text:
In this week's podcast: Libya – as the end to the conflict approaches, oil companies get ready to return to production; mining giant BHP Billiton reports record results; and, delays in deforestation permits by the Indian government could prove costly to Essar Energy.
Presented by Sylvia Pfeifer with Javier Blas, William MacNamara and David Blair.
Produced by LJ Filotrani

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Before my experience at Oconee Middle School, I was a high school special education teacher in two different Georgia school districts. I taught students who were on the autism spectrum and had emotional and behavioral disorders. Most recently, I also served as a high school graduation coach in my previous district. I was also fortunate enough to coach student-athletes in football and wrestling.
In order to prepare myself for my role as an educator, I attended Clemson University in South Carolina where I received a Bachelor's Degrees in Special Education. During my teaching career I completed my Master's Degree in Educational Leadership at Georgia State University and Education Specialist Degree in Educational Leadership at Valdosta State University. I am currently pursuing a Doctoral Degree at Valdosta State University.
I look forward to a great year here at Oconee County Middle School with our fabulous young Braves and outstanding staff.


text:
|2007-12-08, 20:25
|Link #201
Humble Fangirl
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: *looks around* Looks like a house...
Anyway, I agree with everybody else: You're never to old to watch anime.
|2007-12-08, 22:34
|Link #203
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Tesla Leicht Institute
Age: 27
and 3x3 Eyes. Those anime pretty much scared the crap out of me and well I am still afraid of it. I saw little bit of Ah! My Goddess and well being 10 I didn't understand lot of the stuff . And yeah your seriously never too old to watch anime (or too young for that matter for me anyhow).
|2007-12-08, 23:13
|Link #204
Command of the Revenants
Before you say anything, keep in mind I watched Hunt for Red October, repeatedly, when I was 3 or 4. This was after watching a Winnie the Pooh movie constantly the year prior.
I apparently hummed the opening song from Red October, too. Or maybe it was the Russian song...
|2007-12-09, 01:25
|Link #205
I like how there is like almost no discussion about the social acceptability of anime D:. Everyone is just responding to the title of the thread .
|2007-12-09, 08:46
|Link #208
Toyosaki Aki
Join Date: Nov 2007
IMHO, depends on what you're watching. Anime is, afterall, simply a medium just like literature and film. What defines the substance that a work has is its content.
I would say that even 14 is too old to seriously enjoy Hello Kitty. However, put a 16 year old and a 61 year old into a dark room, then show them Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. I'm pretty sure they'd both be equally creeped out.
As for "social acceptability", there really isn't very much to say IMO. Society has labeled anime "for kids" and there is little we can do to change that very fast.
|2007-12-10, 14:26
|Link #209
Inactive Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
I watched Higurashi no Naku Koro ni when I was 14. Is that bad? I was freaked out about it. But I also somehow find it funny. When I was 14 I also watched Elfen Lied. Great stuff Those are both 18+ series but I didnt care.
|2007-12-10, 14:32
|Link #210
|2007-12-10, 16:01
|Link #211
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: San Francisco
Age: 34
|2007-12-11, 01:25
|Link #214
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
i totally think im getting to old for anime...sad as it is....i see the characters living lives which i wish i could live...thats probably gets most people hooked....
i work as a PC technician, which is the most boring job of all....and when im home by myself i just would like to watch characters in some far off fantasy world living lives of action and romance...but i think its time to face the real world...
and to add to my drama, i had a girl over my apartment and she went to check her myspace on my computer(totally without asking) and i left my documents folder in the taskbar....*sigh*
she saw my hundreds of anime, OVAs, and manga...even after making dinner and watching garden state(my "gettin lucky" movie)i knew i was destined for a date with my hand that night...she pretended not to notice the gargantuin and gratuitous amounts of anime...but from the spacy and confused look on her face i knew....i havent been able to call her again...(to embarssed)...anime was always my "secret" indulgence....but after that ordeal i figured i might be to old for cartoons (btw im 19) ....thou im procrastinating im gonna delete everything soon....so that situation never happens again and so i wont be tempted into watching it anymore and get into the routine of a regular life *sigh*.....its for the best
what got me suckered into anime was "3x3 eyes"....what a bad ass series...
|2007-12-11, 03:55
|Link #216
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
its really sad that i have to keep it a secret.....
but i do have to say thou most of the kids in the anime club in my highschool were absolute dorks...and i dont want to be lumped in the same group as them...cause im super shallow like that....
what we need is a celebrity who likes anime and we need him to come out his manga filled closet and give a better representation of anime viewers...example- pot belly pigs for pets is kool cause george clooney has one....we need a bad ass like brad pitt to go on oprah, MTV, and TNT and proclaim his undieing love for anime...we need a celebrity representative
instead we get geeks running in the streets with their manga practically cascading out their black "trench coat" pockets (on a serious note...wtf...people that where trench coats as a "fad" make me wanna join a cult and drink the koolaid) no offense (well i dont think i can get away with saying "no offense" after that statement)....
i mean for real why can't Wesley Snipes or Samuel L. Jackson be into anime....well billy bob thorton did the dubbs for "princess mononoke" but that still isn't enough...
i think im gonna write "in-touch" or "cosmo" and tell them to write a story on celebs that are into anime....
P.S.....for the kids that run throu the hallways wearing trench coats....for real...gimmie your name and address and i will buy you a new jacket.....i never want to see another "neo" wanna-be for the rest of my life.....i want trench coats to die...(unless its cold and its practical...but other than that die!!!)
|2007-12-11, 05:49
|Link #217
Junior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
Age: 29
Im beginning to expirience people around me who think i should do something thats meets u with there standards like: football or model building. Those are the times I think who are they to judge an hobby/interest? Just because people in general thinks anime is for kids or bad for youre social life. Indeed as stated earlier these are the mostly the people who didnt experience the game/anime rising in the late 70's. But ofcourse there are people my age who says the same thing because there interest are different. and anime isnt really a an general interest so you try to explain anime with examples everyone knows, like DBZ. But then ofcourse im giving the wrong idea.
Its quite troublesome but as for the topic. Im collecting and watching anime at external HDs. And i will continue to do so untill im not interested anymore, so i guess around the time my eyes shuts down. And by the time I have kids, I can show them some classics
|2007-12-11, 07:18
|Link #218
Command of the Revenants
Guess I'm lucky I found a teacher that supported my love for anime. Hell, he even had me write a paper on the history of it all, and whatever details I could find (It was supposed to replace an assignment I couldn't do due to lack of transportation and time.). Apparently, it was so good, I got extra credit on it.
Hell, even the rest of my Japanese class didn't bat an eyelash at me for it. I even lent the born again Christian my copy of Mushishi. They at least watched 3 before time constraints, but found it different. Tried to get them to watch Haibane Renmei, but further time loss prevented them from watching it. Course, she's been to Japan, so she probably didn't care.
The only negative person I found was my father. And if I start talking about the more mature ones, like Mushishi, he'll probably forget it.
|2007-12-11, 08:07
|Link #219
legend in my spare time
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: in a house (Aus)
Age: 30
genre changes with age, anime is my relaxation time definitely not my main interest. but i'd rather watch something like FLCL (again) than say american dad any day of the week
|Thread Tools


