Come to the Thrivable Future Salon Oct 14 in SF

Mark reading Thrivability in the hammock

Mark Finnern reading Thrivability in the hammock

When we met in 2012 at an alternative currency event in NYC, I could not have imagined today. Here it is! So exciting!

Back then, he was interested in my word, “Thrivability” and led Future Salons in SF. A couple years later, while in SF, we agreed to meet again. He wanted me to talk at his Future Salon.

We never really had that conversation. Instead, we discovered each other. The overlaps in interests and approach were significant, from small things like the soft boiled eggs, to big things like wanting to co-create a world that works (and have fun doing it!). This summer, we married on the beach where we often enjoy sunset picnic hikes.

Thrivability can be like that, full of surprising and delightful twists.

Rather than just having me speak at his Future Salon, Mark Finnern has merged his work with mine (and me with his!).

We will be hosting our first Thrivable Future Salon October 14th at 6pm at Pivotal Labs in San Francisco.

Here is the invitation! After a warm welcome, we will host an Open Mike for you to share your ideas and interests in co-creating a more thrivable work that works. We are particularly looking for ideas that tie back to something one can take action on right now.

The future is created by the present.

Both of us believe we are all in this together. While we will sometimes have speakers, our focus is on high participation among peers (read: you). Come play with us!

Of course, not everyone can be available that evening or be in San Francisco. We will try to webcast it using Spreecast. But look for more webcasts including our friends from across the globe in the near future.

Invitation

Welcome!

Future Salon, please meet Thrivability… and Thrivability, allow me to introduce the Bay Area Future Salon! [Read history below if this doesn’t make sense.]

Hello all. Welcome to the Thrivable Future Salon where we meet to discuss and challenge each other in co-creating a more thrivable future that works for all. We have some audacious goals for the future, sure, and we are having a fun time together moving in that direction.

If you are curious or even passionate about creating the future, imagining new possibilities, or wanting to thrive in your life, work, and community, then come join us!

Can’t make this one and want to learn about future events, online and in person?
Join our mailing list.

Topics

From the angle of “what will make me, us, and all of us more thrivable” we want to have discussions at this and future events about:

Collaboration and co-creativity in practice
Open source and other forms of network production
Tips about personal thrivability
Open government and the future of democracy
The future of work
The future of learning
add your Thrivable Future topic here!

Open Mike

For this relaunch event, we would like to solicit topics from you! Open Mike style. If you want to present a 5 minute talk on your own thrivable future topic, let us know by filling out this form.

Sharing Online

Tweet: Create the future, imagine new possibilities, or want to thrive in your life, work, and community, then join us at Thrivable Future Salon! [LINK]

Hashtag: #TFS

Webcast: For those not in the room, we will try to webcast via http://spreecast.com. Try this link. However our focus is on the in person event. Let us know if you want to help with organizing the webcast.

Can’t make this one and want to learn about future events, online and in person?
Join our mailing list.

Agenda

Doors open at 6pm for you to connect with each other and grab a beer.
At 6:15, our formal event begins, including a warm and hearty welcome.
Introduction to Thrivability by Jean Russell
Future Salon by Mark Finnern.
5+5 minute Open Mike talks (sign up now if you want to offer one).
Summarize and synthesize together, answering the question:
“What can you do for a more thrivable world now?”

We hope you join us afterwards for casual conversations and drinks nearby.

Sponsor

We thank Pivotal Labs for sponsoring this event by providing our event space.

We are seeking a food sponsor. Drinks are provided by Pivotal Labs.

Contact us if you like what we are creating and would like to be a general sponsor for Thrivable Future Salons. Send an email to mark at finnern dot com.

History

Mark has been hosting the Bay Area Future Salon since 2002. The Future Salon has provided our audience with riveting speakers on topics that lead toward a world that works for all, including David Brin, Nicole Lazarro, Mickey McManus, Howard Rheingold, Doug Engelbart, and more.

Ten years later, Mark met Jean Russell, a founder of Thrivability. Jean co-created the Thrivability Sketch with 70 amazing collaborators in 2010. And then in 2013, she released, through Triarchy Press, Thrivability: Breaking Through to a World that Works. The tagline for the Future Salon has been: Bolding Creating a World that Works for All.

And so, with a tremendous shared sense of purpose and practice, not only did they marry, they are weaving the Future Salon and Thrivability together in the Thrivable Futures.

Make sure you are signed up to get our updates about upcoming events online and in person.

Co-Created Solution Design Workshop at Chicago Bioneers

by Jean Russell

I hope you will join me November 2nd in Chicago for a workshop on Co-Created Solution Design at Chicago Bioneers.

