Two Conferences Seen Through One Digital Hole

The world is a continuum, circling around itself, and around the sun and we as individuals have often the feeling being stuck in one single place.

Certainly that has been the case for centuries when we in our small villages seldom got notice about what happened such outside our hunting area. Inventions like the wheel, telegraph, telephone and lately the World Wide Web have changed that world view immensely. Not that we as a species have adapted to it yet fully. Of course place still matters, and small communities where we feel a kind of safety, and common understanding.

However what would you do if you'd year in two "global villages" there would something happening some thousand kilometers away, 9 time zones apart and where you perhaps don't even know a single person, and you even can't visit the one merely a 120 km away due to other restrictions?

Would you go?

Just imagine for a minute you'd be in the year 2020.  Technology would be so advanced that on your room wall there would be an oversized OLED flat-foil-screen that would instantly connect with the conversations happening in both locations. You could follow what is being talked about, learn to know new people by sheer serendipity (as something catches your eye, and an instant later connects with some thoughts on your mind, or another occasion you'd talked about this topic months before).

Utopia?

Not quite. The world we live in seems to be in a lot of turmoil, and yet something is slowly emerging. The first time this caught probably everybody was in late 2008 when the global economy was hit by the financial crisis. The disconnect between real value creation, and what the banking sector (at large, including hedge fonds) was setting the bets on in order to grow the global economy in ways that seemed outrageous at this time. This is now almost to the date six years ago. Still it seems it is all about making more money, more profit for the sake of it.

No, two conferences at quite diverse locations - one in Silicon Valley right in San Francisco, and the other one not far from so-called "Silicon Saxony" in Leipzig - deal with on how to invest, and do good at the same time building up a sustainable social capital (SOCAP14), and the other tackling the questions in order to change the economic growth to rather a degrowth (Degrowth14).

The most precious resources we as humans own is the time of life, and so there is a trade-off every time we have to decide to go to one or the other conference (in general between several activities that give value back to us).

So perhaps the best of our times in terms to engage with two conferences at the same time are the boundary objects that social networks enable us to create in order to facilitate, and ease the conversation across disciplines, in time & space, and accelerate the knowledge flow allowing us to create the serendipity bumps that often are the most memorable moments in life, where we have learned more than we could have imagined before they had happened.

To give an idea what it could be like see for #SOCAP14 and #Degrowth14 just now on your screen.

I have a DREAM - but I am not MartinLutherKing ;-)

Reply by Ralf Lippold on December 24, 2008 at 8:08pm
Good morning Otto,

Seems to be that this group has taken full grip of my energy:-)

Just came back from a Gottesdienst (mess) at the Frauenkirche (awesome:-)) and totally inspired to write down my first thoughts on your questions (as the topic is racing my mind actually for the last 19 years, after the wall came down between East and West Germany). The crisis of today we see all around is not so new to this part of the country and actually people over here cope quite good with that (they been through the same stage right after '89 when most factories in the so-called "Neuen Bundesländern" ("new states") had to close down).

What do you see going on in your environment?
A deep reluctance to change. Everybody is waiting for the "big guys" that can make the change happen. As I was looking for a job for a few months I got some personal experience on how people are treated by the unemployment agencies. They definitely don't care whether you are working at a place to your strengths:-( The only goal is to put you out of the list. They could be a real value creating institution, if .... Yes if a few essentials would be changed and the pure numbers goals would be eliminated. I have intervened already and proposed a cooperation with a newly set up Team Academy institution in Dresden to eliminate unemployment in Saxony and provide sustainable value to the region and its people.

It is really difficult to grasp the right people and the right time (like here in this group, from the blog I wouldn't have thought of that vivid action already taking off:-)) and I wonder whether who else has made similar experiences and stepped perhaps inside that kind of institutions to make the change start?

How does the global crisis of our time manifest in your context of work and life?
At least not negative. For me every problem bears great opportunities in it and the current crisis really offers lots of chances (oil crisis, climate change, urban planning, new social media use, etc.). The old organizations won't cope too long with the crisis and there is the possibility to make the change real ("Orbiting the Giant Hairball", by Gordon MacKenzie shows quite excellent how it can be done:-))

What is beginning and where?
Here in Dresden and the eastern parts of the country people get back their pride as they have been through this downturn right after the wall came down. They can cope with shortages (done that for 40 years during the GDR times).
To be honest they would be the "real" Toyota people - if one would let them go!

And: what are the things that we could do that would help us and others to move from here (the collapsing old system) to there (the emerging field of the future)? what should we do?