text:
Report: Marbury demanding more money in China
|03.09.10 at 9:01 am ET
Former Celtic Stephon Marbury is demanding an additional $2 million to return to the Chinese team Shanxi Zhongyu, according to The Hoops Market (via Sina).
Marbury reportedly is unhappy with the cold weather and is asking for more money, a huge jump from the $25,000 a month he signed for in January. Just a month ago, Brave Dragons coach Wu Qinglong praised Marbury for being easy to get along with.
'People say this and that about him, but let me tell you, I had dinner with him last night and it was so simple, chicken fried rice. That's it,' he said. 'He was happy. He said it was really good. He didn't even want anything to drink, just some bottled water.'
Marbury is averaging over 23 points, nine assists, and six rebounds. However Shanxi Zhongyu did not qualify for the Chinese Basketball Association playoffs.
Garnett: Ray is playing 'beautiful basketball'
|03.08.10 at 1:02 pm ET
Ray Allen's clutch performance on Sunday night was a thing of beauty – to fans and teammates alike.
Just ask Kevin Garnett who watched as Allen's back-to-back 3-pointers helped the Celtics erase a 13-point-hole in the final six minutes and come away with an 86-83 win over Washington.
'A huge weapon," Garnett said. "You know him and P [Paul Pierce] can put up a lot of points in a hurry. That's big. We have to get them open. You know our job is to get them open. I thought that once he got into a nice, little rhythm, I think that everyone else, you know fed off of that a little bit. When it was time to really get him opened for the three, we got him open, and he hit a big shot.'
Garnett has seen Allen suddenly get hot after the All-Star break, carrying the Celtics offense while Pierce nursed a sore thumb.
'I can just say that each player has their time where they play up and down," Garnett said. "That is the nature of the season. You know, you guys don't know but he deals with a lot of different things with injuries, you know we all deal with different types of physical stuff. He is no different than that. At the same time he had talks of business, about where he was going to be in his future and stuff. I can just tell that he is a lot more healthier. Everything that he is doing is a lot more fluid. He is not thinking a lot, he is just reacting and his beautiful basketball.'
Paul Pierce had a slightly different take.
While happy with the win, Pierce realizes the team should have had that intensity all along against a Washington team that has just 21 wins this season. Read the rest of this entry »
Flip: 'We choked' against Celtics
|03.08.10 at 2:04 am ET
Flip Saunders knows Kevin Garnett well enough. For 10 seasons, Saunders coached the perennial All-Star with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
With all apologizes to Jim Croce, Saunders, now the head coach of the Wizards, knows you don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind and you don't tick off the Big Ticket.
The last part of that equation was especially troublesome in Saunders' eyes as he watched his Wizards blow a 79-66 lead with just over six minutes to go Sunday night.
'Well, we choked," Saunders began. "Six minutes to go, we're up 13. We've got young guys, they don't know what it's like to be in a situation. We start talking to Garnett, start talking trash and everything else. Got Garnett and those guys juiced up and we just pissed down our leg the last six minutes.
"You have a veteran team that knows how to close out games against a young team that hasn't been there, and instead of just letting a sleeping dog lie, we juiced up their energies. We had plays coming off timeouts and we had guys going to the wrong side of the floor, we were so discombobulated.'
[Click here to hear Saunders rip into his team for coming unglued at the end of the game.] Read the rest of this entry »
Ray: We probably got away with one
|03.08.10 at 12:20 am ET
Ray Allen felt comfortable all night.
With a game-high 25 points and 4-of-6 shooting from beyond the 3-point line, the stats say as much.
The problem was ' for 42 minutes ' the Washington Wizards felt just as good in nearly everything they did.
With the Celtics down 13 points, that's when Allen said the C's finally got to their opponent, opening the door for him to play hero in the final 93 seconds.
'It was night and day. We put a lot of pressure on them. We made them play away from the basket. We forced them to be more uncomfortable than we did in the first half," said Allen, whose trey with 17.1 seconds remaining proved to be the difference in Boston's 86-83 win.
Asked if the Celtics might have gotten away with a win when maybe they didn't deserve one, Allen was as honest as he could be.
'You could say probably in a small way we did," he admitted. "But we fought for it, we never gave up or thought it was over with, so it bowed in our favor tonight.'
Fast Break: Celtics vs. Wizards
|03.07.10 at 10:46 pm ET
It looked like another disappointing home loss for the Celtics. Down by 12 in the third quarter, the C's were on the verge of falling to the Wizards just a week after being upset by the Nets.
But that's when their winning experience came into play. The Celtics outscored the Wizards 24-17 in the fourth quarter to secure a 86-83 comeback victory.
Turning Point: Down 81-77, Rajon Rondo scored a fastbreak layup and drew the foul on Al Thornton with 1:37 to go. He missed the free throw, but Kendrick Perkins kicked out the offensive rebound to Ray Allen, who drained a trey. This capped a 16-2 Celtics run and put them up, 82-81.
Player of the game: Ray Allen (25 points) got the Celtics momentum back with a pair of treys in the third quarter. Not only did he hit a go-ahead 3-pointer in the fourth, he knocked down the game-winning 3 with 17 seconds left.
– Rondo scored just two points in the first half. He got hot late in the third to score seven points in a span of two-minutes. He finished the game with 15 points.
– Michael Finley was inactive and watched the game from the end of the Celtics bench in a charcoal suit.
– Tony Allen played two minutes in his first game back since injuring his hip on Wednesday against the Bobcats.
– The Celtics are now 6-5 on Sundays and improved to 25-6 against sub-.500 opponents.
Third Quarter Wrap: Celtics vs. Wizards
|03.07.10 at 10:00 pm ET
If the Celtics are going to take back this game, they have just 12 more minutes to do so. They trail 66-62 after three quarters.
The C's struggled to piece together a total team effort coming out of halftime. Paul Pierce and Kendrick Perkins were the only players to score for the first 5:49 of the quarter. The C's also went scoreless during a 3:45 stretch in which the Wizards pushed their lead up to 11 points.
Ray Allen gave the Celtics a spark midway through the quarter with a pair of 3s. Then it was Rajon Rondo's turn. He scored seven points two minutes to bring the Celtics back within four.
The Celtics have momentum heading into the fourth, but they still have to dig themselves out of a deficit. They are 7-14 when trailing after three quarters.
Halftime: Celtics-Wizards
|03.07.10 at 9:10 pm ET
The first half was best summed up by a fan in the next row: "C'mon, it's the Wizards!"
Once again, the Celtics have their work cut out for them against a bad team as they trail 44-38 at the half. As they did against New Jersey two weeks ago the Celtics came out flat and suddenly a team with no hope and no directions looks like a world beater.
The Celtics problems have been mostly on offense where they shot just 35 percent and tied a season-low for first-half points. The Wizards have also blocked six shots, which contributed to that low total, with three of them coming from Javale McGee. Undeterred, the Celtics continued to try and take it to the basket against McGee and he continued to throw it back in their face.
Al Thornton has 15 points and eight rebounds, which in and of itself in an indictment on how the C's played.
Latest from Bleacher Report
- Isaiah Thomas to Play vs. Wizards After Missing 2 Games with Knee Injury
- Ray Allen Not Invited to Rajon Rondo's NBA Title Celebration After...
- Isaiah Thomas Will Miss Next 2 Games for Celtics with Knee Injury
- Al Horford, Avery Bradley Out vs. Suns with Elbow, Hamstring Injuries
- Avery Bradley Returns from Achilles Injury for Celtics vs. Hawks
- Isaiah Thomas Criticizes DeMarre Carroll for Flagrant Foul in Celtics vs...


text:
Volunteer Abroad
Volunteering is an act of offering one's service willingly and without pay. To volunteer abroad is something that a person can hardly do for they are not receiving any salary every month. Many people volunteer abroad not only to help poor countries but to travel as well. Volunteering becomes their passion and many love what they do. Being a volunteer abroad is not easy. Volunteers leave their families behind to help other families who are affected by natural calamities, victims of war, slaves of poverty and many others.
One of the many countries that are often reinforced by volunteers abroad is the Republic of Ghana. Many volunteers abroad are assigned in Ghana because of the nation's economic status and current situation of the people especially the youth. Ghana belongs to the top 100 most corrupt nations in the world therefore suffers from poverty despite its abundance in hydrocarbons and minerals. Being a volunteer in Ghana having this advocate to promote a drug free society and a society that is free from poverty is a very challenging mission. On top of these work, Ghana is a very beautiful place for a vacation.
Another country that a volunteer abroad must be assigned to is the twentieth most populated country in the world, Thailand. This is a nice place to render a volunteer program since Thailand is open in regional and international organizations. Despite being considered as the newly industrialized country, a lot of Thailanders are still experiencing poverty and hard livelihood particularly in rural areas wherein volunteer in Thailand are targeting to conduct their missions. As a volunteer abroad, one of the greatest things that you can learn in every mission to every country that you visit in is the opportunity to learn the culture of the townsfolk and understanding more about their history. To become a volunteer abroad does not only mean to learn something from the people there but also sharing what you have learned to them.
If Thailand is rich with the gift of the mountains, Costa Rica can be a place for volunteers abroad who love living by the coast. The name of the country is a Spanish term which means "Rich Coast". Volunteers abroad scatter to seven provinces of Costa Rica for this nation is an active member of the UN and the Organization of American States. Such mission of the volunteers abroad to this place is the establishment of an international language, English, because there are still several numbers of indigenous people who speak their native language not including their primary language which is Spanish. The advocacy of the volunteer in Costa Rica includes the right of education, promotion of health, sports and many others.


text:
Winter Music Conference 2015. Stay classy
Description:Girl tripping decides to piss in urinal infront of everyone @ Ultra miami MMW WMC Surfcomber Pool Party. Claims she is "a doctor"
Added:2 years ago
0 likes, 0 dislikes
Embed / Iframe code:
Make your selection, copy and paste the embed code above.
Standart sizes: Custom size:
What is the problem?
Please do not abuse this section. The videos ,which are on investigate list, are manually checked by editor.
Security code:(is not case-sensitive) can't read
Write a comment
at least 10 characters, up to 400 characters
400 characters remaining
Security code:
(is not case-sensitive) can't read


text:
SPOOL/HT SHRNK 1/8 60' CLR Ico-Rally Spools, I.D.: 1/8 , Spool Length: 60 feet, Color: Clear
by kathyk
on 7/1/2011
best product for the job
24-1250 - 100 Ft 16 AWG Automotive Primary Wire - Red
Multi-stranded single conductor automotive primary wire. Soft bare electrolytic copper for
maximum flexibility and conductivity. Made of a flame retardant compound that is highly resistant to oil, water, alkalies. ozone, grease and diesel fumes. Made in USA
I am very pleased with both the products and the services. Thank you.


text:
|Message view
|« Date » · « Thread »
|« Date » · « Thread »
|Ross Gardler <rgard...@apache.org>
|Re: avoiding unnecessary changes in output formatting
|Thu, 22 Dec 2005 10:13:35 GMT
David Crossley wrote: > Johannes Schaefer wrote: > >>Tim Williams schrieb: >> >>>Johannes Schaefer wrote: >>> >>> >>>>>Author: rgardler >>>>>Date: Wed Dec 7 11:58:13 2005 >>>>>New Revision: 354838 >>>>> >>>>>URL: http://svn.apache.org/viewcvs?rev=354838&view=rev >>>>>Log: >>>>>check for existence of @class to prevent an extra space being added when not needed >>>> >>>>Is this necessary? The extra space does not do any harm. >>>>If "Yes", I'll update my recent comitts accordingly. >>>>Sorry for not noticing/reviewing earlier. >>> >>>I think this came up because it caused unexpected changes in the >>>forrestbot build to our docs. Someone will let us know if I'm wrong. >>>http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=forrest-dev&m=113384565318583&w=2 >> >>wow! small change big effect! >>Will do my best to avoid extra spaces, then. >>Thanks for the link. > > > Yeah, when i saw our huge commit message for the generated > docs i had visions of our users. Many users have the > generated docs in version control. So it is important to > keep the diffs minimal. > > Complaints are already heard on other lists about the > verbose html output from Forrest. > > Part of their problem is committers not configuring their > svn clients properly, so they see diffs to PDFs too. > > We have improved a lot lately with our CSS-based design. > > We had a discussion recently on dev about using a > final transformer step at the end to tidy the > html output into consistent format. Or perhaps > that is the job of the html serializer. Dunno. > > Anyway should we do that? Users would get one big > change after they upgraded tp 0.8 and thereafter > the changes would be minimal and output would be > consistent. A side-benefit is that it is human-readable. How about we do this as part of the Dispatcher work. There would be no "big change" for those not moving from Dispatcher and it can be another of the "selling" points for the new publication. Of course this means there would be a reasonably long wait for it to happen. Whereas the transformer/serializer approach could be done immediately. Ross
|View raw message


text:
Chanel Brown Suede Leather Single Flap Bag Authentic Pre Owned
Product Details
Authenticity code: Chanel 12345245
Authentic: Preowned
This authentic Chanel Brown Amaizing Single Flap Bag is breath taking! It features brown Suede Leather, gold tone signature chain, and a CC turnlock. Chain and leather entwined straps on bottom portion. This Chanel will only get better with time!
- Exterior: Very Good
- Interior: Very Good
- Description of Interior: Leather Lined
- Interior Pockets: Two open pockets
- Color: Brown
- Hardware Description: Gold Hardware
- Material: Suede
- Width: 10 in.
- Length: 2 in.
- Height: 5.09 in.
- Handle Drop: 13 in.
Product Code: 2248006
All photos are of actual item being sold. This Chanel® item is guaranteed to be authentic. Chanel is a registered trademark of Chanel. LuxeDH is not affiliated with or represents Chanel in any way or form.


