Forest Row

As of today, this blog will focus on my explorations into the village of Forest Row, its history, its people and how I relate to it and them.

Pictures of Forest Row

How can I best serve my community?

I posted the following to our local transition network website.  I find these sites are populated by people of good intent and who are open to discussions about their lives, their communities and the future. 

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This is a question that I have asked myself wherever I live. It brings up many interesting answers. It also invites me to ask people in the community how I can best serve it or rather, them.

As I am new to this site and this village (even though I am physically living just outside Forest Row, my head and heart are most definitely in it and our intention is to move in when the time is right), I thought I would write down some of my thoughts to give you a better idea of where I am coming from. I write them in bullet points so that you can take in the ideas more easily. (I find that prose requires more commitment of a reader).

At this stage, it is my intention simply to find out about this village….talk to people…see if there’s an action research project that I can undertake that will simultaneously help the people in the village and help me

# This form of online blogging and investigative writing is often called autoethnography in acadamic terms and is practised by many independent thinkers and investigators throughout the world (see www.ms.lt)

# I am open to expressing who I am in the public domain

# By expressing who I am in the public domain, then perhaps others will feel more comfortable in doing so

# I am fascinated by questions and where they lead us

# I have many questions

# When I lived in Guildford, I spent a few weeks walking around town, saying ‘hello’ to people and asking where I could find the wise people

# They sent me to the university and the MP

# Where do the wise people of Forest Row live?

# Is it right to even ask the question, as we are all wise and dumb in our own unique ways?

# Someone entering a community from the ‘outside’ who is asking questions can be perceived as an agitator, a fly in the ointment, and therefore be rejected by that community

# Someone who lives in the community and is established or known can ask difficult questions and be accepted, even praised for it

# One plays the role of a catalyst and the other is an enzyme

# I look forward to meeting and talking with many of you in person

Listening to lawn mowers and bird song and loving it.

TS Elliot

When the stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city?

Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”

What will you answer?  We all dwell together

To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger…

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.

Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

Choruses from the rock

Found in NEF’s document on Timebanking.

Thanks to Tris Dyson of SPICE for the document.

Harrison Bergeron

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-175006468841636088

jacony:

nemoi:

SuperTouch Blog Archive NEWS///RIP///IN LOVING MEMORY OF PHOTOGRAPHER SHAWN MORTENSEN 19662009

From John Caswell's group on LinkedIn

www.grouppartners.net

linkedin site

“Imagine - conversation, debate and true engagement with people - life size - sitting in front of you, but they are in China. Real world context now applies. Excuses like ‘I don’t get that twitter thing’, ‘you will never get me on Facebook’ - ‘I’ve never been a video games player’ - surely at that point fly out the window.

Content rich virtual environments where everything you need is both anticipated, at your fingertips and in multiple dimensions - projected from your mobile device. This is a world where you can mould, hold, turn around and develop future scenarios as if in a video game at the same time as run a real time alternative vision with all the risks and opportunities, played out, analyzed and foretold in HD,THX and cinema surround sound.

This is a world where the relationship you have with your friends and working colleagues are as fruitful - through any device - as they are in the real world. The engagement with others in fact some ways more valuable because the exchange of content between people is now simplified, non politicized and transparent. Or as much as you enable it to be. Structured, Visual and Thoughtful.

Many people of a certain age or disposition will loathe the idea - but sorry - its already here”.

Working in the future will entail some interesting challenges:

1. Enabling effective dialog in spite of the dogma, the fixed frames.
2. Overcoming all the projected ‘inner safety’ of the current structure and the resistance to change that we all hold on to.
3. Understanding the flows of knowledge that actually force improvement of performance – the new approach to process, systems and project management.
4. What really matters?

Building a future way of thinking and working that can enable more of the following:

* Meaning
* Intention
* Purpose
* Consequence
* Relevance
* Priority
* Integrity
* Clarity
* Speed
* etc, etc

The Future will be about Leveraging, Structured Design Principles, User Interface, Visualization & Meaningful Experience

1. The ‘experience’ has to be compelling and contain all of the values/principles above. In fact it has to surpass any previous experience of them we’ve ever had. Valuable.
2. Teams need to team, individual conversation has to be superior to that which has been enabled before. Valuable.
3. Meetings need to be stimulating, structured, curious and at the right pace. Valuable.
4. Enabling effective dialog has te be natural and seamless and part of the ‘way of things’. Valuable
5. The flows of knowledge that actually force improvement of performance have to be implicit within the activity. Valuable.

Communicating and working together in Structured, Visual ways.

The knowledge worker, the administrators, the processors, the front office, the sales teams, the delivery workers. They all have different needs and live in differing contexts. What will they get from all this change. The ‘experience’ has to be compelling and contain all of these. In fact it has to surpass any previous experience of them we’ve ever had. Valuable. Teams need to team, individual conversation has to be superior to that which has been enabled before. Valuable. Meetings need to be stimulating, structured, curious and at the right pace. Valuable.

Best times to expand

I’ve started to re-read the Glass Bead Game to hone my language and intellectual framework for the Game Of Now summer season of games.

I find the best time to read it is immediately before bed and as I wake up through the layers of consciousness to full awakeness.

As I read Hesse, his initial thoughts and the relationships between them and his intent in the form of a vision and the internal struggles to shape each line, paragraph and chapter into meaning, provides me with the equivalent of a dishwashing of the brain.

I love it.

If you’ve not read it, read it. (Ah, the joys of English that two words spelled the same in close succession have very different sounds).

Tododdle

grahamgrafx:

benisadork:

insertname:

I’ve made a site, it allows you to make and share todo list, you may find it useful. Check it out at tododdle.com

tododdle is the best thing ever.

Using tododdle.com to get through the home stretch of my thesis project.

Harrison Bergeron

Thanks to Chris Harvey for the link:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-175006468841636088