Sometimes you fall in love with a client. There is a sweet spot where your own heart’s purpose is fully aligned with what your client is trying to do in the world. In that sweet spot they are no longer really a client – you become true partners.
I’ve just wrapped up the contracted part of our work with Urban Bush Women, but I’m certain that ours is a partnership that will continue.
Leave a commentThis may be the best 14 minutes of your day (and the best TED talk ever). Watch it! Go Green Bronx Machine! Si se puede!
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The following post is reblogged from Seth’s Blog. We hope that it will enrich your life and much as it has ours.
The pain of a lousy boss, of careless mistakes, of insufficient credit. The pain of instability, of bullying, of inadequate tools. The pain of poor cash flow, corrosive feedback and work that isn’t worthy of you.
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What has been the most important epiphany in your life?
Today is the Feast of the Epiphany and I’m from Puerto Rico where we celebrate it as Three Kings Day. In fact, I’ve just heard it argued that Puerto Rico is the country with the strongest tradition of “Día de los Reyes.” Our Christmas gifts used to come on this date instead of December 25. We would leave grass under our beds so that their camels could eat as they went from house to house. I grew up in a nationalist household, so my family was among the last hold outs as “Americanization” (which was really commercialism and marketing) led more and more people to get into Santa Claus. To this day my father hates Santa – it’s actually kind of funny.
Comments Off on EpiphanyClearly a man ahead of his time, R. Buckminster Fuller’s thinking seems to become more and more relevant. His invitation is for us all to be comprehensive anticipatory design scientists, to engage in the “design science revolution.”
Leave a commentHere at IISC we talk about having three lenses for the work of collaboration. One of those lenses is the lens of love. I have worked and played with Anasa Troutman in all kinds of formations over the years, most recently as part of the same Networks and Decentralized Organizing Community of Practice.
I thought that her stance for Love is a very real call for those of us interested in the practice of social transformation. What do you think?
Leave a commentNikky Finney recently won the National Book Award in Poetry for her collection Head Off and Split. If you have not seen or heard her acceptance speech, it is to be seen/heard (if you go to the link, you will have to fast forward a bit through John Lithgow and Elizabeth Alexander). In so many poignant and wonderful ways, she reminds us that, as Audre Lorde once wrote, “Poetry is not a luxury.”
In the video segment above, Finney brings greater dimension (and a sense of history) to the creative writing and speech act, by describing her affinity for blackboards as a way of engaging in more visual and tactile ways with her craft. Her words remind me of what I think many of us at IISC love about visual facilitation and graphic recording in our collaborative capacity building work, of putting marker to butcher block paper, rather than simply or exclusively relying upon conversation, PowerPoint and/or video projected word processing. Process design and facilitation is a contact sport.
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“Stamp [the facilitator] jumped up and down. Her voice was hoarse from three hours of yelling. ‘Everyone is beautiful!’ she shouted. ‘Everyone is awesome!’
That’s some hard core facilitation. I am struck, profoundly affected by, what is happening in our country. I am inspired. I am moved. I have a deep sense of resonance.
“[T]he point of Occupy Wall Street is not its platform so much as its form: people sit down and hash things out instead of passing their complaints on to Washington. ‘We are our demands,’ as the slogan goes.”
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The Interaction Institute for Social Change remembers Margarita Muñiz, educator, leader, champion- as well as one of our beloved Barr Fellows. The following is reposted from the Boston Globe column written by Yvonne Abraham. We could not have said it better.
How do you turn an abandoned school in a crime-ridden neighborhood into a gleaming beacon drawing children and grateful parents from across the city?
The answer is Margarita Muñiz.
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“Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about . . . . You are not alone.'”
– Kurt Vonnegut
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You can’t evict an idea who’s time has come.
We are the 99%. We are everywhere.
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