text:
Cow In A House (Hugfist)
Johanna woke up early that morning. She rolled over and saw that the light on her cell phone indicating a recent voice-mail was flashing. She picked it up and discovered that it was from her high school sweetheart Robert. She hadn't heard from him in ages, but the panic in his voice was unmistakable.
"Johanna, I don't know how it happened but there is a cow in my house. It's hard to say how it got in here, but it looks real angry. I don't think I'm gonna survive this one. I just wanted to say that I've…always…loved…MOOOOOOOO!!!"


text: Divxturka.net is using Redbunker! Because Redbunker is better than Hotfile, Netload and Rapidshare ! Click here and buy REDBUNKER premium account! Plot: A documentary on pro skateboarder Danny Way's tough childhood and his contributions to the sport, including footage of his jump over the Great Wall of China. Genre: Documentary IMDB rating: 6,3/10 from 124 users Directed by: Jacob Rosenberg Starring: Danny Way, Rob Dyrdek and Travis Pastrana Release Name: Waiting.for.Lightning.2012.LIMITED.BDRip.XviD-GECKOS Size: 700 MB Video: AVi | 624×352 | 873 Kbps Audio: English | MP3 | 130 Kbps Runtime: 1h 36mn Information: Code: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1634800/ Download: Code: Single Link No Extraction http://www.redbunker.net/o66j1r1y67z3/geckos-wfl2012-xvid.avi.html Screens:


text:
VideoHive Artificial Intelligence A.I 3581220
After Effects Project \ Openers \ 3D Object
After Effects Project - Artificial Intelligence A.I 3581220 by creativelab @ VideoHive
After Effects Project \ Openers \ 3D Object
After Effects Version: CS4, CS5, CS5.5, CS6; File Size: 490mb; Requires Plugins: No; Resolution: 1920x1080.
Main Futures.
-CS4, CS5, CS6 compatible
– Full HD resolution 1080p
– No additional plugin needed
- 3D Autodesk Maya Files Included
- Sfx included
- Audio is not included
"Artificial Intellegence" is, must say, my most robust project so far. The project is created to be really easy customized. It contains separate videoholder for every visible video(photo) place in this project.
I used lots of photos in preview movie, but you can use videos instead.
The flares and particles comes from Videocopilot's Optical flares and Trapcode Particular but I included the pre-rendered version in the file so YOU DON 'T NEED ANY PLUGINS .
Sfx and Autodesk Maya files are included with project files.
Audio is NOT included but you can find it on audiojungle.net. It is a track called Artificial Intelligence by Tim McMorris, great artist, by the way.
RECOMMENDED CONFIGURATION : i7 processor, 16GB RAM . Render time with recommended configuration approximately 6 hours.
Please check my other files in my portfolio and follow me on VideoHive.
Additional info about all of our project along with tutorial section about easy customization of purchased project you can find on after-effect-templates.com.
Keywords: 3d, animation, camera fly, clean, corporate, flares, hologram, hud, robot, white.


text:
Finding Treasures in Literacy
July 12-13, 2017
Shanty Creek Resort
Bellaire, MI
The Michigan Reading Association is an organization of people who believe that literacy is the key to transferring people's lives. Chartered in 1956 by the International Reading Association, MRA has grown to be the leader in providing literacy resources to teachers, parents and universities.
Ready to become a member of the Michigan Reading Association (or renew your membership)? You can sign-up/renew online.
Here are some of the benefits of membership:


text:
Open-Xchange and SugarCRM Partnership Established
Groupware solutions expert Open-Xchange and customer relationship management (CRM) provider SugarCRM are partnering to mutually integrate their solutions.
Open-Xchange and SugarCRM have made their partnership official. Users of the two software solutions will be able to transfer files from one to the other, according to the companies. This exchange should be possible for contact module data already, even while the project is still in a beta stage. Goal of the partnership is to make calendar and email functions compatible, according to SugarCRM cofounder Clint Oram.
Open-Xchange will provide the import and export functions based on Microformats.org, internally known as Open-Xchange Meta Format (in short, OXMF). Use cases also include managing files for social networks such as Xing and Facebook, possible through test accounts from Ox.io. Test participants should be aware, however, that the "catch" is that it's still in beta and that usernames and passwords for each social network will end up on the test servers.
Issue 199/2017
Buy this issue as a PDF
Red Hat Announces OpenShift.io
Red Hat takes its IDE online.
Microsoft Bakes Linux into Windows Server
Microsoft is slowly becoming a Linux vendor.
Fearless Coyote, Linux Kernel 4.11 is Out
The new kernel makes swap implementation more scalable, which will help cloud providers.
Docker Appoints Steve Singh CEO
The new CEO comes from a very strong SaaS background.
Docker Announces Linux Kit and Moby Project
Both projects help organizations build their own containerized systems.
Ubuntu Returns to Gnome as Its Mobile Plans Shatter
Mark Shuttleworth has resumed the position of CEO of Canonical.
Microsoft is Shutting Down CodePlex
Microsoft's open source code hosting platform CodePlex will come to an end after a more than 10-year stint.
Fedora 26 Alpha Released
Comes with Gnome 3.24
Old Linux Kernel Bug Discovered
The bug was introduced back in 2009 and has been lurking around all this time.
OpenSSH 7.5 Released
The new release deprecates the sshd_config UsePrivilegeSeparation option.


