Category: community indicators

Community for the 21st Century Harvest

On April 1st, amidst all that was going on in my family, I had the chance to step into a different “space” and participate in WeDialog’s first online world cafe on “community.” Since this was a “audio” online experience, I grabbed my pens to try and add a visual aspect for myself. Here are my images:

But hold on to your socks, because Amy Lenzo also recruited two of the BEST graphic facilitators to listen and scribe what they heard, Nancy Margulies and Susan Kelly.

. Here is some of the text from the WeDialog official harvest page:

“Conversations for the 21st Century” launched on Friday, April 1st, with more than 200 people participating in a three hour conversation on the topic of “Community for the 21st Century.”   The series is a production ofweDialogue, the new partnership between Amy Lenzo and Ben Roberts, which was formed to offer online services for the World Café Community Foundation.

Participants came from around the world – the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, South Africa, India and Australia, responding to email invitations from the hosts, conversation starters, special guests Heartland Circle, the Powers of Place Initiative, Berkana Institute, and the Tamarack Institute, our sponsors the World Café Community Foundation, and a wide variety of friendly networks and a robust social media campaign using Facebook, Twitter and various other blogs and online communities.  Over 550 people registered.

A 20 minute round-table of “conversation starters” (a term coined by Heartland in their Thought Leader Gatherings) – Peter Block, Maria Scordialos and Sarah Whiteley and Nancy White – set the context for the full World Café conversation that followed.

Together, the conversation starters offered a wide range of perspectives on what “community” means to them and the ways that they see it evolving as we create, in Peter Blocks’s words, “a future distinct from the past.”

There is a 22 minute audio file of the conversation starters’ words on the World Cafe community blog (for some reason the audio file wouldn’t embed here).

We were very fortunate to have experienced World Café graphic recorders Nancy Margulies and Susan Kelly with us – Nancy for the morning session and Susan Kelly throughout the whole day. Their gleanings from the conversation starters follow.

via Community for the 21st Century – The World Cafe Community.

I simply LOVE these harvests. Brilliant. And hosts Amy and Ben did a terrific job. I look forward to the next offering from WeDialog.

Community Indicators in Times of Stress

As readers know from my last post, our family has been celebrating the life of and grieving the loss of my dad, Bill Wright. Yesterday was his memorial mass at St. Joseph Catholic Church here in Seattle where mom and dad found their Seattle “church home.” Right now I have the house to myself and found I needed some reflective time, and some processing of what has been swirling around us: community.

The core of my professional practice is “connected and connecting” people. In any sense of those words. Experiencing the love and community around my family and me since Dad entered the hospital on March 22nd is a fertile ground for noticing and reflecting on those things that tell us community is present, “community indicators.” If I think to the earthquakes in Christchurch, NZ, and Japan, these community indicators are alive and activated. They are alive in my home town.

By chance I happened on a TedTalk by Eric Whitacre today and lo and behold, the soundtrack for my reflection showed up. I received my love of music from my dad. I remember him playing me albums of marching band music, musicals, folk and classical music into my preteen years. Mom and Dad took us to hear Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops when they played at San Francisco’s Stern Grove. Over the last week I curated some music for the funeral reception – lots of folk music, especially banjo. But all with “soul.” So for me, a soundtrack feels “right.” Even more, the soundtrack itself is a community indicator, a virtual choir of hundreds of voices, recorded around the world and brought together. Now this is not about artifice, or a diminishing of the extraordinary power of singing together, but of how we can sing together in many ways. Singing together IS a community indicator. Take a listen.

via YouTube – Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir – ‘Lux Aurumque’. (The final piece will be premiered on YouTube this Thursday.)

So back to this community thing. I want to thank and honor the many communities that have gathered us in their arms over the last two weeks. I was preparing for a three week set of workshops in New Zealand and Australia the week my dad fell into a coma. A few emails and all of my colleagues who have worked hard to set up the workshops, market, book venues and everything replied to my notice that I had to cancel with two things. “Yes, no problem” and “our hearts, prayers and thoughts are with you and your family.”  They lifted that off my shoulders like a warm spring breeze. The participants, some of whom booked plane tickets to come to the workshops handled it all with grace and love.

