Sunday, November 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Triple Bottom Line Currency
Inspired to action by the Google 10^100 proposal I wrote, I created a new web site for engaging people in the design, implementation, promotion and launch of threebles (from Triple Bottom Line Economics - 3ble).
Come learn more and join in the fun at Threebles.com
Come learn more and join in the fun at Threebles.com
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Creating a Dream Team
Over a decade ago, as I looked at what I wanted to be doing with my life and creating in the world, I realized that I wanted to try an experiment. I wanted to create community that worked together, created together and was out to make a difference in the world. And I meant “worked” together literally – as in co-operating a business.
Well, I did so. I gathered together a dream team of folks that I loved creating with. I didn’t get everyone I wanted on board, and there were even some surprise partners that showed up, but what we created over the next seven years was miraculous. I learned more about myself, people, groups, business and co-creation than I would have imagined possible.
Other people also recognized how extraordinary we were. Dream Team Technologies won ethics awards, invented new technologies, volunteered in the community, made major contributions to education and to non-profit organizations, and even started an alternative currency. The experience of being a team member also transformed many people’s lives.
It was not all roses… or at least there were plenty of thorns, but the experience of our creative energy and ability to tackle challenges, solve problems and pioneer new frontiers has never been paralleled.
As a number of the vision holders left, the company spiraled downward. It was fueled by vision not money, and without the people generating new vision, it became something I wouldn’t even want to be associated with (and I’m not).
After spending a few years with a more inward orientation, I can feel that I’m moving toward co-creating with an inspiring team again. Although I am informed by my previous experience, I am not seeking to rebirth a former endeavor, or create a sequel. That would stifle the authentic creativity available in a new group and a new chemistry. I just know it’s time for that kind of magic, intention and power of co-creative genius to be truly unleashed.
I know that I’m more productive, more creative and more powerful when I’m co-creating with an inspired team. So consider this fair warning: I’m setting out to start creating one again. If you think you want to be a part of it let me know. Let me know what part you’d be most inspired to play and who you most love co-creating with.
There is much to be done. The planet needs our untrammeled inspiration
[Leave a comment here if you want to be a part of this picture.]
Well, I did so. I gathered together a dream team of folks that I loved creating with. I didn’t get everyone I wanted on board, and there were even some surprise partners that showed up, but what we created over the next seven years was miraculous. I learned more about myself, people, groups, business and co-creation than I would have imagined possible.
Other people also recognized how extraordinary we were. Dream Team Technologies won ethics awards, invented new technologies, volunteered in the community, made major contributions to education and to non-profit organizations, and even started an alternative currency. The experience of being a team member also transformed many people’s lives.
It was not all roses… or at least there were plenty of thorns, but the experience of our creative energy and ability to tackle challenges, solve problems and pioneer new frontiers has never been paralleled.
As a number of the vision holders left, the company spiraled downward. It was fueled by vision not money, and without the people generating new vision, it became something I wouldn’t even want to be associated with (and I’m not).
After spending a few years with a more inward orientation, I can feel that I’m moving toward co-creating with an inspiring team again. Although I am informed by my previous experience, I am not seeking to rebirth a former endeavor, or create a sequel. That would stifle the authentic creativity available in a new group and a new chemistry. I just know it’s time for that kind of magic, intention and power of co-creative genius to be truly unleashed.
I know that I’m more productive, more creative and more powerful when I’m co-creating with an inspired team. So consider this fair warning: I’m setting out to start creating one again. If you think you want to be a part of it let me know. Let me know what part you’d be most inspired to play and who you most love co-creating with.
There is much to be done. The planet needs our untrammeled inspiration
[Leave a comment here if you want to be a part of this picture.]
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Friday, May 09, 2008
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Spirituality Snippet
Excerpted from MySpace correspendence with Donia Lilly:
Regarding being Wiccan... I'm not exactly Wiccan, although I have been a member of a most excellent coven. I experienced a great deal of spiritual growth and exploration there. But that was over a decade ago.
I have difficulties with reductivist philosophies. In the same way that I resent the western "scientific" worldview for reducing all things to purely material terms, I am not at home with a religion that does the same thing -- reducing all that is real to Spirit.
Imagine that we sat down together and had a lovely, deep and engaging conversation over tea. What part of that experience is spiritual? Which part material? Which parts are psychological, social, real or unreal?