text:
Understanding and Developing Place as a Living Ecosystem (PART 2)
Workshop in Brittany, France, August 2015
Notes from the Field (PART 2)
This is PART 2 of a two-part series about my unique experience facilitating a Regenerative Development workshop in Brittany, France, this past August. PART 1 describes my intentions for the workshop, the process we went through over the 2.5 days, and highlights the key elements that I believe made the workshop a success. PART 2 presents our case study of the village of Crucuno where an ecovillage project is being planned; and the regenerative potential we uncovered for the project and the village.
PART 2: A Unique Region; A Fascinating Village
The Pays d'Auray on the Bay of Quiberon in the Morbihan, South Brittany, is undeniably one of the most beautiful regions in France. The fact that the whole area includes an exceptionally dense collection of megalithic sites (such as, for instance, the Carnac alignment shown on the picture on the right) makes it a unique and mysterious area. More than 3,000 prehistoric stone formations including alignments, tumuli, dolmen and menhirs have been erected there; many more are still hidden underground.
The workshop itself was held on the beautiful site of the 'Ecole Nationale de Voile' (National Sailing School), right on the bay. Despite the frequent rain during the workshop, this site provided an immediate contact with the local natural environment. (We decided at the last minute to incorporate a brief solo nature walk during the workshop to break the rhythm and give people an opportunity to see the site and reflect.)
The village of Crucuno, which is strangely subdivided in two different municipalities: Erdeven and Plouharnel, is located on a little hill a few kilometers north of the Bay of Quiberon in the countryside. Bernard Menguy, a local architect who participated to the workshop, found out after the workshop that the name of the village in the Breton language is "Krugunou." "Krug" means a "cairn" that is, a little artificial mount of stones specifically placed to specify a particular place. Menguy did not know the significance of "unou."
A huge dolmen, built c. 4000 years BC and classed as a historical monument, is located at the center of the village on the main plaza, in the municipality of Plouharnel. It consists of 9 massive standing stones supporting a 7.6-meter horizontal slab weighting more than 40 tons. The existing megalith is only the remaining element of a bigger monument—a tumulus, which included a 24-meter tunnel, the whole structure being originally entirely covered with smaller stones and earth. Over the years, people removed the smaller stones to build houses in the village. A house was built just a couple of feet from it, which seemed a violent refusal to acknowledge the likely sacred origin of the dolmen. That house has not been inhabited for many years and there are stories of illness and dysfunctional behavior in the family that occupied it. According to two megalith experts, Howard Crowhurst and his son David Crowhurst (who gave us a tour of the village), the dolmen is geometrically related to other megaliths in the area, including the "Quadrilatere" (another large arrangement of large stone a 10 minute walk from the dolmen) as well as the alignments in Carnac (see above picture), a town about 10 kilometers south of the village. Crucuno is being considered for addition to the UNESCO World Heritage's list.
Originally the village was mainly agricultural to support the local families. Today, farming has disappeared and many non-local people come here to retire. The village includes about 40 habitations, 4 or 5 of them being currently vacant. Crucuno seems lifeless but for the main road that cuts the village in two, which we were told, is mainly used as a shortcut to nearby towns by speeding cars. It is primarily a dormitory for families who work in the local towns of Auray or Vanne. The village has no school; no café; no grocery store; not even a church. An incinerator was built not far from the village, slowing down new developments and keeping property cost low. In 2014, a group organized against the incinerator hoping to have it closed while arguing for more ecological ways to manage waste in the area.
'Crucun 'O' Asis' – A project of Ecovillage in Crucuno
(Note: the name 'Crucu 'O' Asis' was dubbed by some participants with great humor during the workshop.)
Now a man in his early 40's, Jérôme Collet remembers visiting his grandparents who lived in Crucuno when he was a child (his grandmother still lives in the village). He decided to settle in the village late 2012 with the idea of building an ecovillage based on co-living spaces on a property he owns. Jérôme has an immune system disease and coming back to the countryside was for him an attempt to return to a more healthy life after an early productive career working for an industrial firm. His goal is to create a more conscious ways of living including new approaches to habitat, growing food, healthcare, education, mobility, clothing, and so on.
Jérôme's project is inspired by the Movement Colibris, an organization created by Pierre Rhabi who is one of the pioneers of ecological agriculture in France and internationally renown for his work against desertification. Project Oasis is the organization's most recent project aimed at facilitating the creation of hundreds of inspirational ecological and co-living places in both urban and rural French areas in less than 5 years. This September Movement Colibris is launching a national campaign with a goal to engage 36,000 French mayors in the Oasis projects. A few of such projects have already been built in France.
During the workshop, we considered Jérôme's project as part of a three-nested system framework (i.e., a holarchy) as shown on the picture. In a holarchy each system's purpose is to support and generate value for the system within which it is nested. While the ecovillage project has a huge potential to play a regenerative role for Crucuno (the 'proximate whole'), defining the 'greater whole' was less obvious for the group. We felt that the relationship was not geographical; instead, we believed that once it has retrieved its vibrancy and life, Crucuno could become a demonstration village with influence well beyond the local region. This impact could easily be amplified if the ecovillage became an official 'Project Oasis' within the network currently created by the Movement Colibris.
We found that the regenerative potential of Crucuno was extensive and, if realized, it could affect the 'Five Capitals' usually considered in a regenerative project: Human, Social, Ecological, Financial and Manufactured/Produced. Some ideas that we explicitly discussed during the workshop included, for instance, the need to rediscover local practices that were used in the "old days" to bring back local craftsmanship, thereby increasing human capitals.
The social capital could be enormous as long as the project and diverse interventions in the village enliven the interest, will and engagement of both local and new inhabitants to regenerate Crucuno, and help them rebuild relationships that have previously been broken. There is a need to reawaken peoples' self-esteem in order to, for instance, overcome the pattern of alcoholism that has plagued the village. We suggested creating a new local school since there are quite a few children, including Jérôme's children, in the village.
Jérôme is greatly interested in encouraging local farmers and perhaps young people to develop bio-agriculture and permaculture on unused agricultural land. A regional campaign to find new ways to manage waste could facilitate the closure of the incinerator, freeing new land for development and, thus, generating new ecological, financial and produced capitals.
Beyond the development of the ecovillage, many in the group mentioned the need to rehabilitate existing vacant buildings, increasing the built capital of the village. It will also be important to keep a close watch on the UNESCO World Heritage's list as such a label comes with both positive outcomes (e.g., funding opportunities, revenues from tourism, etc.) as well as potentially negatives ones such as loss of tranquility, pollution, unwanted and undesirable development and so on.
Since the goal of the workshop was not to perform a 'Story of Place' analysis, I never presumed that the group would be able to uncover "who" Crucuno is, i.e., its identity and vocation, in the very short time we had to broadly explore these aspects. We nevertheless collectively had some deep insights, which went well beyond my own expectations. The group intuitively defined the core purpose of Crucuno as one of creating connections: connections between people; between people and place; between the local community and the extended community of individuals interested in creating solutions that facilitate the transition to a more conscious way of life. To achieve its purpose, we suggested that Crucuno was using a core process of transmutation to evolve from one state to another. The core value generated via this process was life giving, creating harmony and health. While we cannot determine what the Essence, Identity, and Vocation of Crucuno are until we have completed the Story of Place research—and I do not know whether our insights are going toward the right direction—the three-fold ideas of 'creating connections,' 'transmutation,' and 'life giving, creating harmony and health' all resonated deeply with the group. Interestingly, we came up with these ideas in the last half an hour of the workshop and the energy in the circle at that time was quite high. I believe we all felt we were getting to something very important. Unfortunately, due to time limitation, we had to adjourn quite abruptly and we did not have time to ponder the implications of these ideas for the ecovillage project. Nevertheless, it seemed to us that we had connected to something quite powerful, which is nicely captured in a note that Jérôme sent me after the workshop in which he wrote:
"Merci pour ces 3 jours, c'était magique, tu nous as connecté à plus grand encore qu'imaginé…"
"Thank you for these 3 days, it was magical, you connected us to much more than imagined…"
And he humbly added:
"Ce projet ne m'appartient pas, je suis juste un serviteur pour quelque chose qui me dépasse et qui me guide…"
"This project does not belong to me, I am just a servant of something that is beyond me and that guides me…"
To me, one of the most significant contributions of the workshop to Jérôme's project—and one of the main contributions a regenerative process should make—is an increase in the level of energy and motivation of the local actors and stakeholders. Once again in the words of Jérôme:
"Nolwenn, Didier et Muriel sont super motivés. Nous allons avancer très vite, des réunions sont prévus dès cette semaine."
"Nolwenn, Didier and Muriel are super motivated. We are going to move forward very fast, meetings are already scheduled as soon as next week."
Feelings, which Nolwenn Bouillaud, who works with Jérôme on the project, confirmed by writing:
"Notre petit groupe de travail s'élargit comme la motivation…"
"Our little work group expands like the motivation…"
There is nothing more rewarding to me than the knowledge that a small group of well-intentioned individuals can over 3 days re-energize their levels of Being and Will to continue to passionately drive the planning, design and development of a project with the potential to regenerate a local community, if not a region. My humble contribution was to simply create a structure and facilitate a carefully designed process while providing some guidance. The village of Crucuno revealed its identity, vocation and desire for becoming to those who knew how to see and listen. The professionals involved observed the patterns and synthesized what they saw and heard while remaining connected to their hearts. Indeed, the whole workshop was impregnated with the participants' love and care for the village as well as for Jérôme and his project.
Love, perhaps that's the secret sauce! This is why I do this work!
Understanding and Developing Place as a Living Ecosystem (PART 1)
Workshop in Brittany, France, August 2015
Notes from the Field (PART 1)
These notes are PART 1 of a two-part series about my unique experience facilitating a Regenerative Development workshop in Brittany, France, this past August. PART 1 describes my intentions for the workshop, the process we went through over the 2.5 days, and highlights the key elements that I believe made the workshop a success. PART 2 presents our case study of the village of Crucuno where an ecovillage project is being planned; and the regenerative potential we uncovered for the project and the village.
PART 1: A Unique Workshop Experience
I was invited by my friend and colleague Anne Monmousseau, Executive Director of the University Terre&Mer (UTM), to facilitate a 2.5-day Regenerative Development learning experience for about 30 participants (architects; city planners; permaculture professionals; local change agents) on the beautiful peninsula of Saint-Pierre-Quiberon, in the Morbihan department, South Brittany, France. The theme of the event was: "Aménager le Territoire Comme un Ecosystème Vivant," which roughly translates as: "Understanding and Developing Place as a Living Ecosystem." The overall program included:
- A 3-hour presentation of the Regenerative Development approach (an approach developed by the Regenesis Group, Santa Fe, NM); (note: the PPT presentation can be seen on Slideshare)
- A visit to the village of Crucuno, about 10 km inland from the bay of Quiberon, where the future ecovillage will be located;