Washington DC trip (1969?)

Here in Seattle, from the moment the 911 team arrived to my Mom’s emergency call, to the last few hours in the hospital when Dad was leaving us, people reached out. Strangers. Ambulance drivers. Emergency room nurses. Doctors, techs, cleaning folks, everyone. I think they all knew what was happening before we did, so they gently made the path a little clearer, a little more peaceful as we walked along it.

My parent’s pastor, Father John, came to the emergency room and hospital. On the night of Dad’s death, also his birthday, he called his sister with whom he was to have dinner and said he had to be elsewhere and he came to the hospital. My sister was there and she and I were able to sing to Dad through the end. She sings with a Threshold Choir in Davis, California and brought that calm peace. I would not have been able to sing alone. The nursing staff brought in food for the family as we watched and waited through the last hours. One saw my son was really struggling and hugged him and offered words of comfort.

Across town at Mirabella, the next day, as my mom walked down the hall, people started the flow of hugs, tears and “we are here for you” that have continued unabated. Flowers, cards, food. Yesterday at the funeral, 78 Mirabellians had signed up to share two buses and many carpools and came to celebrate Dad’s life. And many promised to keep reaching out to Mom as she works her way through the stages and waves of mourning and loss.

Dad and Randy, Santa Clara

Father John create a beautiful service that, with family members and friends doing readings and remembrances, flowed like a practiced choir. He started his homily with a verse from a favorite song of Dad’s “All God’s Critters Have a Place in the Choir” (by Bill Staines) and connected it to the Beatitudes which he read for the gospel, and to Dad’s generous spirit. MHB Conant sang and Robert McCaffery-Lent brought solace and beauty through music. (See 2011 Bill Wright Program).

Family members did the readings and Jack Blume (a Mirabella resident), Randy Wright (my brother) and Cleve Wright (a friend of my Dad’s and a former Mirabella employee) shared amazing, warm and beautiful stories about Dad. To a one, they all talked about Dad’s openness, positivity and generosity of spirit. Tears, laughter, music. As it should be.

Afterwards at the reception in the Parish hall there were more stories, songs (the water aerobic’s “Zippidy Doo Dah”), red wine (as Dad would want it) and lots of people coming up to me to say “your Dad was remarkable,” or “I don’t usually go to funerals, but I came to your Dad’s and I’m glad I did.” I think Father John also converted a few people to his parish! 🙂

Dad and I on the Washington Coast

Back online on Twitter, Facebook and on my blog condolences flowed in. I heard from people in my Dad’s life that I hadn’t heard from in years. Family that I thought didn’t even know I blogged commented here (thank you!) Cards from clients. Tons of love. This sustains us as we ride the waves of loss and grief. They refresh precious memories, sharpen stories that may have been fading.

My Dad was a steady light in my life. Patient to a fault. Tenderhearted. Appreciative. Easy to be with. He fixed things and showed me HOW to fix things. He gave me my curly hair, my love of music and vegetable gardening, my inclination to wave at trains, and  a confidence to step out in the world even when I felt scared and shy. Up to the last he was engineering and reengineering, having recently re-jiggered a no-knead bread recipe to fit into the new cast iron pan he got at the family Christmas gift exchange. His Sudoku prowess blew my mind. Both he and my mom role modeled community service at every turn, in often different but significant ways.

I can’t imagine doing this alone. You are my community. Your “indicators” are blinking and lighting up like the milky way on a clear, mountain night. Thank you.

RSA and Connected Communities

I’ve been up to my alligators in all things networks as part of the Network Weaving Community of practice project, a nine month community of practice for 70 non profit folks who use or want to use the power of networks in their work. I keep tagging and annotating websites like crazy (find them here!) and have seen some terrific stuff I’d like to reblog. One is the Connected Communities Report: How social networks power and sustain the Big Society by Jonathan Rowson, Steve Broome and Alasdair Jones. This is worth a read of you are working at a specific community level and/or you are working at a network level. The point is, when we see the different levels available for activation, we can be more intentional in our work, activating whatever levels can add value.

