Month: April 2008

Seeds of Compassion Begins in Seattle

Seeds of ChangeI awoke before dawn to many birds singing, then a beautiful sunrise. An auspicious start for Seeds of Compassion , a 5-Day Gathering in Seattle with his Holiness, the Dalai Lama and a huge community of people who care about the role of compassion in the lives of children. This morning I attended the session on the Science of Compassion, and am currently listening to the live stream of this afternoon’s second science day. Archived materials are being translated into 24 languages. That is a mind-blowing, bridge-building commitment. (The image to the right is a close up of Tim Corey’s work)

Experiencing the Dalai Lama
You hear about this remarkable human being — of his warmth, humility and compassion. Even from high in the stadium stands, I felt this. Such humor too… his twinkle twinkled across the stadium. He spoke without pretension, took his time and radiated calm. While I was intellectually engaged with the offering of the panelists (and they came across very compassionate themselves), I found myself just experiencing his Holiness. Sometimes I could not understand with the amplification and echoes, but that didn’t seem to matter. It mattered that I was able to just be there.

Graphic Facilitation at the Seeds of Compassion
I’m also a Seeds volunteer over the next 5 days, helping with the graphic recording of many of the events and welcoming people to put their mark on paper in the Conversation Cafe room where people can debrief and talk with each other about their experiences over the 5 days. Today Patti Dobrowolski and Timothy Corey recorded. You can see photos here. Our full team also includes Keith McCandless, and Steven Wright. I am thrilled to be able to watch and learn from them, as well as provide a contribution to the event WITH them.

Today after the morning event ended, I hung out while Tim and Patti completed their charts. It was wonderful to see people look at them, remark at how it helps them remember what they heard, and their amazement that “they drew this DURING the presentation!” For me as a newbie practitioner of this art, it was immensely useful to see their two different styles and watch their final additions.

I’m looking forward to five days of learning, community and compassion. It seems a fitting entry point to my 50th birthday on April 15th.

6footsix and Becoming a Sponsor

Colleen's WaveFor years I have sponsored friends doing charity walk (like the March of Dimes’ Walk for Babies coming up soon.) That’s a no brainer. However, I’ve never sponsored an athlete-environmentalist. But now I have.

As of a few hours ago, I sponsored a bunch of temporary tattoos to help amazing beach volleyballista Colleen Smith, aka, 6footsix energize kids to help save our environment. You can read about it here.

Why Colleen? A couple of reasons. First of all, my pal Steve Crandall (another “imaginary friend who I met via my online network) told me about Colleen and her story grabbed me. He asked if I can help. NOTHING BEATS A PERSONAL ASK! So we started brainstorming. I strongly supported Steve’s impulse to set up a blog and I said to add a donation mechanism. I think Colleen’s story resonates and that people will respond.

I told my friend, freelance writer and yoga teacher, Erin Pursell (also a great editor) about Colleen. Erin eventually interviewed Colleen for an upcoming story in Sierra Magazine. Because, you know, getting the word out is important.

For Steve and I, it seemed fitting to activate our networks to support Colleen, not just in her work to become a winning beach volleyball player, but because she was interweaving her sport with a passion for the environment and, particularly, engaging kids in environmental issues. Why?

Backstory from Colleen’s blog:

I started thinking more about living in a greener world and thought about the beaches I play volleyball on. If global warming persists at the rate us earthlings are consuming, some predictions state that by 2100 the sea level will rise up to 6 meters! Just to put this into perspective, that is 3 Colleens! This made me realize that perhaps I could make a bigger difference than just making changes in my life; while on tour, I could encourage others to make changes in their own lives.

A friend of mine designed a temporary tattoo for me and I am going to wear it at one meter on my body which is just below where my bikini bottom meets my thigh. Crazywave_3This mark is going to represent where the sea level may rise to by the year 2060. This is during our lifetimes, people!