- Brief presentations from a few participants on diverse eco-systemic approaches to design and place-making;
- Multiple small and large groups' reflections on the impact of the regenerative development approach on design-built professional practices;
- Application of systemic frameworks on a variety of participants' projects to give participants 'a taste' of the regenerative approach;
- A preliminary exploration of the identity, vocation and regenerative potential of the village of Crucuno and of the ecovillage project. (Note: the goal of the workshop was not to perform a complete 'Story of Place,' a process that takes multiple weeks of work and research for a team of professionals.)
My Intent and Process for the Workshop
As I prepared for the workshop, I was reminded by my colleagues at the Regenesis Group that, beyond the development of my presentation and the design of the process itself, it was critical I prepare myself, i.e., be clear on my intent and purpose, my state of being and my will during the workshop. This was a great reminder of what Bill O'Brien, who served as CEO of Hanover Insurance, once said when asked to sum up his most important learning experience in leading profound change—he responded, "The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener." To that end, I asked my colleague Craig DeForest to coach me through that personal work.
Since it was my first visit in Brittany, I engaged in the process with no preconceived idea about the place, its people, or their past and future needs. I purposely held the attitude and curiosity of an explorer, trusting that what we needed to learn would emerge out of the place itself and the collective intelligence of the group. I aimed at creating a collaborative and co-creative environment where everyone involved could feel s/he had a contribution to make. I saw my role as one of orchestrating the process and guiding the participants in shared reflections and inquiries to help them gain new insights about 1) their professional practices; and 2) the vocation of Crucuno and the role the ecovillage project could play in regenerating the village and the surrounding area.
My purpose for the workshop, which I shared with the group on the first day, was:
"To engage you in a co-exploration of the potential of the regenerative development method and of its benefits, in a way that helps you develop a new perspective on the role you can play in regenerating Place and local communities, so that you may evolve your practices in a way that increase the regenerative potential and impact of your projects."
As I prepared for the workshop, I reflected on the type of experience I wanted to create for the participants in addition to the delivery of traditional learning objectives. I created a "system of products," which included:
- Learning Objectives:
- Awareness of the greater potential a project can realize when it is anchored in a deep understanding of the identity, vocation and potential of a Place and when it is understood as an instrument for regeneration (versus 'an end in itself').
- Understanding of the need for design-built professionals to shift from focusing on 'things' and problem solving to focusing on potential.
- Appreciation of the need to let go of professional 'ego' and preconceived ideas and, instead, tune in to what a "Place" may reveal of itself.
- Understanding of the benefits the use of systemic frameworks provide in guiding and expanding the inquiry and thinking process about a project.
- Awareness of the importance of self-reflection in regenerative work.
- Energized Participants' State of Being (during the workshop), allowing them to:
- Engage in deeper reflections about Place and the regenerative potential of the project.
- Increase the level of collaboration, cooperation, support and sharing.
- Create mutually beneficial relationships.
- Increased Level of Participants' Will (at the end and after the workshop) to:
- Be in service of Places and Communities.
- Continue to explore their regenerative role as professionals.
- Evolve their design-built practices.
I am fortunate to have had for audience a very engaged group of caring individuals and professionals who share the same vision for, and actively work toward, the emergence of a more conscious, mindful, collaborative and creative society where humans and nature co-evolve and live in harmony with one another. I am deeply grateful for the spirit of collaboration and co-creation present throughout the workshop, the depth and quality of the reflections and the numerous insights that were shared. I am also impressed by the level of support, care and love that impregnated the workshop throughout. Over the 3 days, a palpable energy field emerged that carried us through our process, deepening our relationships and investigation, helping us going deeper and deeper into our inquiry. A few process elements, I believe, participated in the emergence of this field:
- Except during my presentation on the first morning and small-group project activity on day 2, we remained in a large circle thus creating a sense of unity and wholeness at the group level. This sense of wholeness was not broken by the departure or arrival of a few participants throughout the 3 days.
- Each day, we began with a centering/grounding visualization exercise facilitated by Anne Monmousseau to bring the participants "into the room."
- At the beginning and end of each morning and afternoon session, we asked participants to check-in or out by sharing one single word that came to their minds. The approach was not only effective in getting the pulse of 30 people relatively quickly but, more importantly, it helped each person focus on the essence of what s/he was thinking/feeling/processing; this created a collective picture of where the whole group was at different stages of the process.
- Each session included small-group reflections on important questions. For instance, we began the first day with a reflection on: "Why does the Planet need me to evolve my professional practices and in what way should my practices evolve?" On the second day, after a brief imaging exercise, we broke into 3 groups to perform a Bohmian dialogue around the questions: "What personal or professional transformation is required in order to create and sustain the vitality and viability of the regenerative environment that you have previously imaged? What's your level of Will to realize that vision?" On the third morning, before engaging in the exploration of the identity and potential of Crucuno and the regenerative role of the Ecovillage project, I asked: "What should we remain aware of, and sensitive about, to ensure the quality of our reflection? What barriers or constraints are we imposing on ourselves that we need to transcend?"
- The debriefing of each group activities included "meta" level questions, which helped participants reflect on their learning and personal experience. For instance, after the Dialogue on Day 2, I asked: "In what way did this reflection/dialogue change your way of thinking?" and "What did you feel during this exercise? What was your level of energy?"
Such carefully designed processes, crafted questions and mindful intentions for the workshop are essential ingredients in creating a powerful container for co-creation and emergence (and are typical of the work of regenerative practitioners who have trained with the Regenesis Group).
Intertwined with all of these design elements was the palpable energy of the place itself. Crucuno and its megaliths are unique: the massive dolmen at the center of the village, the "Quadrilatere" not very far from it (another impressive megalith site) and the stories that a local shared all had a huge impact on the group experience. We all felt this unique energy and the sense of Place when visiting the village (you can read about Crucuno in PART 2). The theme of the megaliths remained ever present in our conversations to the extent that some people felt that an over emphasis on them was, somehow, taking us away from our main purpose—that was to uncover the distinctive characteristics of Crucuno and its vocation. Their mysterious aura is indeed impossible to ignore and is reinforced by the fact we know so little about them.
A Journey to Be Continued
During the afternoon of the last day, a few of us met to debrief our experience and discuss possible next steps. Many participants shared their "positive frustrations" about the fact they felt they had only skimmed the surface and that they were still hungry to learn more about the regenerative approach. A few had assumed the workshop would be a conventional training and had come with the intention to learn a methodology and specific set of tools they could apply afterward. This, however, had never been the intent and in the future, I need to be paying more attention to the way such a workshop is being advertised.
My objective wasn't to deliver a training and I did not expect participants to fully grasp the regenerative frameworks that supported our inquiry. One of my goals was to give participants a sense of the potential of the approach. But more importantly, and as stated in my purpose statement and the "system of products," my intention was to mainly engage them in a reflection of the greater potential a project can realize when it is anchored in a deep understanding of the identity, vocation and potential of a Place and when it is understood as an instrument for regeneration. I wanted them to appreciate how a shift from focusing on the functional aspects of a project to focusing on how Place and its vocation can unlock the energy around a project and uncover possibilities beyond what could have been assumed at the onset. Considering the desire from many in the room to continue the learning process, I believe we began to realize this objective.
Building on the momentum, I suggested the University Terre&Mer (UTM) to create a Regenerative Lab under their umbrella to continue to support the ecovillage project of Crucuno. I committed to work with members of the Regenesis Group to create a course in French that incorporates core elements of The Regenerative Practitioner Series in addition to a "Story of Place" applied training on the village of Crucuno—the whole thing delivered through the Lab. I also plan to work with UTM to define the organizational principles of the Lab, which of course needs to operate as a regenerative entity. UTM will search for funding to support the activities of the Lab and will organize a second workshop on Regenerative Development next year.
I want to end these notes with a quote from an email sent to me after the workshop by the architect Bernard Menguy:
"Merci à toi également pour le message « régénérant » que tu as fait passer, pour qu'il devienne régénératif, la mise en place de la formation que tu proposes d'étudier est essentielle. Je reste dans l'attente d'en savoir plus."
"Thank you also for the 'enlivening' message you brought to us, for it to become regenerative, the course you proposed is essential. I look forward to learning more."
I want to thank my colleagues Ben Haggard and Joel Glanzberg from the Regenesis Group and Craig DeForest, an independent consultant, for their input and support as I prepared for the workshop. Their suggestions on the process and their help in preparing me to facilitate it were tremendous.
I am deeply grateful to Anne Monmousseau who saw the potential in presenting the Regenerative Development Approach to a French audience and who fully trusted my ability to deliver a powerful learning experience. There is no magic in that, considering the quality of the events offered by UTM to support the transition to a more sustainable economy, the organization is able to attract people of integrity and high-level consciousness—a strong element that contributed to the positive outcomes of the workshop. Many thanks to the UTM staff and other helpers, who took care of all the logistics, captured pictures, and recorded the event, which allowed me to concentrate on my work.
Generative Strategies for Increased Value Creation
In my previous post, I suggested that the process of reframing is essential to opening the door to new possibilities for the future when addressing the root causes of complex problems. The ability to reframe is key to creating disruptive innovations that have a lasting and positive impact on society.
Building up on this idea, this new post focuses on generative strategies and the unfolding of solutions for increased value creation. The adjective 'generative' means 'able to produce,' as in, 'the generative power of life force'. Generative strategies are life giving because they unlock the potential existing in a system. They emerge out of a learning and creative process in which an organization or group of stakeholders challenge business as usual, disrupt the status quo, and reframe their challenge or situation. Generative strategies deliver outcomes at the whole system level and create value for all key stakeholders involved and beyond.
To illustrate the power of generative strategies, I present three stories:
1) A community-based stormwater management strategy in Portland, Oregon;
2) The creation of a new community ecosystem by the Brattleboro Coop in New England;
3) The 'marriage' of two different library organizations operating collaboratively under a same roof: the Martin Luther King Library in San José, California.
Community-Based Stormwater Management in Portland, Oregon