Just because we have the capacity to use language to divide our experience into little pieces, it does not make those divisions real. In fact I believe that this very divisiveness is at the core of most of what ails us on the planet right now.
Do you know that the word "science" comes from the same root as the words "scissors," "schism" and "schitzo" (as in phrenia). It means to divide. It refers to a kind of knowledge that comes from discriminating, dissecting and analyzing things.
This division is what disconnects us from each other, from ourselves, from nature, from the planet and from the consequenses of our actions. I do not choose "science" whether academic or christian. I prefer a more holistic approach which embraces wholeness and encompasses the whole of human experience.
Fundamentally, I still share much of the perspective that I learned in Christian Science. That we are perfect. That harmony is the natural way of things and disharmony merely evidence of our disconnection from that deeper harmony.
However, I understand these things in terms of energy. Both matter and spirit are energy. Some of the most powerful tools for humans to connect with and interact with energy are the symbols found in nature, art and magic. So... in that vein, I studied earth based religion, much as I studied all other religions. (One of my degrees is in Comparative Religion.)
To this day, I live inside a worldview that is more about the harmonous flow of energy than it is about Spirit's primacy and Matter's unreality. So, it's is pretty close to the cosmology of Wicca, but has a bit of my own twist.
I could go deeper with this, but I fear I may have already provided a longer answer than you anticipated.
Little snippets
I may not be reliable about blogging, but I realized that sometimes in correspondence with folks I type things that are worth keeping. So since this blog seems to be fairly random anyway, I'm going to start putting them in here.
In a facebook message with Jeff Grossberg:
In a facebook message with Jeff Grossberg:
Regarding community tools... I'm glad to see technology not being used solely for money-making but also for friend-making.
Fundamentally, community has changed. Most of us will never have the nostalgic small village existence that is imprinted in our deeper social patterns. We are too mobile, absorbing too much news from too many sources, and interacting with too many people flung too widely. Our social fabric has been stretched beyond its former limits, so it is high time that we learn new ways of weaving it.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Saturday, April 26, 2008
A World Without Small Business...
Ashley Kingsley originally posted this article and David Sandusky started some discussion of it here where I posted this response.
Some of us are actively doing something about this.
We are not dealing with an even playing field. The federal government spends about $300 billion a year in incentives and subsidies to big business, and that was BEFORE the Bush administration started increasing this pattern and doesn't even reference massive contracting (like Halliburton). State and local governments bend over backwards with tax-reductions and subsidies trying to attract big businesses in order to create jobs. Everyone (including government employees) have our investments and retirement funds tied up in financial vehicles that provide trillions more of public funding for big business.
We live inside of a cultural myth that big business is more efficient, provides more consistent quality, more competitive prices, and is the backbone of our economy, yet in spite of the $trillions of additional funding they receive, 85% of new jobs created in the past 5 years were in the small - medium business sector. Most real innovation comes from small business (and tends to later be purchased by the big boys).
However, much of our core infrastructure has been gobbled up by big business with their additional public funding. Wal-mart is the biggest grocery distributor in the country now, and all the slots behind it Kroger Corp., Safeway, etc. are not much better. What happens to these massively globalized business models when gas is $10/gallon? $25/gallon? $50/gallon? It's already bankrupting the business model of the airlines as it approaches $4/gallon. We need to start rebuilding our LOCAL capacities and LOCAL economy.
----- Okay, so what are we doing about it? --------
In Denver we have started the Mile High Business Alliance (www.MileHighBiz.org) to support local businesses. We are taking on a huge array of ambitious programs for promoting local business, increasing relationships and trust in the community, shifting people's awareness, shifting governmental practices and policies, creating local investment funds, and so on.
We have created a series of walking guides for neighborhoods with a high-density of local businesses to help shift people's big mall and big box buying habits. So far we have published Local Flavor Guides (www.LocalFlavorGuides.com) for East Colfax, S. Pearl St., S. Gaylord St., and the Santa Fe Arts District. We have two more guides coming out over the next few weeks for SoBo (S. Broadway) and Uptown (17th & 18th Ave from Grant to York). We've got about 20 guides currently in the plans.
To help compete with national advertising hoopla we got mayor Hickenlooper to declare the week following Thanksgiving "Buy Local Week" and are starting to promote the local alternatives to big-box holiday shopping patterns.
