come home and in the shower, curse his name. I wrote his name on the bottom of my shoes. And here all this anger and even hate was coming out of my fingers, channeled through the paint.

On Sunday morning, we were invited to show our paintings and, god help me, talk about them. And there I was, like Meg, with my guts on the canvas and having to talk about it in front of all these people. I started crying. And all that anger that I felt, as a “good girl” came flooding out. Like a gashed artery.

All for a bit of paint, or a marker on a paper, and an invitation to express what is truly inside of us. From an ice cream, to our pain.

Meg, again, I both thank you and ask for your forgiveness.

How I slowed down blogging and started drawing on walls

I had a ball leading a session today at Northern Voice. I have lots of pictures, more reflections, etc. But that can wait to later. In the mean time (and in case there is no “later”) here is the link to the wiki page and the slides. northernvoice wiki / How I slowed down blogging and started drawing on walls

northernvoice wiki / Multilingual blogs

northernvoice wiki / Multilingual blogs

I have some notes up – not edited yet, but if you are interested in multilingual blogging and websites, check it out. It would be great if you added examples, links. We have a tag going multilingual_bloggers on del.iciou.us

Live blogging caveat applies to live wiki-ing as well. I WILL make typos, miss things and make mistakes. And I won’t write down what I said.