The City of Portland has gained an international reputation for being a leader in the deployment of creative approaches for sustainable stormwater management [1]. Traditional approaches to stormwater management consist of building sewer infrastructure systems to manage sewage and stormwater and prevent overflows into rivers and streams. Prompted by an environmental lawsuit in 1991, the State of Oregon and the City of Portland agreed to build a new Combined Sewer Overflow tunnel on the East side of the Willamette River, for a total cost of $1.4 billion. The new "big pipe" — a tunnel of 22 feet in diameter and six miles long, which was completed in 2011, currently manages more than 94% of the volume of combined sewage and stormwater that used to overflow into the Willamette river [2]. While such infrastructure projects provide an important service to urban communities, they are very costly and cause environmental problems when heavy rainfall exceeds the storage capacity of the pipes and untreated sewage, stormwater and other toxic wastes get discharged into waterways, creating risks for human health and the health of watersheds. In Portland, I have heard that the new CSO would run at almost capacity while just completed. Realizing that the on-going focus on building "big pipes" is a financially and ecologically unsustainable strategy in the long-term, the City of Portland actively sought a more creative and more sustainable approach to its stormwater management problem — one that does not consider stormwater as a waste but instead as a precious asset for the community.
In 2006, Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services (BES) launched the Clean River Rewards program — an initiative that engages the community in the management of stormwater at the source, on private properties [3]. BES grants stormwater utility discounts and provides financial incentives to property owners who invest in stormwater green infrastructure projects. The management of stormwater requires property owners to disconnect their downspouts from the sewer system and manage stormwater with green solutions such as rain barrels, cisterns, rain garden, bio-swales, and green roofs.
The program generates a whole range of benefits and positive outcomes for the municipality and the whole community. First, by leveraging private investments, the City is able to reallocate scarce resources to the projects that need them the most. Second, onsite stormwater management techniques create many environmental benefits such as cleaner rivers and streams, healthy watersheds, and wildlife closer to the urban environment. Third, green infrastructures are aesthetically appealing and increase the value of the private properties. Finally, the program supports the development of a local green economy and, potentially, the creation of new jobs, as property owners seek the service of suppliers and contractors to implement the stormwater management projects.
The program was certainly not easy to implement and required a shift in the way diverse stakeholders saw their respective roles within the community. For instance, some citizens believed it was not theirs but the responsibility of the City to manage stormwater infrastructure. The community had to be educated on the needs to improve the quality of the watershed and on the benefits of green infrastructures. In addition, not any green infrastructure can be implemented on a given property due to soil characteristics and other physical attributes; thus, the involvement of a technical expert is required to guarantee the correct project design. Despite many apparent barriers, internally within BES and, externally, within the community, the program was nevertheless successfully launched; it included the city's financial incentives and discounts as well as access to relevant resources and a new online registration process for property owners.
Brattleboro Coop: From Energy Efficiency to Creating a New Community Ecosystem
Bill Reed, Principal Consultant at Regenesis and Integrative Design Collaborative, presented the story of Bratteboro Coop in his Keynote Address for the AIA National Convention in May 2007 on the theme: 'A Living Systems Approach to Design' [4]. The Brattleboro Coop is a wonderful example of an organization that embarked on a journey of creative thinking to generate high value, not only for itself, but also for the community in which it is embedded. In the words of Bill Reed:
"The Brattleboro Coop is a Grocery store that wanted to build a high performance LEED building. In particular, they wanted to generate innovative solutions to their energy use. It was observed that the energy expended in shipping food to the store was far higher than the energy used to operate the building (an average of 3,000 miles per bite of food in New England.) Moreover, their high dependence on shipped food made their business highly vulnerable to disruptions in the supply chain (e.g. a trucker's strike, fuel costs). The project became one of engaging them in a process that looked at the energies involved in the system as a whole.
As a result, the coop envisioned an entirely new role for itself. Not only will it work to model low energy use in its building, it has become a sponsor for local agriculture and regenerating the soil that had been significantly compromised after 300 years of poor farming and wood extraction practices. They are discussing the reprogramming of this 'grocery store' to potentially grow into an agriculture and soil extension service, a cannery, a place for hunters to dress meat, a day-care center, and a credit union. The overall aim is to catalyze the evolution back to a regenerated system for local agriculture and community sustainability. The aspirations of the people and the patterns of place were aligned and new potential was created in an evolving program. The building process became a catalyst for a long-term and living system perspective. They are now using this work as the basis to develop a 100 year plan for the Coop and the region."
What strikes me in this story is the particular way the challenge was reframed, beyond the short-term need to reduce energy used in the building, to encompass a broader long-term vision that considered the new role the Coop might play within its community. By creating new relationships, the Coop was able generate multiple and diverse outcomes: the revival of a community through the creation of local jobs; the respect of the "place" and its ecology through local agriculture; new community services; and overall, a healthier and more resilient community.
I want to emphasize Bill's last point that "the building process became a catalyst for a long-term and living system perspective." Any project, initiative or strategic planning process can become a catalyst for the development of generative strategies. The process requires a shift in thinking from 'fixing a problem' to uncovering the potential already present in the system; a willingness to ask new questions grounded in a whole system perspective and a long-term view; that an on-going focus on delivering outcomes for the whole system as opposed to achieving isolated goals.
Martin Luther King Library: A Miracle on 4th Street, San José, California [5]
San José Martin Luther King Library (King Library) is one-of-a-kind in the United States: never before has the 'mariage' of two such different institutions as a university library and a city library been attempted. Allowing a community of patrons as diverse as young children, teens, senior citizens, university students and faculty to meet under the same roof is a revolutionary experiment that redefines a library's mission as one of supporting a whole community, with all its diversity. The idea of a joint library was born in 1996 from the minds of two visionaries – former San José mayor Susan Hammer and former San José State University president Robert Caret – who successfully broke the pattern of indifference and disdain, which had been representative of the relationship between the two entities over decades. Indeed, on the one hand, the city of San José had been struggling over the years with urban decay downtown; the university, on the other hand, faced internal cultural changes and had become very insular. Very little was shared between the two institutions. However, with Caret and Hammer, things began to change. On her side, Hammer viewed the urban university as a main "player" in restructuring downtown. On his side, Caret considered San José State to be a "metropolitan university" and started to develop partnerships that benefited both the university and the community. Both the city and the university had inadequate libraries and were in need of more space; neither of them, however, had a budget that permitted them to expand on their own. Both Hammer and Caret realized that by bringing their resources together, they could build a landmark building that neither could afford alone. The result was a $177.5 million library jointly funded by the university and the city.
The challenges faced by the King Library project team were daunting at many levels: contextual, operational, organizational, cultural, procedural, technical and architectural. Because there was no precedent for a joint library, they had to innovate to combine their respective operational needs into a single set of requirements, while maintaining the integrity of two completely different cultures. The library had to provide "seamless services" to its users. But the novelty of the concept was such that many believed the experiment would fail. Opposition to the project quickly developed on both sides: The difference of users' needs – from a graduate student working on a thesis to a toddler playing near-by – was perceived as a gap that could not be filled. Yet, despite the complexity of the project and the inherent uncertainties faced by the "two-headed" client and the project team, the King Library project was an overall success and the facility was delivered on time, below budget and without a single claim.
King Library is not the result of a miracle, as some people believed. The project owes much of its success to an outstanding facilitation process by local architecture firm Anderson-Brulé Architects (ABA) that was hired to facilitate the feasibility study and the development of a joint operation plan and remained an active participant until the completion of the project. When, at the earliest stages of the project, the question in everyone's mind was "What if…," ABA challenged the client team to answer questions such as: "How would you do this?" "What gets in your way?" "What would stop you?" "How could you move past that thing that stops you?" The focus on "how" provided a structure to librarians' discussions and ensured that the team members were maintaining their focus on important questions. ABA encouraged the librarians to work in a creative way, while also providing a structure that allowed the librarians to slowly adapt to their challenge. The more the librarians interacted with one another, the more positive feedback was created, which reinforced the meaning of their collaborative activities. The earlier tensions within the project team slowly evolved into "creative battles" for solving problems in a way that benefitted both organizations.
Throughout the process, the client team developed a new "identity" that was formulated around a new operational, functional and cultural personality. The team's emerging identity and collaborative attitude became contagious and was re-emphasized at each main project phase, as new participants got involved. The project collaborative philosophy helped overcome many obstacles and enabled the alignment of the goals of hundreds, if not thousands, of people involved in making King Library a reality.
To conclude, here is a summary of the commonalities between the projects presented:
- Shift in mindset — from 'business as usual' to believing something greater can be achieved. The vision becomes an attractor and a powerful force that brings life and creative energy to the project.
- Long-term view — because the sustainability and resilience of living systems operate in the long-term.
- Potential-driven process — these projects do not focus on solving a given problem but on unlocking the inherent potential that exists in a given organization or system to uncover new possibilities. Generative strategies emerge out of the context and history of the place and/or system.
- Relationship-driven process — the value of collaboration and partnerships is recognized as essential to achieving greater outcomes for the whole community and the environment. By pulling together the necessary skills and resources, new ties are created that are in themselves, generative.
- Open system — these projects redefine and expand the problem's boundaries to generate higher value.
- Reframing — the questions we ask influence our answers. All generative processes are learning processes that are inherently transformative.
- Focus on the 'how'— there is nothing more inspiring than joining our efforts to co-create solutions that are truly innovative for the greater good.
- Trust — often not present at the outset of a project, trust between stakeholders must be consciously developed to enable a cooperative culture.
- Transformative — generative projects shift the way participants see themselves and the role they play within the larger ecosystem.
- Development of new capacity — Generative projects offers a creative learning environment where new skills and capacities are being developed.
[1] Portland Sustainable Stormwater Management: http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bes/34598
[2] EPA (2009). Portland Launches a Stormwater Marketplace. Nonpoint Source News-Notes. February 2009. Issue #86.
