Patterns of Engagement

This is the first of four articles focused on the Liberating Voices practicums conducted for the two Public Thinking Public Health classes held at Evergreen College at the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010.  The actual tools, templates, session plans and reports are available from the Download tab of this site. This article focuses [...]

I’m still woefully behind on completing a report on the practicums I’ve been conducting at Evergreen College. Nevertheless, I’m posting a selection of tools and templates I used for exploring the practical application of Liberating Voices patterns, partly to support the teams of students who are working with local organizations this quarter. While most of [...]

Just now listening to Gorecki’s Third Symphony, the “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs,” which was brought to my attention as the soundtrack for the climactic scene in the movie, Fearless. In the film, Jeff Bridges plays an architect recovering from severe post-traumatic stress induced by a horrendous jet crash, from which he walked away virtually unharmed, [...]

In a recent tweet, I wrote: Increasingly drawn to creativity at the margins, in the gap, where little is expected & folks later scramble to explain what happened. And nearly as soon as I released it, I realized I had used “margins” as a place holder for several different dimensions that may intersect with unexpected [...]

Just contributed a comment to another great conversation over at Tim Kastelle’s Innovation Leadership Network blog about “Personal Filter, Aggregate, and Connect Strategies,” and felt that I should expand a little here while the creative juices were still bubbling. For reference, here’s my comment: Now I’m realizing that there’s yet another dimension or perspective beyond [...]

Time for corrective action.  I have stood and continue to stand among those calling for greater transparency in the public sphere, and particularly in the workings of government. I operate under the assumption that whatever I place online or in email is ultimately available for all to see, by accident or intention.  Everything I post [...]

What is social media and why is it so important right now? Rather than aggregating a selection of the amazing wisdom and insight already available across the ‘Net (especially note the fantastic conversation taking place on Venessa Miemis’ posting, “What is social media [the 2010 edition]“), I’m going to adopt more of a personal witness [...]

A recent exchange of comments on David Hodgson’s Idea Hive blog around “A Culture of Innovation is the Key to Our Future” got me spinning off into an entirely different reflection on “culture.” As much as I’ve participated in the framing of “corporate culture,” for example, in the nearly mythical terms of vision, mission, shared [...]

In the course of researching ESL (English as second language) materials, my wife came upon Global Brains: Knowledge and Competencies for the 21st Century by Gary Ferraro. At first, the list of competencies seemed relatively typical; but once I started playing around with how they actually related to each other, something kind of clicked, and [...]

Twitter is one of those unique environments that defies simple categorization: kind of like a blog, or a telegram, or instant messaging, or a wire service, but somehow distinct, deceptively simple, and surprisingly protean, in the sense of shaping a wild frontier of information within the flow (and steadily accumulated log) of 140-character messages. Its [...]