In the next couple weeks we are launching a large Local First campaign (www.ColoradoLocalFirst.com). One portion of this is media exposure and viral & grass-roots marketing, another is our online business directory with only Colorado-based businesses in it. Although you can search for business by name, category or proximity, this is not just fancy phone book, it is a place of full community engagement and transparency. We are collecting ratings and feedback for all the businesses as well as information about their community involvement, environmental sustainability, employment practices, customer care, social responsibility, etc. You can see metrics, ratings and rankings of how local businesses are doing on all these things.
The directory is launching with basic information for 432,000 Colorado businesses. A few thousand will also have extended information and we'll have the business practice infor for the first few hundred. But we need YOUR participation to make it really work. Tell us your favorite businesses. Rate your experiences. Tell us about your priorities. Help us take back the streets for local business!
And others are working on this too.
I realized I should post some more resources for non-Denverites.
The Mile High Business Alliance is a BALLE Network (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies - www.LivingEconomies.org) and is part of a whole relocalization movement (www.relocalize.net)
In the past couple years we've had a handful of other BALLE networks crop up in Colorado: Boulder Going Local, Longmont Small Business Association, Be Local Northern Colorado (Ft. Collins) and LaPlata Organization Cooperative Advocating Local (LOCAL in Durango).
And books.... Micheal Shuman's books _Going Local_ and _The Small-Mart Revolution_
There's a lot of great stuff happening to help tip the scales back from the hands of big business. Come get involved!
Some of us are actively doing something about this.
We are not dealing with an even playing field. The federal government spends about $300 billion a year in incentives and subsidies to big business, and that was BEFORE the Bush administration started increasing this pattern and doesn't even reference massive contracting (like Halliburton). State and local governments bend over backwards with tax-reductions and subsidies trying to attract big businesses in order to create jobs. Everyone (including government employees) have our investments and retirement funds tied up in financial vehicles that provide trillions more of public funding for big business.
We live inside of a cultural myth that big business is more efficient, provides more consistent quality, more competitive prices, and is the backbone of our economy, yet in spite of the $trillions of additional funding they receive, 85% of new jobs created in the past 5 years were in the small - medium business sector. Most real innovation comes from small business (and tends to later be purchased by the big boys).
However, much of our core infrastructure has been gobbled up by big business with their additional public funding. Wal-mart is the biggest grocery distributor in the country now, and all the slots behind it Kroger Corp., Safeway, etc. are not much better. What happens to these massively globalized business models when gas is $10/gallon? $25/gallon? $50/gallon? It's already bankrupting the business model of the airlines as it approaches $4/gallon. We need to start rebuilding our LOCAL capacities and LOCAL economy.
----- Okay, so what are we doing about it? --------
In Denver we have started the Mile High Business Alliance (www.MileHighBiz.org) to support local businesses. We are taking on a huge array of ambitious programs for promoting local business, increasing relationships and trust in the community, shifting people's awareness, shifting governmental practices and policies, creating local investment funds, and so on.
We have created a series of walking guides for neighborhoods with a high-density of local businesses to help shift people's big mall and big box buying habits. So far we have published Local Flavor Guides (www.LocalFlavorGuides.com) for East Colfax, S. Pearl St., S. Gaylord St., and the Santa Fe Arts District. We have two more guides coming out over the next few weeks for SoBo (S. Broadway) and Uptown (17th & 18th Ave from Grant to York). We've got about 20 guides currently in the plans.
To help compete with national advertising hoopla we got mayor Hickenlooper to declare the week following Thanksgiving "Buy Local Week" and are starting to promote the local alternatives to big-box holiday shopping patterns.
In the next couple weeks we are launching a large Local First campaign (www.ColoradoLocalFirst.com). One portion of this is media exposure and viral & grass-roots marketing, another is our online business directory with only Colorado-based businesses in it. Although you can search for business by name, category or proximity, this is not just fancy phone book, it is a place of full community engagement and transparency. We are collecting ratings and feedback for all the businesses as well as information about their community involvement, environmental sustainability, employment practices, customer care, social responsibility, etc. You can see metrics, ratings and rankings of how local businesses are doing on all these things.
The directory is launching with basic information for 432,000 Colorado businesses. A few thousand will also have extended information and we'll have the business practice infor for the first few hundred. But we need YOUR participation to make it really work. Tell us your favorite businesses. Rate your experiences. Tell us about your priorities. Help us take back the streets for local business!