[3] Portland Clean Rivers Reward Program: http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bes/41976
[4] Reed, Bill (2007). A Living Systems Approach to Design. Keynote Address for the AIA National Convention in May 2007.
[5] Benne, Beatrice (2005). Doctoral Dissertation: Managing AEC Project Organizations at the Edge of Chaos: An Analysis of AEC Projects Adaptive Capacity from a Living Systems Perspective. University of Berkeley. (Note: for King Library story see Chapter 5).
Roughly, this is how the story went:
The Stanford Graduate School of Business offers a multi-disciplinary course called Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability. In 2007, the course challenged student teams to design an incubator for developing countries that would cost less than 1% of the price of a traditional $20,000 incubator. Some members of the student teams were sent to Nepal to visit local hospitals, speak with stakeholders, and inquire about users' needs.
During their visit, the members of one team observed that the hospitals had many baby incubators yet these incubators were empty. Intrigued, they inquired with the local doctors and staff about why it was the case. They learned that while price of the incubators is important, hospitals have to deal with the fact that 80% of babies in Nepal are born at home; women living in the countryside and giving birth to a premature baby are usually unable to bring their baby to the city hospitals because it is too costly to do so and because they have no means to transport their baby safely. Indeed, one of the main criteria for babies' survival is hypothermia: babies are not able to regulate their own temperature; hence babies need a device to keep them very warm.
This was a big "Aha" moment for the student team who realized that the 'users' were not necessarily the hospitals but mothers in rural areas who need to keep their premature babies warm; however, there isn't always electricity in rural areas to use a traditional incubator. Moreover, mothers potentially need to transport their babies safely to a hospital for further care. Hence, the team reframed the problem around the specific needs of mothers living in the countryside, with no electricity.
The story of the team learning journey and design process is fascinating; unfortunately, it would take too long to recall here. The solution they developed is astonishing in terms of the innovation it represents, its technical ingenuity; its shear simplicity and beauty; and the obvious love and empathy that the product emanates throughout. Now produced by embraceglobal.org — a company subsequently created by some of the student team members — the product is "an innovative, low cost infant warmer" that looks like "a miniature sleeping bag that incorporates a phase change material, which stays at a constant temperature for up to 6 hours." (See a picture of the Embrace Infant Warmer.)
This story offers many important lessons about the process of innovation, creativity and problem solving for social change. Questions that intrigued me most are:
• How does a design team learning process evolve from focusing on developing "a cheap incubator" (I like to think of it as a "cheap box") to a safe warmer device that saves lives? In other words, how does the process of reframing take place? And why is it important?
• Why is it that only one of all the teams involved in the design challenge came up with such a reframing of the challenge, hence a completely different solution to the problem?
• Why is it that the Embrace team could not find any interest for taking their innovation, i.e., the "low cost infant warmer," to the next stage of development? Indeed, the organizations involved with the course thought that, "because governments in developing countries are trying to get women to give birth in hospitals instead of at home, the group thought Embrace was "too much for a home setting"[1]. In other words, despite addressing a 'real' user need, the Embrace solution did not meet the 'accepted' perceived needs and requirements of the main stakeholders.
I will not answer these questions directly here. I will only says this: I believe that the teams, groups, organizations, communities, local governments and so on, who are able to successfully address the complex challenges of our times are the ones who are able to reframe their problems — usually by reframing a technical problem (e.g., a cheaper "box") into an adaptive challenge (e.g., saving babies lives); by moving away from addressing symptoms to uncovering root causes of the issues; and by believing that solutions to deeper issues exist and are achievable. This is indeed hard work. The process is inherently collaborative and requires us to challenge our assumptions and beliefs. It forces us to overcome our doubts and fears about challenging the status quo and fears of potential failure. It demands that we rise to our highest potential and address the "impossible." But as the Embrace team demonstrates, even what seems impossible can be overcome — with a combination of love, empathy, collaboration and hard work!
This is the way I want to address complex problems. Will you join me?
Note: I first heard about the story of the Embrace team and of their innovative solution by watching a documentary video produced and realized by Corey Ford, an adjunct faculty at the Design MBA at the California College or the Arts, while I was sitting in Corey's Venture Studio class early on this year. I found this story deeply moving and rich in lessons on how to address complex social issues. It is a success story on how to make a difference in the world. We need more stories like this one.
[1] You can find a more in-depth overview of this story on the Stanford Graduate School of Business website: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm1109/embrace_chen.html
Summer 2012 Courses
This post is to announce course sessions that my colleague Andrew J. Campbell and I will be co-facilitating this summer.
The Art of Spontaneity
Andrew will be spending the month of June in the Bay Area and we are offering three learning journeys on the theme: The Art of Spontaneity.
We have chosen the Mission District in San Francisco near Dolores Park and Lake Merritt in Oakland as locations for our informal gatherings, which will take place outside in the neighborhoods. Please see the brochure for more background on the learning journeys. The cost of the course is $40 per person and does not include lunch. There are plenty of restaurants and sandwich places in both locations for us to get our lunch.
Each session will include a maximum of 10 participants. We will meet at 9:30 AM and will end at 5:30 PM. Please register to the session of your choice and see logistics information for each session in Eventbrite :
Mission District (Dolores Park): Friday June 15 — Friday June 22
Lake Merritt: Saturday, June 16
For more information, please contact me: email@example.com
We look forward to seeing you there!
"The only real way to develop strategy is to use a process where one goes to 'primary knowing,' tapping into source and then listening deeply, moment to moment as the path unfolds—walking the path as it is created."
~ Joseph Jaworski, in conversation with Andrew Campbell, 2008.
Transformative Learning in Business
Last weekend, I had the pleasure to be on a panel on the topic of Transformative Learning in Business. This conversation with Sabine Amend, Elizabeth Dolan, Louise Hansell, and David Hodgson, our panel facilitator, was recorded on Saturday, April 14th, 2012. It was part of a summit Re-Imagining Learning: A Virtual Summit on Transformative Learning hosted by Meridian University.
Here is the recording:
Demystifying the Pattern(s) of Change: A Common Archetype
We are all familiar with it because we have ridden its wave many times in our lives. Some of us have developed the wisdom to embrace it when it arises; others are still resisting it, stricken by anxiety and fear when sensing it's coming. Most of us, not always happily, are accepting it as an avoidable element of life. Perhaps a few have learned to enjoy it. We hate to be forced into it and we have become skilled at finding ways to turn our back to it, often in denial. Yet, avoiding it only makes its process more difficult; it will return. When we must face it, we too often try to control it. Of course, you know what 'beast' I am speaking about. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you "CHANGE!"
Perhaps it is time we get to know the 'beast' and learn about its chameleon-like personality. Depending on the context where it has been analyzed, it bears different names and has been depicted slightly differently. But as you are about to learn, it seems to follow pretty much the same pattern—it is in fact, an archetype. Indeed, the process of change is nothing else than the evolutionary pattern of life and creativity—a pattern that pervades the entire Universe.
I begin the inquiry with the well-known story of the birth of the butterfly. Next, I use complexity and chaos theories to shine some light onto the evolutionary pattern of change. Finally, I borrow from other fields of inquiry such as chemistry, ecology, organization theory, story telling, mythology and the creative process to show the similarities in the way the process of change has been described from these different perspectives.
The Birth of a Butterfly
A real miracle, the birth of the butterfly is an irreversible transformation, in the chaos of the pupa. Evolution biologist Elisabeth Sahtouris tells the story:
"Inside a cocoon, deep in the caterpillar's body, tiny things biologists call 'imaginal disks' begin to form. Not recognizing the newcomers, the caterpillar's immune system snuffs them. But they keep coming faster and faster, then begin to link up with each other. Eventually the caterpillar's immune system fails from the stress and the disks become imaginal cells that build the butterfly from the meltdown of the caterpillar's body.
If we see ourselves as imaginal discs working to build the butterfly of a better world, we will also see how important it is to link with each other in the effort, to recognize how many different kinds of imaginal cells it will take to build a butterfly with all its capabilities and colors."
The butterfly story has become a metaphor for social change, as our old systems are slowly collapsing to hopefully give rise to a vision of human society in which people live in harmony with others and with nature.
Complex Adaptive Systems Adaptation at the Edge of Chaos
Without going too deep into the theories, complexity science and the theory of complex adaptive systems teach us that complex adaptive systems (CAS) and living systems (LS) adapt to changes occurring in their environment in a state away from dynamic equilibrium, at the edge of chaos—a paradoxical transition phase of simultaneous stability and instability. At the edge of chaos, when the conditions are right, the components of CAS and LS are able to spontaneously self-organize, without any blueprint. The result is the emergence of new structures of higher-level order and new patterns of organization better adapted to the environment. This creative process, taking a system from dynamic equilibrium to the edge of chaos, and, then, to a higher state of order, coherence and wholeness is depicted on Figure 2. It is important to note that emergence is never a guarantee. When the system does not have the required learning capacity to creatively self-organize and transform, it may go through an immergence—a process of disintegration and complete breakdown.
The Evolutionary Path of Chaotic Systems
Obviously, a system may go through multiple phases of change throughout its life—alternating between periods of stability and instability, continuity and discontinuity, order and chaos. The pattern described in the previous section, when viewed from an evolutionary perspective, looks like Figure 3. The system progressively moves away from equilibrium until it takes a deep dive toward the "Chaos point" where the bifurcation resides: from there, the system may take a breakthrough path or a breakdown path (Laszlo, 2010). And the process repeats throughout the life cycle of the system.
Order Arising from Disorder in Dissipative Structures
Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003) won the 1977 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on dissipative structures, which demonstrates that order can arise from disorder. Prigogine showed that, left on its own, a mixture of specific substances in a dish results in a chemical reaction that creates concentric patterns spiraling for several hours at the surface of the dish (Fig. 4). The ordered patterns represent a decrease in entropy (i.e., increase in order) within the dish—entropy that is dissipated to the environment. Here again, when energy and matter flow between an open system and its environment, order and patterns emerge when the system is far from thermodynamic equilibrium, i.e., at the edge of chaos.
Four Phases of the Adaptive Cycle of Natural Ecosystems
Researchers have discovered that natural ecosystems proceed through recurring cycles consisting of four phases: rapid growth, conservation, release, and reorganization (Walker and Salt, 2006). A description of the nature of these phases, including examples of how they can be interpreted in the realm of social organizations is as follow:
- The Exploitation Phase (r Phase) is a period of rapid growth. The components of a system are weakly interconnected and act independently without the need for much regulation. (e.g., a business start-up phase.)
