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Spirit Rising

In Spirit Rising, Michael Nagler describes "A Hundred Flowers in Search of a Garden". That is his metaphor for the many progressive, spiritually motivated people who lack a coherent movement within which to do meaningful work at the scale of which their numbers would suggest they are capable. But his experience with this is the same as mine: Too many people want such a thing to come together for it not to happen. Posted: 12/1/05; 8:50:16 PM #

10 Ways to Keep Online Dialogue on Topic

Alexandra Samuel compiled 10 ways to keep online dialogue on topic from a recent conference on Building Democracy Through Online Citizen Deliberation. The ten methods, which to my pleasure are not very different from what we want to do offline as well, are: (1) Keep your goal visible. (2) Keep your rules visible. (3) Use moderation effectively — and sparingly. (4) Open a parking lot. (5) Create an alternative channel for free-form input. (6) Offer outside spaces for outside discussion. (7) Try and try again. (8) Be a role model. (9) Reframe off-topic comments. (10) Redefine “on topic”. Posted: 12/1/05; 8:42:47 PM #

Microsoft gets Support for Open Source Removed from UN Document

If you have been following the amazing progress being made in the adoption of open source software by governments and NGOs around the world, it might interest you to learn that Microsoft has gotten support for open source software removed from a United Nations document called the Vienna Conclusions. They were long under development and were presented last week at the World Summit on the Information Society, a gathering intended to address the digital divide and thus a particularly appropriate place for open source software. The statement that offended Microsoft? "Increasingly, revenue is generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top of them. The success of the free software model is one example." Unbelievable. Posted: 12/1/05; 8:35:22 PM #

British Campaigner Among Four Kidnapped in Iraq
	Over the weekend, four peace activists were abducted in Iraq. In my mind, those are the real heroes of this war, not the people who hide behind high tech weaponry and certainly not the people who hide behind the lies that have been told to get us here. But our culture sure does seem to honor the person with a gun far more often than the person with a heart. Posted: 12/1/05; 8:27:06 PM #

The Practitioner's Landscape

Well-informed nonprofit communication and technology consultants are aware of the field of complexity, but there are probably only a few who are able to put that field to any use in their work. The Practitioner's Landscape (six page PDF), by Glenda Eoyang, is a nice attempt to put the field of complexity of human systems into a sensible taxonomy. Her twelve categories, which derive from a three by four matrix that's meant to help practitioners apply the right tool in the right context, are: Butterfly Effects, Coupling, Balanced Scorecard, Reflection, Attractors, Future Search, Network Analysis, Intuition, Open Space Technology, Computer Simulation Models, and Nonlinear Time Series Modeling. Posted: 12/1/05; 7:09:39 PM #

Science in the Web Age

In Science in the Web Age, Declan Butler looks at the emerging use of weblogs and wikis in scientific communities. There are new knowledge building communities of practice emerging, which continue to use older tools, such as peer reviewed journals, along side these new tools, with their rapid response, high touch communication models. If scientists, with all their competition for resources and their high stakes inquiries, can incorporate new models, there is great hope that our own communities of good work can do the same. Posted: 12/1/05; 6:44:45 PM #