And others are working on this too.
I realized I should post some more resources for non-Denverites.
The Mile High Business Alliance is a BALLE Network (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies - www.LivingEconomies.org) and is part of a whole relocalization movement (www.relocalize.net)
In the past couple years we've had a handful of other BALLE networks crop up in Colorado: Boulder Going Local, Longmont Small Business Association, Be Local Northern Colorado (Ft. Collins) and LaPlata Organization Cooperative Advocating Local (LOCAL in Durango).
And books.... Micheal Shuman's books _Going Local_ and _The Small-Mart Revolution_
There's a lot of great stuff happening to help tip the scales back from the hands of big business. Come get involved!
Friday, March 21, 2008
Politics and Kool-Aid
I just read something an 'article' about Obama's recent speech, "A More Perfect Union," addressing issues of race in our country. This 'article' consisted largely of name-calling saying Obama was a big fraud and was playing the race card and trying to guilt whites into voting for him.
Of course, this leads me to believe the writer couldn't possibly have actually seen or read the speech. It was one of the most eloquent, direct and blame-free discussions of race I've heard. He addresses a history of past inequities but puts it into the context of our countries ongoing process of perfecting our democracy. Alluding the to Preamble of the Constitution, ("We the people, of the United States of America, in order to form a perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility...) he enjoins us all to be responsible, compassionate and work together in the great American experiment.
If you haven't seen/heard it you can find the video and text here: http://my.barackobama.com/hisownwords
Anyway, back to the article... The reader comments cheered the author on for his "insightful analysis" and lamented the cultish Obamaniacs. "Can't the see this guy is all pretty talk with no substance. They've all drunk some powerful cool aid."
So... I felt compelled to respond.
Feel free to comment. (But I'm hoping for something other than name-calling and ideological righteousness.)
Of course, this leads me to believe the writer couldn't possibly have actually seen or read the speech. It was one of the most eloquent, direct and blame-free discussions of race I've heard. He addresses a history of past inequities but puts it into the context of our countries ongoing process of perfecting our democracy. Alluding the to Preamble of the Constitution, ("We the people, of the United States of America, in order to form a perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility...) he enjoins us all to be responsible, compassionate and work together in the great American experiment.
If you haven't seen/heard it you can find the video and text here: http://my.barackobama.com/hisownwords
Anyway, back to the article... The reader comments cheered the author on for his "insightful analysis" and lamented the cultish Obamaniacs. "Can't the see this guy is all pretty talk with no substance. They've all drunk some powerful cool aid."
So... I felt compelled to respond.
Posted by: Artemystic - Mar 21, 02:05 AM
It makes me sad to see the (lack of useful) dialogue happening here.
Why did Obama give a speech addressing race? Because his opponents and the media were making it an issue. Yes, he did it while running for President. That does not make straight-talk about the topic any less useful.
While other candidates are mud-slinging, name-calling and trying to polarize people, Obama responds not by saying, "Poor me. They're picking on the black guy again." Rather he opens a thoughtful dialogue about the situation with race in the country.
So let's look at it.
Fraud:
An intentional perversion of truth; deceitful practice or device resorted to with intent to deprive another of property or other right.
The Clinton campaign calls Jeremiah Wright anti-American and depicts him as a dangerous fringe element. "Ooops... We forgot we invited him to the White House dinner we organized for our nation's religious leaders. Uh-oh... and there are pictures of Bill Clinton shaking his hand with Al Gore standing in the background and Hillary at a nearby table?"
The Clinton campaign circulates the NAFTA news from Canada calling Obama a liar on the days before the OH and TX elections. "Oops... the quote was actually from somebody on our campaign staff and the Obama folks never said anything inconsistent with Obama's stand on NAFTA."
And while campaigning in OH (where industry jobs have been lost overseas) Hillary speaks out against NAFTA saying she wouldn't support it as it is and has always been opposed to it. "Oops... I want to count my husband's time in the White House as part of my experience but not be held to account for what we actually did during that time." "Double Oops... My tour schedule and speaking engagements where I was promoting NAFTA and how great it will be for the country are on record?"
McCain saying he will always stand firm against the use of torture because he's experienced it and knows the depths of its inhumanity. "Oops... You mean for me to play with the big boys and get the endorsement from the White House I have to vote for torture? Okay, torture it is, then."
