Author Archive

Aug/10/10//Gibrán Rivera//Collaboration, Featured

The Power of Conversation

In this 10 minute video, Jack Ricchiuto, a friend of IISC’s, successfully distills the four conversations that build community and gives us a glimpse into the shadow conversations that keep us from success.  Evidently influenced by Peter Block, Ricchiuto is part of a wave of organization and community builders that have been inviting us to look at our work from a different lens.

Jack names the following four conversations with power: Read the rest of this entry »

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Aug/09/10//Gibrán Rivera//Featured, Spiritual Activism

framing deep change

deep change

I did not make it to the US Social Forum, but I have been hit by its reverberations!  Given my take on how change happens, I’ve been particularly excited by stories from the “transformation” track.  I saw my friend Jodie Tonita just as she was returning from the USSF, and she handed me a copy of “framing deep change:  essays on transformative social change,” produced by the Center for Transformative Change.  We are really in motion here, and the deeper aspects of our works are calling more of out attention. Read the rest of this entry »

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Aug/03/10//Gibrán Rivera//Featured, Social Innovation

Web of Change – Part 2

Web of Change - Innovation and Collaboration to Transform our World

Lots of anticipation around this year’s Web of Change!  I am on the facilitation team as well as one of the hosts for the event.  Hosts have been asked to launch this year’s conversation through a series of thought pieces that will be posted on  webofchange.com every week until our convening begins.  I have the honor of launching our “WOC Thought Bomb Series,” with the following reflections on “Paradigm Next and the Intersection.”  Click here to read, and please do share your responses!

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Aug/02/10//Gibrán Rivera//Featured, Networks

Transcend Organizational Constraints

Collective Leadership

This is a very exciting time for those of us who are working to apply the logic of networks to the work of social change.  Our ideas are gaining traction as more and more experiments start to point towards success.  Life online, the viral nature of meaningful stories and our human desire for deeper connection all serve to confirm our intuitive understanding of life in a network.  However, as we step into this paradigm shift, as we start to approve of these ideas, we still have to contend with the constraints of the organizational and funding structures within which we currently work. Read the rest of this entry »

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Jul/27/10//Gibrán Rivera//Social Innovation

Web of Change 10:10 – The Intersection

Web of Change - Innovation and Collaboration to Transform our World

The recent Shirley Sherrod debacle unfolds with a thousand lessons, among these are the very fact that whether we have a black President or not, the issue of race is alive and well in the United States.  The incident also points to the potentially explosive concoction of new media technology and a 24hr “news” cycle, of the politics of spectacle and a culture of fear among our “leaders.”  Even as technology is changing everything – our deepest wounds are yet to heal, and our suppressed demons continue to show their many heads.

This being said – I am an optimist!  I trust the directionality of our current paradigm shift.   Read the rest of this entry »

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