From a very personal perspective and inspired by the visit up to Team Academy, a visit to Genthin (where they close down the chemical plant of Henkel, which is some sort of regional identification) and the idea that has grown out of visits to the small suburb Hellerau, where similar ideas as here in the group emerged some 90 years ago and presently are brought up by Genius-Hellerau (guess I have do the English translation for them, in order that other people outside the German speaking compartment (as one would say in Agent-Based-Modeling coming from System Dynamics;-)) can also participate).

Coming back from Oman in April I told my former logistics professor at my former university in Dresden about the World Café in which the Forum was organized. He gave me the hint and the invitation to the folks in Hellerau. Ever since I have met very interesting people who are striving for the sustainable change in the region. Yet it is really difficult for them to see the change (under grassroot level won't be seen in the beginning and only the really visionaries will "see" that).

The process is ongoing, even though they have doubts that something to change would be possible in the established institutions in government, business and education.

Nevertheless I am working on setting up the Team Academy in Dresden, which I was directly inspired by Marigo (she is also member here) a couple of months ago. Since then I participate in a business plan start-up competition with the project. First round is over already and prizes will given end of January (let's see how the project got the interest of the jury).

I know of other Team Academy like initiatives around Europe and yet there could be stronger inter-group exchange, marketing, and learning.

So I am looking for supporters and if somebody is interested in the ideas behind it have a look at Team Lea(r)ning Experience Dresden

....thoughts must have held back and now they are out;-))

All the best you all and enjoy the coming days and a fresh start in 2009

Ralf

▶ Reply
Permalink Reply by Otto Scharmer on December 24, 2008 at 10:19pm
Ralf--thank you for checking in on the varous questions posed in this forum. great to hear that you are working with team academy folks----otto

Presentation - special about it?

Yesterday I tapped by chance into a situation where profound change happened in a situation where I (first) perceived a crashing of a "social field".

In the afternoon while walking by I saw an info post about an evening event around cultural pillars in a city (Luzern, Switzerland). Curious as I am, having fun exploring the Unmapped it managed to come to the event (even though with 30 min delay due to a call with a potential client discussing with him the benefit of the lean approach).

The benefit of coming late was that the crowd was already listening to the main presentation (after two pre-presentations) of Dr. ThomasHeld on the Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern (KKL) and its birthgiving process. It turned out to be that he was sort of the facilitator to make the process of establishing a 225 Mio CHF hall on the lakeside in Luzern, which has only 60.000 inhabitants - a huge project!

He told the crowd, that they managed back in 1991 when the project first started to use the "Round Table" concept that was facilitating the GDR transformation in the first months after the Wall had come down (with a smile on his lips). Then after his presentation he offered to answer specific question and quite soon a negative power emerged into the room (so it seemed to me).

And then a strange thing happened: I stayed seated until almost all others had left the room, a few people got to talk with Dr. Held. A few minutes into a feeling where I felt that the positive energy that had fueled up during the past hour had left the room in minutes, I stood up and went to the window, saw some copies on a table close to it and a DIN A3 copy caught my interest. It was the story behind the KKL and the role Dr. ThomasHeld played in it. Reading the first lines of the article gave me the impulse to connect with Dr. ThomasHeld, who still was standing at the podium, thanked him for his inspirational talk.

Not long after (merely minutes) I was invited to join the crowd in a restaurant for some talk. Again there was a constraint - needed to visit an ATM - on my way phoned a dear friend, told her about the first of the evening till that moment. Entering the restaurant with icy hands and a warmed ear (from the phone;-)), my mind was open to what would come to me in the next moments.

It happened to be that I was invited into joining the already filled up table, and the next conversations went on smoothly into fields I never expected, about Singularity University, Twitter (usefulness), and questions on how to cope with complex (almost unsolvable seeming) business problems [such as the vision of the KKL for Dresden].

In a way we all followed - unconsciously the U Process in large chunks - into unknown fields of action and opportunities that emerged through using the set up power of the "social field" that pulled everybody in the direction to make the vision [a new concert hall in Dresden] not staying a dream but rather making it REALITY.

So my very personal PresencingStatus on the events of yesterday:

Good: taking the chance to visit event, follow the impuls to join in the restaurant, asking the bold question "Where can I sit down? Seems to be full." (in the restaurant)

Tricky: Being late, the feeling that the power in the room had left, not jumping too far ahead on explaining Twitter to newcomers

Learned: Going to the Balcony/ Window helps to reframe thinking and the situation, taking unknown chances opens new opportunities

Action: Writing a blog post (what I do right now), visiting "Dido and Aeneas" a second time to learn more about the subtle changes within a social field