We had a great time last night with Jessica Bergthold of the Mile High Photographers. While her group is all about professional photography in the greater Denver area, it follows the same principles of any other collaboration network. And as Miyamoto Musashi said, “From one thing, know ten thousand things.” So what I take away from Jessica’s experience I think we can all apply to the many collaborative projects we have.
To paraphrase her main talking point … In the old, dark days of freelance work (not that long ago, actually), photographers sat alone in their offices, scared of their competitors. Then came that spark of realization: “nobody is doing anything new or secret, so why should we hide our knowledge?” Thus a new model of collaboration was born among photographers.
Wedding Photographers: hopefully they don’t get a lot of repeat business.
I kid … but seriously, when your livelihood is built on referrals & “hittin’ the bricks”—and in a time when the economy has people looking at spending less—you might think photography is a cutthroat profession, but not so in Colorado. The Mile High Photographers have been practicing an abundant form of professional collaboration for over a year.
“This is a group of photographers in the Denver area who strive to create a great network of gifted, talented and caring professionals working together for the gain of each individual and his/hers respective business.” —MHP Website
Mile High Photographers features monthly meetings with members presenting their expertise in photography, business, and the photography busines. They also organize photo shoots and professional workshops for members. What I most admire about their work is the collaboration I see among people doing what they love to do.
This month we bring you Jessica Bergthold to present the Mile High Photographers group, how it connects to people’s passions (not always photography), and how it positively affects the communities of photographers and Colorado businesses. (We love local business.)
I just finished watching a wonderful TED Talk by Seth Godin about making change in the world. It was stirring to hear this because it felt like he was speaking right to me about our very own Abundance League.
The idea Godin proffers about making change is not the old model of “build a big factory and make change,” or “get a big enough mouthpiece in media and make change”; the model he describes is “leading and connecting people with ideas” through something he calls “tribes.” You don’t have to invent the idea, just organize the people around it. You don’t need everyone, just the few people who believe and are passionate.
If the right hemisphere of our brains is all about the here-and-now, the “we,” and the unity that is all of us, is this where abundant thinking comes from? If the left hemisphere is about linearality, and the past and the future, what can we learn … or unlearn?
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a neural anatomist who “got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one.” In this uplifting talk, she describes the process, including a feeling of oneness with the universe as the left hemisphere in her brain shut down. Listen to her talk at the TED conference…
For the April confluence I am excited to introduceTodd Siler, PhD who will be leading us in a process he calls Metaphorming. Todd has developed this over many years, working with people of all types & ages, from school children to top executives at Fortune 500 companies.
He tells us, “this interactive presentation will provide you with some key tools, methods, knowledge, and experiences for discovering and applying your creative potential in new ways … the Metaphorming process provides a global common language that enables people to conceptualize, visualize, express and present their ideas, viewpoints, knowledge, and experiences in ways that effectively communicate the essence and details of their thinking.”
A friend forwarded this quote to me, which rings true:
“Money is like an iron ring we’ve put through our noses. We’ve forgotten that we designed it, and it’s now leading us around. I think it’s time to figure out where we want to go – in my opinion toward sustainability and community – and then design a money system that gets us there.”
Denver, as always it was a wonderful confluence of the Abundance League. For this gathering we chose the more intimate environs of Susan’s home, and to focus our time just on member announcements and mingling. Because this meeting focused on passions, needs and gifts of all of us present, we devoted more time to the check-in portion and exchanged some quick feedback, saving the deeper conversations for mingling afterwards.
As a new approach to note-taking, we followed Susan’s idea of passing the laptop around so that each person who spoke took notes for the person speaking after them. This enabled each to transition from speaking to listening; it also ensured that nobody spent all their time typing and all could give their attention. I think it worked pretty darn well: we got good notes that required no very little editing, which allows us to be faster at posting to the blog!