I really enjoy talking to kids and want to get their ideas on living greener. I am going to encourage them, their parents, and other adults to join my green team. In order to do so, they must promise me to change one aspect in their lives to contribute to a better greener world. Upon making this promise, they will be provided with a token to keep their word: a temporary tattoo, a re-usable shopping bag, or a 1-meter magnet to stick to their fridge. All kids will receive an extremely cool storyboard from Pixar artist, Nick Sung, just to give them some ideas how they and their friends can live greener lives. (THANK YOU NICK FOR YOUR GENEROUS VOLUNTEERMANSHIP!!!)

Second reason? Because I can. My contribution is tiny. But tiny contributions add up. And people’s lives can be changed. Not just Colleens, but the kids she will reach. That is power.

So, can you help? Bob (or spike) over to Colleen’s blog and click the paypal button. Maybe you too, can become a sponsor!

Almada, Portugal in June with KM4Dev

KM4Dev Almada Page Screen ShotOne of my favorite communities, Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev as we call it), will have it’s annual F2F in Almada, Portugal, just across the Tagus river from Lisbon. Yes, I lobbied for Portugal because some of my dear friends are there, giving me multiple reasons to hop on a plane. The gathering in June will be in Open Space, so anyone can bring their knowledge to share, questions to pose and you can be sure, there WILL be partying. I have to start getting in Party-Shape to keep up with these friends and colleagues!

Who can come? Anyone who decides to join the community via our site or DGroups email list and shares a passion for the application of knowledge and learning in international development. So that might be YOU!

It looks like I may be in Lisbon the few days earlier to give a talk at an Elearning Conf. More on that later!

Scott Leslie on Trailfire

IMG_0798
Creative Commons License photo credit: Carnavas
As part of the online Knowledge Sharing (KS) in International Agriculture Development workshop, we are exploring KS tools and methods and then sharing our learning via the KS Toolkit Wiki. One tool that came up for review was Trailfire. I had not heard about it, so I put a query out on my Twitter network and in moments, Scott Leslie, a Northern Voice colleague, came to my rescue. Here is a 15 minute podcast with Scott about Trailfire and related tools used to share and comment on our journeys across the web.

Podcast: Scott Leslie on Trailfire

This tool is a Firefox plug-in, so if you want a defined group or community to use it, they all have to be FF users and agree to use the plug in. It would be interesting to test this in the international agriculture research community. (Or any other community.) There is also the wonderful bit about serendipity – finding trails left by others – their annotations and opinions — on sites that you are looking at.

Scott also shared his pre-call prep notes — which I find interesting. (Thanks, Scott!) I’ve put them below.

If you are interested in more blog posts like this, please let me know — and what tools or methods that might interest you.

Trailfire notes

Firefox plugin that works in conjunction with a main site

allows users to create “trails” which are made up of sequenced web sites

a trail mark also allows users to add an annotation to the page, so that when you are looking at that page
with the plugin enabled, you see a small mark, mousing over it shows you the full comment and
provides a link to the full trail

the website allows you to share your trails with others

you can also have the plugin show ALL trailmarks that have been made for a specific page, not just yours, which opens up
all sorts of possibilities for finding other users and finding other trails, other contexts in which a page can be seen

you can also add comments to other people’s trailmarks, meaning that conversations can actually break out “on” the web pages where the
marks were left without the need for any additional server software

cross between a social bookmarking and annotation tool

Educational and Other uses
obvious one is for instructors to create a trail through a series of web pages with some educational objective in mind

but as students/learners can also create their own trails and marks, it also becomes a way to connect with other informal
learners

it empowers users to connect and share with each other without requiring the individual sites to provide any facility or
containing mechanism to do so

simple way to add help commentary to websites – add a mark that leads off to further help documents and tutorials from whatever site
you are trying to use, or use the note to add help, like Greader shortkeys mark

a way to non-invasively annotate the web

a way to leave commentary for Others on websites

a virtual layer that overlays the web; this same technique is now being exploited by browser plugins like PMOG,
passively multiplayer online game, a game played ON TOP of the regular web through a browser plugin

cf. also medium (http://me.dium.com/ )

URLs mentioned in this podcast: