a grassroots collaboration network for social innovators like you
Some reading ideas for the holidays and beyond. Really great list from the P2P Foundation: The 10 best P2P (nonfiction) books of 2009
From Shareable.net, also quite good, if I do say so myself:
The Best Shareable Books of 2009
Eight Books We’re Looking Forward to in 2010
And another gem from the P2P Foundation:
The 10 Most Important P2P Trends of 2009
Five years ago, frustrated with holiday shopping, I started a donation exchange with my family to exchange donations to nonprofits instead of gifts. It changed our holidays for the better, brought family closer together, and since then has raised thousands of dollars for causes. Not to mention how much easier on the earth it has been. At the below link is the story of how a family with a mix of progressive and conservative members came together through a holiday donation exchange. The story includes instructions about how you can do it too.
Imagine how strong the nonprofit sector would be if the $460 BILLION spent on the holidays (in the US alone) went to nonprofits? And if such a tradition doesn’t start with nonprofit workers, who would it start with?
I hope you give it a try. And you could suggest it to your donors, coworkers, and board members too. If there was ever a way to dramatically increase the flow of support into nonprofits, this is it.
Here’s to Happier Holidays!
For October’s meeting, we screened RE:Invention, a documentary short by Catherine Goerz and crew about how some are using the economic crisis for personal transformation. The discussion that followed covered a lot of ground, but a couple interesting themes emerged for me including the difficulty of leaving a career that pays for one that has meaning, how transformation is a privileged experience when for some just surviving is an accomplishment, how important it is to see others making changes as inspiration. Also, many people shared their own stories of transformation with lessons learned.
Later Catherine and I brainstormed the below tips for those who want to Re:Invent. The below is by no means a comprehensive. Feel free to add to these ideas in comments.
Catherine:
-Let go of your thoughts and beliefs around who you think you are. Be willing to release your past identity and open to new ways of living and working.
-Let the old structures of your life that may not serve you any more – your job, income, living situation, relationships, etc.- dissolve so that you make space for the new structures to be seeded.
-Create a powerful vision for what you want to manifest in your life. Set a clear and aligned intention to move towards it and allow in the people and situations that will bring it into form. Then let it go.
-If you have lost your job and are living on a reduced income, reassess what you need to be happy and provided for. You may not need a high-paying job, a car or material items to live an inspired and meaningful life.
-Trust the process of transformation and remind yourself that everything is temporary. What may seem like a big impossible situation will shift over time and reveal totally new situations and opportunities for reinvention.
-Be curious about what’s next. Approach the changes in your life with a sense of openness and curiosity. Don’t take anything too seriously.
-When dealing with a crisis, don’t resist the changes that are being foisted upon you. Embrace the challenges and notice your capacity for resiliency and how well you can adapt to new situations when you don’t fight them.
-Observe how you are evolving as time goes by and stay committed to transformation to see it through.
Neal:
-Don’t RE:Invent alone. Form a peer group for the changes you want to make. Or enlist your friends’ support. Let them know what you’re doing. Good friends will get behind you.
-If you don’t know what you want in life, then begin an exploration. Go outside your circle of friends to discover new ideas and people.
-Assess what’s truly interesting to you. Focus in on your passion or passions. Sometimes reflecting on past experience can help you understand what turns you on. Sometimes new experiences are needed.
-When you have an idea of what interests you, then immediately find the community around your interest. Do not wait. Become a part of it. The best way to become part of a community is to contribute something that’s needed. Volunteer. No job is too small to start. Small things lead to big things.
-Be patient. Be persistent. Big changes take time.
On November 19th, pioneer social change strategist Harald Katzmair, Ph.D will lead us in an exploration of the media environment and cultural moment in which we live, and point the way to from mere participation to power.
Harald’s talk will begin with an exploration of the dark side of Web 2.0. How it can overload us with messages, shrink attention spans, erode focus, and thus disrupt our ability to find common ground and take common action. Through Web 2.0 we may be, as in the title of cultural critic Neil Postman’s influential book, amusing ourselves to death.
We must recognize that individual participation does not necessarily equate to power. Power is the ability to act. And collective action is what enables citizens to be powerful politically. Being hyperconnected can overload us and cripple our ability to act as individuals and groups at a time when we need to be really good at taking common action in order to avoid a climate disaster.
In Harald’s view, what’s needed to survive are new tools that can help us do just that. We have to go beyond mere individual participation to collective action. And realize that it’s not the size of your network that counts, but how it’s patterned to achieve a clear goal.
Harald will share cutting edge tools he’s developed to help groups set agendas, act collectively, and mobilize networks for change. What sets Harald’s approach apart is that it’s based on social network analysis and complexity theory, which are especially useful for modeling complex systems, harnessing collective intelligence, and identifying actions that have maximum impact with minimal blow back.
Harald is CEO and Founder of FAS.research, a pioneer in applying social network analysis and complexity theory to solving complex problems in multi-stakeholder environments. His passion is helping people come together to solve “wicked” problems. One of his current projects is helping tribal leaders in Jordan develop a water sharing system. If Jordan does not succeed in this, they’ll run out of water in 20 years.
It should be an eye opening night. I hope you’ll join us.
Event cohost: Shareable Magazine. Join Shareable’s Facebook page here to get ideas for creating a shareable world and chime in with your ideas.
