From the Archives: Two more friends better than two more enemies

Social Media in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.

It is encouraging to see this article from 2013 is still online, and is still relevant examining how young people from conflict areas can be connected with each other. And the risks involved. . With the current conflicts continuing in Armenia and Azerbaijan and with the emergent issues in Russia and the Ukraine. It also reminds me of the amazing work I was invited into in the Caucasus with Project Harmony, with the highs, lows and learnings. I was hopeful and naïve – I’ll own that!  (More here.) 

From the Archives: Almost Improvising

I’m editing this one from 2013 just before Superbowl Sunday, which is mentioned in this post. Leaving it AS IS!

“We aren’t always improvising, we are almost improvising. Then there is that moment we are actually improvising and it is all worth it.” Matt Smith, liberally misquoted by yours truly.

I spent Superbowl Sunday at an improv workshop, thinking that my avoidance of the television and a shift from American football sports to theater sports was good karma. I wanted to step further into improvisation, particularly applied improvisation (vs performance.)  Little did I know that my learnings from both would intersect around the power of being ready to improvise.

I met Matt Smith last September at the Applied Improvisation Conference in a fabulous workshop he co-led with Rebecca Stockley. (The post about the workshop experience links to some good stuff by Viv McWaters also worth reading…) After AIN I realized I needed a lot more work on my own in order to weave applied improvisational approaches into my facilitation and community work. Finally, I found a day that worked for me and headed over to the beautiful Valley School (ah, I want to be 8 years old and go to school here!) with an open mind, heart and lots of questions like “how does this work in an intercultural or even multilingual contexts?”

 

“The big question is, what happens when everything changes, when you go off script?” Hofstetter said. “That was where it got fun.”

via How Oreo Got That Twitter Ad Up So Fast.

 

From the Archives: Saying Just Enough: Judicious Use of Prompts

From the draft archives 2013. Yes, I’m up to 2013. The little gif is just for fun!

An animated giff of my grandchild dancing

One of my yoga teachers is really good and putting together a great flow sequence. She is observant and gives good verbal suggestions during poses. But her narrative runs non stop for the whole hour. Even the narrative about emptying our minds, turning away from the “monkey-mind” feels like my very own, well, monkey-mind!

Nancy back in 2012

Saying less, clear prompts, and space to listen to the answers. This one still resonates.

Polluted Science Communications is Still a Problem

From the draft archives 2012.

Why we are poles apart on climate change : Nature News & Comment. This post prompted me to make a few notes about how communities and networks could help reduce polluted science communications. How naive I was.  We now know that troll farms assume the mantle of communities and networks and more efficiently pollute science, political and other domains of communications better than ever. I think revisiting my draft archives is making me sad…