This workshop is for you if:

you work with others that you don’t have total control over to come up with new ideas or actions
you want to tap into the wisdom of a group and go beyond what any could do alone
the same old problems are present and you know you need to approach them differently to get better answers

My goal for the workshop is two-fold:

give people ways to redirect conversations to be more co-creative
offer several different approaches to achieving co-created solution design

Why Co-Created Solution Design?

Since January 2011, a small group of facilitators working on social entrepreneurship and international development have come together to find ways to impact the system of social innovation globally. We call ourselves ci2iglobal, which is short for Collective Impact and Innovation Institute. With a collective 100 years experience in the area, we pooled our experiences together to figure out where we can be most useful. We believe a crucial part of the difference we can make is spreading the work of co-created solution design.

Collaboration might be the hot word of today, but we believe co-creation gets closer to our intent to help solutions arise from group creation. Too often gatherings come together and the path or outcome has been pre-determined. And it limits the engagement of all stakeholders, which is vital to successful social innovation. Co-created solution design provides a method – a process – to create solutions, but it does not presume answers. It opens questions to be answered by the group.

While much of what we do is about getting something done together, what actually gets done depends heavily on the relationships between the participants and their commitment to action.

I remember very vividly learning first hand the difference between advice and self-generated solutions. On the second day of my coach training, we were asked to provide advice to our partners on how to achieve one of their goals. We talked at them for 30 minutes. Then we were asked to listen as they thought through another challenge. The difference startled me. I am a quick thinker and prided myself on my ability to offer useful advice. However, the solutions my partner came up with had deep understanding of all the forces at play. Most importantly, my partner hesitated in implementing my solution, whereas the partner eagerly looked forward to testing the self-generated solution. The difference in engagement and commitment was tangible for me. I have tried to listen more and advise less ever since.

Co-created solution design is just like that, except it is working with groups and even groups of groups on larger systemic issues.

Strategies

I will be highlighting three different strategies for doing co-created solution design:

Engaging Exploration – Use when there is not much of a time limit and a need to see and act within a large landscape of possibilities.
Flash – Use when there is very little time and a strong base of existing knowledge and awareness.
Creative – Use when you need a very well fit and very novel solution.

So, how do we do it?

Come to the Co-Created Solution Design workshop to find out! After the workshop, I will share some of the materials from the workshop here for those of you who can’t make it.

Give it away now!

by Thriver

I get asked a lot to do many things for free. All the time. And I find I sit in a tension between advocacy for the content of the work – give that away to promote the work – AND that my work is a service process that I earn a living from.

So people ask for me to help put together events, curate things, or advise on their projects. But I also make a living facilitating events, curating and managing projects, and consulting. So when do I say yes to the free services they ask me for and when do I say, “yes, and that costs money.”

I can sense by gut when the opportunity doesn’t seem to be reciprocal. But describing that sense of reciprocal benefit in terms that can become principles for consistent action…that seems more tricky. How do you manage it?

photo credit: askingdave

Is it worth it to do for free?

Events:

A major conference in one of my fields has historically given me a free pass to be an energizing presence in the space. They aren’t asking me to run the event. I get to do my thing. And they get the benefit of my more subtle forms of facilitating – network weaving, curiosity infusions, etc.
That exchange seemed worth it to me. This year the benefits are not clear or pressing enough to them.
A conference in one of my fields – but directed more toward specialists – asks me to be on an organizing committee for 9 months. To even attend the event I will spend a thousand dollars on airfare – not to mention numerous hours of pre-event meetings. I might increase visibility of my work, but not to a broad audience. That didn’t seem worth it. They aren’t offering money and the visibility gained isn’t ideal. I might learn some, and I already have enough social contacts in that arena for my needs.
An innovation event raising money to do the event via crowdfunding asks me about curating some of the event. Hmmm, the right kind of audience. And, if this was not my content audience, I would be charging at least $3000 for design, coordination, and production. I will have to think about this. It would have to make my organization visible to the tune of a $4000 sponsorship in lieu of fees, I think. At least for my effort at this time and not living in the location of the event.

