Reflection on #gathering11

It's me - really 

Last weekend around this time we were well into the 1st DAY at #gathering11 - an exceptional experience. Similar power I have seen in Muscat, Oman, during the 3rd SoL Global Forum in spring 2008 and visiting the "management school without teachers" (Team Academy) where students co-create value for real customers and learn through this experience.

Being part of the collective learning experience one often encounter times when you really feel "yes, that's working nicely" to moments you think "nothing really comes out of that".

The beauty of an event over several days is that you can adjust your personal thinking and connecting your past experience with what is going on in the room gradually (if you allow to let it go loose). Once you sort of give up, feeling that the process is overpowering you (which I actually felt on the arrival in the morning of the 2nd DAY), the way is open to transcend into a larger collective body, get yourself connected.

This happened to me during the second part of the Sunday at Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne, when the asset workshop at the very end really grasped my interest and joy. This was the state which connected very well with my first encounter with a Twitterwall at the 1st Mobile Camp in Dresden in 2009 which emerged in the WikiWall.

My condensed take away from these two amazing days (which I unfortunately could not follow up in the Hub Melbourne) are captured in the following PresencingStatus:

Gathering11 Badge

1. What was good? Powerful morning start with "Thrivable World" video by Jean Russell, the power of passionate and dedicated people in the room, the beauty of the venue (which reminded me of CoOrpheum), connecting with people whom I only knew across Facebook, a wide range of passionate change makers (in discipline, age, profession, role, etc.)
2. What was tricky? Holding the energy power feeling the sort of "overheating" 
3. What have I learned? Connections are most easily made with name badges (in the size we had been given - where the heck did I put it? Found just now :) ), technology (e.g. my question on the gathering11 Flickr) is not yet playing a larger part in the collaborative action across boundaries (whether in distance, time zone, or field of expertise/ experience)
4. Action to be taken? more than happy to engage in making a "thrivable world" become happening in the days ahead (even though away in distance and time (8 hours delayed to Melbourne)) - technology provides the tools to do so. "How Small Moves, Smartly Made, can Set Big Things in Motion" - subtitle of "The Power of Pull" and my personal philosophy in life (sometimes I call it Lean Thinking ;))