- The transition from the r Phase to the Conservation Phase (K Phase) proceeds incrementally. Connections between agents in the system increase and resources (energy and materials) slowly accumulate. Specialization and economy of scale develop for greater efficiency. The system becomes more strongly regulated. Growth rate slows down and the system loses some flexibility. The system becomes more vulnerable to disturbance. (e.g., a medium to large business that perhaps grows from a local producer to a national and then global company.)
- The transition from the K Phase to the Release Phase (Omega Phase) may be sudden. The system's resilience is not sufficient to absorb the trigger or disturbance and its structure breaks down. (e.g., an organization or industry facing a disruptive technology or a market shock.)
- The Reorganization Phase (Alpha Phase) is a chaotic phase of great uncertainty where all options are open. This phase where creativity, innovation, experimentation pay off leads to renewal of the system. Novel combinations of species can generate new possibilities that will be tested in the future. Of course, the possibility for system collapse is always present in this phase where success is never guaranteed. (e.g., innovations in an organization or the emergence of a new market.)
In Figure 6, I have superposed the four Adaptive Cycle Phases of ecosystems onto the Adaptive process of living systems at the edge of chaos graph to show the overlap of the different phases:
- The Conservation Phase K at the state of dynamic equilibrium.
- The Release Phase Ω, as the system's structure starts to breakdown faced with disturbances (internal and external).
- The Reorganization Phase a, a chaotic phase of learning, creativity and self-organization.
- The Exploitation Phase r, when the system reaps the benefits of its transformation and grows, before its growth starts to slow down and the system enters a new K Phase.
Theory U
Otto Scharmer's seminal work on Theory U provides another perspective of the process of change, albeit applied to social systems. Theory U depicts a method or process to help individuals and groups move through different stages of cognition, while deepening the level of learning and insights from one stage to another. The different stages of cognition are: downloading; seeing; sensing; presencing; crystallizing; prototyping; performing and embodying (Scharmer, 2007).
One should not fail to notice the similarity and overlap between the adaptive process of complex adaptive systems at the edge of chaos (Fig. 2) and the U Movement (Fig. 7). A social system in a stage of downloading operates at a dynamic equilibrium, maintaining its performance through the application of routines and best practices. Faced with the need to change, the system may start challenging its old assumptions and worldviews. As it does so, it begins to see reality with fresh eyes and uncovers deeper patterns that perhaps kept the system stuck. Slowly, the system is becoming aware of the fact that its own structure is, in fact, responsible for creating the behaviors that need to change. Entering next the stage of 'not-knowing' the system becomes more open to authentic learning, and potentially able to connecting to a deeper source of knowledge and insights. This stage is often uncomfortable, as the system must remain there long enough, at the edge of chaos, for self-organization and emergence to occur. This is a highly creative state, should one be patient enough to accept the confusion in which one might find oneself. In a state of Presencing, when insights arise, knowing what decisions to make and strategy to implement seem very straightforward: the path ahead is now obvious: the system starts prototyping and testing the new ideas and strategies and eventually, implementing them at a large scale. Eventually, the system achieves a higher state of knowing and level of consciousness—a new dynamic equilibrium.
The Three Act Story Structure
I find it quite interesting that the basic three act story structure used in plays or movies follows a similar pattern (Fig. 8a and Fig. 8b). In the Beginning act, the characters in their normal life situation are introduced (i.e., at their dynamic equilibrium). Slowly, the story develops, describing the situation and "conflict" the characters face, i.e., the disruption in their lives. In the Middle act, the story develops through a series of complications and obstacles (some resolved, others unresolved) finally leading to the ultimate tension and crisis—the Climax. In the final act, the End, the climax and the issues are rapidly resolved and the tension dissipates.
This story structure has been used through the ages all over the world in myths and tales to reflect the pattern of our personal and collective struggles: it represents the pattern of life and transformation and was captured eloquently by Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, which I'll describe next.
The Hero's Journey
The Hero's Journey has three main phases, each including multiple steps. In the first phase—Departure—the hero is presented with a call for adventure, the initial indication that something is going to change. Often, the hero refuses the call because of all the familiar reasons of inertia, fear, sense of inadequacy and so on. When the hero finally commits, s/he may often receive the help of a supernatural protective figure. This is the point when the hero must cross the threshold, i.e., go through an ordeal to move from the every day world to the world of adventure. The hero enters the "belly of the whale" which represents the final separation between the old world/self and the potential for a new world/self.
The second phase—Initiation—is marked by a series of adventures that test the hero's ability to move to the next stage of his/her development. Even though supernatural helpers will often support the hero through his journey, s/he might fail some of the tests. The meeting with the goddess is a critical phase when the hero experiences unconditional love and begins to see her/himself in a non-dualistic way. The hero will eventually have to face the monster, wizard, or warrior in the final battle (climax of the journey). This is the ultimate test when the transformation takes place: the 'monster' i.e., the 'old self' in the hero must be 'killed' so that the new self comes into being.
The final phase—Return—is not as easy as it might seem. It is often as dangerous to be returning from the journey, as it was to embark in it. The hero may need the help of guides, especially if the transformative experience has weakened him or her. So the hero must again cross the threshold of adventure and do so while preserving the wisdom gained on the quest. S/he must find ways to integrate all the learning into human life and share it with other—not a trivial thing to do. The hero must be master of two worlds, i.e., able to achieve a balance between the material and spiritual worlds. As a result the hero gains a new level of mastery: the freedom from the fear of death, which is the freedom to live.
In the Hero's Journey, we once again witness the same pattern of becoming. As personal life crisis or challenges pushes us to leave the comfort of our everyday routine (stable state), one is faced with the choice of accepting or refusing the call of adventure. Accepting the call forces us to move to the edge and face our own demons. The more we are able to let go of the old ways of thinking and patterns of behavior—a process often felt as an internal "death"—the more we can learn and transform ourselves until we emerge from the abyss, through the process of rebirth, as a new Being, able to operate at a higher level of complexity and wholeness. The challenge is then to integrate the learning into our lives and ways of being so that we can act from a different place—a place of increased wisdom and love.
The Creative Process
The transformative change process is a highly creative process very similar to the process that artists go through when they authentically create. As art psychologist Anton Ehrenzweig (1967) explains, the creative process is related to the primary process when the unconscious scans the chaotic oceanic state of undifferentiated order (i.e., a state where everything is connected and whole). In contrast to the conscious state, which per nature fragments and differentiates, the unconscious is able to access the great complexity of undifferentiated structures that are at the origin of dreams and unconscious phantasy. For the artist, the challenge is to tap into undifferentiated order without letting the ego take control over the process by creating defensive and rigid responses when stressed with the anxiety that inevitably is associated with the chaotic phase. When the ego is able to yield a shift of control, the unconscious becomes a source of insights, which the conscious mind can use, in the secondary process, through a process of dedifferentiation as the mind returns to a conscious state of awareness to exploit the insight and create something new.
The work of the artist Jackson Pollock is, for that matter, particularly interesting. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that what one might dismiss as "random" drips of painting, are actually an in-depth, intuitive study of "certain features of fluid dynamics" where the artist uses physics as its partner in this seemingly co-creative process — and he performed this before any physicists thought of studying fluid dynamics (see article: The Cutting_Edge Physics of Jackson Pollock, Wired Magazine, July 5, 2011).
The primary process, which I believe is identical to a state of Presencing (Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, Flowers, 2004), is an embodied experience of pre-cognition and of sensing the whole; it requires breaking up the pattern of thought while awakening the creative unconscious mind. This process is source of direct and intuitive knowledge that often emerges in a flash of understanding. Any individual, whether in the arts, science, or in other creative domains (including management) must have the capacity to navigate this process in order to be creative.
Through the review of diverse models, I aimed to demonstrate that whether in the domain of nature, social systems, or individual creativity, the process of transformative change follows the same evolutionary pattern. The process is very much fractals in that it operates in a similar fashion at the level of an individual, group, organization, but also at the level of society, nature/ecology and at the level of the whole universe. I believe that by gaining some familiarity with the pattern and its related phases one might be able to identify where we are in the process at any given time, make sense of the confusion when it arises and be better equipped to ride the wave of change. In addition, it is critical to learn which specific tools are best appropriate to facilitate each one of the phases so that to meet their requirements and achieve their respective purposes. Finally, one must develop the capacity to maintain ourselves, at the edge of chaos, using our unconscious as a means to access deeper insights. Accomplishing all the above requires commitment and practice. It also begins with engaging our heart in the process so that to not let us paralyzed by fear. Easier said than done!
Ehrenzweig, Anto (1964). The Hidden Order of Art: A Study in the Psychology of Artistic Imagination. University of California Press.
Jaworski, J., Kahane, A., Scharmer, C. O. PresenceWorkbook. Society of Organizational Leaning.
Laszlo, Ervin (2010). The Chaos Point: The World at the Crossroads. Piatkus.
Scharmer, Otto C. (2007). Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges. Society of Organizational Leaning, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Senge, P., Scharmer, O. C., Jaworksi, J., Flowers, B. S., (2004). Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future. Society of Organizational Leaning, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Walker, B. and Salt, D. (2006). Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. Island Press.
The Butterfly Story
- http://thelearninghost.com/butterflyconnection/imaginal-cells-part-one/
- http://www.sahtouris.com/ – 5_3,0,
The Three Act Story
- http://www.musik-therapie.at/PederHill/Structure&Plot.htm
- http://digitalworlds.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/story-arcs-and-the-three-act-structure/
The Hero's Journey
- http://orias.berkeley.edu/hero/index.htm
- http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/smc/journey/ref/summary.html
Jackson Pollock's Physics


text:
You missed it This great deal for Relax N Glow is over. But don't despair, we've got more great deals every day.
Related Deals That You May Like
back by popular demand:
Relax N Glow
50-Minute Swedish Massage or European Facial
83% recommendedin LivingSocial customer ratings
After visiting Relax N Glow for a European facial, one customer said that the owner, Rea, "put this 60th Street spa on my radar." Use this deal for a European facial for yourself and you'll not only get the chance to visit its 60th Street location, but its Broome Street spot as well:
• $49 ($110 value) for a 50-minute Swedish massage
• $49 ($110 value) for a 50-minute classic European facial
• $89 ($208 value) for a Swedish massage and European facial, 50 minutes each
• $169 ($416 value) for a Swedish massage and European facial, 50 minutes each, for two
Relax N Glow's Website
PAID VALUE EXPIRES ON May 29, 2022
PROMOTIONAL VALUE EXPIRES ON November 25, 2014
484 Broome Street, New York, NY 10013
212-343-9444 | get directions
Suite 2
204 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10022
646-398-8585 | get directions