MEETING:
When: Thursday, November 19th, 2009, 6:30-9:30pm
Where: Citizen Space , 425 Second St., #100, San Francisco
AGENDA:
6:30 – 7:00 Arrive – mingle, nosh
7:00 – 7:30 Member announcements lightening round: share your passions, needs & gifts quickly
7:30 – 8:00 Break – nosh, make connections based on announcements
8:00 – 9:15 Presentation and discussion
9:15 – 9:30 Clean up, take the discussion to the 21st Amendment
BRING
-Willingness to help others and receive help
-Healthy stuff for the potluck
-Yourself, friends
Janelle Orsi wrote a great piece for Shareable called The Four Degrees of Sharing.
The opening paragraph is a great summation of what Shareable, a new online magazine I’m producing these days, is all about actually.
“Sharing is a big deal these days. Sharing is a growth industry, a new field of study and of practice; it presents a realm of career opportunities, a new way of life, and a concept around which we are restructuring our world. Sharing is the answer to some of today’s biggest questions: How will we meet the needs of the world’s enormous population? How do we reduce our impact on the planet and cope with the destruction already inflicted? How can we each be healthy, enjoy life, and create thriving communities?”
I really like Janelle’s approach. She’s makes a new perspective easy to grasp.
My friends Emily and Janelle, authors of The Sharing Solution, are giving a book talk in San Francisco tonight. Janelle is know to break out in song during her talks, so don’t miss that. Here’s the details:
Janelle Orsi and Emily Doskow present The Sharing Solution
2251 Chestnut Street (Marina neighborhood), San Francisco, CA
www.booksinc.net
Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 7:30pm
Just wanted to remind you about our meeting this Thursday where we’ll share our knowledge about dating and relationships to raise our collective romantic IQ. You want more love? Come and get it. See meeting details here.
Sent to me by Don Steiny. This is one of the assumptions which the abundance league is based. My experience is that this is true. My advice. Be generous. Encourage others’ generosity on a regular basis through some structured way, like an event. Do this over a period of years. See what happens. I did this. My life was transformed in positive ways that far exceeded my expectations. In fact, I have a hard time processing how great life can be because how ingrained my assumptions are that it’s an dog-eat-dog, zero sum, every man for himself game. It doesn’t have to be.
“There is a stream of research — which economists routinely ignore, reject, or are unable to process — that shows self-interest is not hardwired but is in fact a social norm that gets stronger or weaker depending on the assumptions that people hold about their own behavior and those around them.”
- Bob Sutton
Big thanks to Ken Lynch of SCC Bank and the Carbon Coin project for a wide ranging discussion on currency. There were several key points from the meeting, below is what I remember. To all the currency experts out there, feel free to correct me in comments.
-The overarching theme was that monetary systems change over time and that it’s likely we’ll see change in our lifetime, perhaps a big one.
-One change that can be seen over time is a fluctuation between use of the dominant currency and community currencies. When times are tough, community currencies come into vogue. When times are good, the dominant currency gains in dominance. However, the long-term trend is toward fewer currencies. We may be moving toward a monetary mono-culture.
-That there are advantages to a central bank and currency and disadvantages. And the same with complementary currencies. It all depends what kind of society you want. A central bank and currency makes trade easier, but seems to concentrates power into a small number of hands. Community currencies may be more economically democratic but can make trade between communities difficult.
-That governments or central banks tend to degrade their currency over time as they accumulate more debt, or something like that. An example is that the U.S. went of the gold standard in the 70s so that paper money had absolutely no intrinsic value except the trust we put in it.
We didn’t get as much time for discussion as we normally do, but the conversation did continue well into the evening when we moved it to the 21st Amendment. And it was great to see the co-founders of Abundance League, Scott Levkoff and Polly Whitaker, who brought their inspiring vibe to the experience.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS
The next meeting is August 20th. Check out meeting details here.
An alternative economy is emerging that’s run by people like you and I. And it’s built to serve us, unlike that other f@%$! economy. The way to make it real is to begin transacting on its platforms and using its currencies. And we must begin our withdrawal from the platforms and currencies that steal our health and wealth. This month’s Abundance League is designed to help us do just that.
Heather Young is an alternative economic organizer and has been an environmental and social justice activist for over a decade. She will be discussing the many ways we can create this economy together right now in a more loving, abundant, just and sustainable way here in the Bay Area. She’ll give us an overview of the movement in the Bay Area and share it’s various projects including:
-Bay Area Community Exchange – a network of alternative currency projects in the Bay Area, including a time exchange project that is in trial phase.
-The Really Really Free Market – an event that demonstrates a pure gift economy in SF and over 50 other cities in the US and around the world.
-JASecon (Just Alternative Sustainable economy) – an all volunteer organization that aims to tie together and synergize all the different aspects of the alternative economy and to host a grassroots economic festival/conference on Sept. 26 in Oakland.
-Plus Neighborhood Vegetables and others.
MEETING
When: August 20th, 6:30-9:30pm
Where: Citizen Space , 425 Second St., #100, San Francisco
AGENDA
6:30 – 7:00 Arrive – mingle, nosh
7:00 – 7:30 Member announcements lightening round: share your passions, needs & gifts quickly
7:30 – 8:00 Break – exchange support, mingle, nosh
8:00 – 9:15 Presentation & discussion
9:15 – 9:30 Clean up, take the discussion to the 21st Amendment
BRING
-Desire to help others
-Healthy food and drink for the potluck
-Your real self, friends
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