Traditional approaches to community regeneration which define communities in solely geographic terms have severe limitations. They often failed to deliver on key social capital improvements such as improving trust between residents or fostering a greater sense of belonging.

In this report we argue for a new approach to community regeneration, based on an understanding of the importance of social networks, such an approach has the potential to bring about significant improvements in efforts to combat isolation and to support the development of resilient and empowered communities.

Download Connected Communities: How social networks power and sustain the Big Society (PDF, 1.5MB)

Skip to the key points of the report

via RSA – Connected Communities.

Many Voices

I have about a half billion partially edited blog posts. But life has changed a lot for me since becoming a grandmother and now having the honor of spending afternoons with my grandbaby and I have not prioritized writing. I actually have more time for reflection on walks, while laying on the floor with the baby and such. But now work consumes the mornings, with the tyranny of the to do list.

I still take “breaks” by looking at my Twitter feed and came across this very useful article, 3 Unique ways to record, edit, and publish your audio :: 10,000 Words :: where journalism and technology meet. There are a bunch of projects where people will be doing short audios and videos and I appreciate useful posts like this one.

Then, at the bottom, there was an embedded YouTube video that struck me to the core and actually reassured me that my silence is fine. There is a lot of great stuff filling the electrons. Take a look at this.

The blog post author, Mark S. Luckie (what a GREAT name!) , wrote:

If you’re looking for inspiration for your collaborative audio projects, check out the video below of a choral piece constructed from 250 individual performances. For this unique project, each person seen in the clip submitted a video of themselves voicing a part of the composition “Lux Aurumque,” composed by Eric Whitacre. The individual videos were then edited together and the stunning result was uploaded to YouTube.

Collaboration and crowdsourcing… the future of audio is here.

In our networked world, we have many voices. We don’t all have to ‘talk’ at the same time. But look what happens when we sing “together!”

Many voices. Powerful. Thanks, Mark, for bringing this into my life today. I experienced something beautiful and was also able to let go of the “non blogging” nagging, guilt!

P.S. See also this terrific post by Mark which puts a great reframe on Personal Branding.

P.S.S. Another great collaborative song video

Reviving Community Indicators – Learning

For long time readers of this blog,  you know I’ve been obsessed with “signs of life” from communities which I call “community indicators.” I haven’t posted any recently, but something spurred me yesterday…

This past week I was very grateful to be a supporter of Dreamfish’s online retreat for their inaugural group of Dreamfish Fellows. The fellows will be taking leadership/stewardship roles in the Dreamfish network and communities over the next six month. As the first group, there was not only the exploration of a new group, but exploration of the roles they will play. All online, because cost and distance made a face to face a less “sustainable” option.

One of the Fellows, Kate McAlpine  shared some of her work with the Caucus for  Children’s Rights, in Tanzania

She shared a draft paper which I’ve still to read, but this graphic just “rang my bells.”  You’ll have to click into it to read it, and I’ve included the PDF for ease.

This sure is a community indicator in my eyes, capturing (or “reifying” – definition below!) the learning of a community of practice over time. In this case, the indicator is learning over time, and a way to VISUALIZE and SHARE that learning. That is the bit that really stands out for me.)

Attribution: Kate McAlpine (2009) Caucus for  Children’s Rights, Tanzania.

CCR Graphics_15Dec09

Any community indicators showing up in your life? Should we start thinking about network indicators?

Definition Time….Reification from Etienne Wenger (Wenger, E.  (1998).  Communities of practice. Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) gleaned by a paper by Hildreth, 2002

: …to refer to the process of giving form to our experience by producing objects that congeal this experience into ‘thingness’ … With the term reification I mean to cover a wide range of processes that include making, designing, representing, naming, encoding and describing as well as perceiving, interpreting, using, reusing, decoding and recasting. (Wenger, 1998: 58-59)