McCain saying he's for political reform and holding politicitians to account. "Oops... You mean I'm not supposed to use public funds of my office to pay for my fundraising trips?" "Oops... I'll take millions of public campaign funds and then when I reach the spending limit just break the rules and take the RNC money."
After being one of the 5 Senators involved in S & L bailout fraud, he says he'll never abuse the influence of his position again to interfere with regulatory bodies. "Oops... You mean I can't tell the FCC they have to process my lobbyist friend's application by X date?" Then after claiming he never sent the letter to the FCC pushing them for approval. "Double Oops... You have my sworn testimony at Senate hearing talking about the contents of the letter I just said I never sent?"
You say Obama is all pretty talk. Read his Blueprint for Change and criticize him on the merits of his plan, rather than blindly saying he doesn't have one.
Many here seem to get their jollies with the name-calling of Obama and saying that he's a fraud. But if you're shouting "fraud" while supporting one of the other corrupt politicians, you really have to wonder who's been drinking the Kool-Aid.
Feel free to comment. (But I'm hoping for something other than name-calling and ideological righteousness.)
Brain for ransom
Sometimes when the list of things to do gets to long, I experience a kind of paralysis that I think of as overwhelm.
I have a similar experience in the domain of writing. I sit down to write something and have so much stuff backlogged in my brain that it is difficult to write about the thing I’m trying to.
This is strikingly clear to me as I tackle the notion of writing a book. I hear stories from writers about how they hate writing, how they have to force themselves to do it, or sometimes how they get dragged kicking and screaming through the process by the book calling itself forth to be written.
This last case is how I feel. The more I think about and talk about the book, the more it grabs hold of me and won’t let go. So when I try to surrender myself to it, I think of all the scores of other things that I’ve promised people and that I’m supposed to be writing.
So, you can imagine how that affects the chances of me writing in my blog.
…but who knows, stranger things have happened.
I have a similar experience in the domain of writing. I sit down to write something and have so much stuff backlogged in my brain that it is difficult to write about the thing I’m trying to.
This is strikingly clear to me as I tackle the notion of writing a book. I hear stories from writers about how they hate writing, how they have to force themselves to do it, or sometimes how they get dragged kicking and screaming through the process by the book calling itself forth to be written.
This last case is how I feel. The more I think about and talk about the book, the more it grabs hold of me and won’t let go. So when I try to surrender myself to it, I think of all the scores of other things that I’ve promised people and that I’m supposed to be writing.
So, you can imagine how that affects the chances of me writing in my blog.
…but who knows, stranger things have happened.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Democracy in Action
Photos from the Jefferson County convention and assembly (Colorado)
I’m blogging from the Jefferson County Democractic Party Assembly/Convention. This is a strange and interesting experience. There were a number of speakers, the county officials, Presidential surrogates, Senator Salazar, Congressman (and Senatorial Candidate) Udall.
A Denver commissioner spoke on behalf of Hillary Clinton and did a nice job of portraying her as the tough broad who knows how to make back room deal happen, and the only candidate that opposed Cheney’s back room energy deal.
Ed Perlmutter spoke on behalf of Barack Obama. Frankly his speech was quite disappointing. Other than reading some quotes from Jefferson and Washington, his main point was about how the little things that show what kind of person someone is, Obama gave his char to Ed’s wife at an event.
Yeah. I know. It seems like there are a lot of other worthwhile things to have said. I’m not sure Perlmutter was in the best position to be speaking to this group since he was addressing his own constituency and needs the votes from the Hillary supporters to keep his office.
After all the speakers, there were nominations for county commissioners
The turnout is certainly impressive. Apparently there are over 3,000 delegates and 1,200 alternates that have shown up. The alternates are still awaiting word for admittance and this main room is already standing room only.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Mickki's NYE Party Haircut
Foreshadowing: Mickki grins drunkenly while Kelly smiles mischievously about what is to come.
Getting started with the deed
Clipping in process
"Did I really just do this? My head feels so weird!"
Voila! A masterpiece.
Partying resumes.
At least she didn't cut it like Martin!
At a war protest
Holding the reprinted sign I painted when I was 5.
I painted this when I was five years old based on a patch on my jeans of the sign from the 60's. My mother (who saves everything) took it into a print shop, got it digitized and printed. Now she carries it to the war protests she goes to.
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