Consulting:

Someone designing a values-driven community asks to pick my brain for an hour. It actually takes about 3 hours between the email and follow up, the scanning of documents to offer useful feedback, and then the actual conversation. They are not likely to be paying for consulting later. Benefits: continue building reputation as someone who can think through the complexity of a social ecosystem and flow dynamics. Yes. Good. And costs: my time and energy aren’t being valued with anything but gratitude. I am not getting visibility, social contacts, nor learning. I have historically just done this sort of thing for the sector. Over and over. I am starting to feel like setting the limit at 1 hour is not enough. I should restrict these freebies to 30 minutes or just publish a guide of questions for a reasonable fee. Anything of my time over that needs to be an hourly rate through the Agency.
Someone calls needing to make a decision on a potential partnership or collaboration. We talk for 45 minutes. I ask questions. We clarify. A decision is made. We could call this social capital building. And you might say that if the person had to pay they would simply skip the counseling. However, I am failing to use the social capital I built with them before it starts depleting (passage of time – these things don’t hold value indefinitely). I need to start making it clear that I charge for this. That will show up over at the Agency in the next month too.
I am on the board for a project and the collaborators on that project have a massive meltdown. I mediate over the course of two weeks to get them to a clear outcome, agreed process, and personal development for all sides toward positive feelings and “ownership” aka responsibility all around. Of course this is free – I might not be on the board to serve that purpose expressly, but I am happy to give my time to them. However, I ought to also be more clear about providing this kind of mediation as a service. That is definitely invisible to the market. Again, that will be showing up in the Agency in the next month.

How do you decide what to give away? When is it worth it? How do you do your cross-capital forms accounting?

Facilitation Algebra

by Thriver

We have all attended events in which we had to yawn. The pace is slow and laborious. We are stuck in a chair listening the whole time, and the mind wanders to what is on the buffet table that we can nibble on.

Imagine if we assigned a rating for degree of engagement when we gather people together for group work. Let’s say we collapse, for simplicity, the difference between engagement of speaking, learning, or connecting, and just say engagement.

If I have forty people in the room and only one is speaking, the engagement of the speaker, I hope, is maximal. Some percentage of the room, depending on what is said and their interest, is in various states of engagement. We might be able to calculate, if we knew those degrees, the sum of the level of engagement in the whole to what is being said (minus degree of engagement on other devices or to other topics in mind).

Let’s say the activity is introductions, and each person is speaking for 1-2 minutes about themselves, so the group knows itself. It will take 60 to 80 minutes to go around the room. It will also, usually cost, the facilitator energy to police the 1-2 minute limit unless they use a device like a pre-written 3×5 card to keep people brief. (I have used these cards to keep within intro time limits and then made harvest documentation by having them post to a wall using an association method, which can be quite helpful in knowing ourselves as a whole.)

Now, let’s say, instead, I ask those forty people, as part of their introductions to each other, to organize in space around the room as if it was a map of the world. I give them a compass point and four locations to work from. In 3 minutes the group has some sense of where everyone is from and who is near them. They all used their bodies, and had to talk with 2 or 3 others to be sure they were in the right relation to proximal people. What is the algebra of engagement of this activity? Assume there was no need to move chairs or change the room to do the exercise. In 30 minutes of these sorts of exercises (align yourself on a spectrum of interest in… or belief about…, for example). For documentation, you can have someone take photos of the arrangements.

The art of facilitation is the crafting of optimal processes for engagement and achievement of collective goals. There are no perfect solutions, and every group has needs to be addressed that shape the processes that can work. Facilitation is the art of creating process that moderates the flows of individual engagement and catalyzes the flow of necessary information leading to action.

Abra cadabra – work with the algebra of group energy to achieve outcomes to make magical experiences of flow and contribution.

When designing group process ask:

who will be in active engagement during this process?
who will be in passive forms of engagement during this process?
is there another way to achieve this outcome that would change the active and passive engagement ratio?
if each person’s time and attention has a numeric value, and I do the algebra, have I optimized the value in the group? Is there excess capacity that I could/should engage?
how simply can I explain what the process is?

photo credit: www.metaphoricalplatypus.com

DIY Economy

by Thriver

I have just returned from an incredible event in Asheville, North Carolina on the DIY Economy. I helped facilitate two sessions on building the coalition for the DIY Economy that Josh Middleman convened. Here are my notes and drawings with brief explanations for those who were not there.

Together, we are building a new, Do-it-yourself style economy. Or maybe a Do-it-ourselves economy. And some of us are taking up the work of building bridges from the old economy to the new economy.

A key, suggested Grace Kim, from GOOD magazine, to forming coalitions is a clear shared goal. After doing much of the work below, the draft statement of our goal is: Acting together to create ___ economic ecosystems grounded in people having agency. We coldn’t fill in the blank in the time allotted. Maybe you can help!

I suggested, reflecting on a values exercise from the first day, that there were three main camps attracted to the DIY Economy: those who value autonomy, those who value social justice, and those who strive for resilience. All of those camps share an interest in individual agency. Together, we discussed. (You could call autonomy the more libertarian or pro-business group, but the value they are honoring is autonomy.)

To encourage us to think beyond our own values to include others, I shared the following graphic from my work with Gerard Senehi on Evolutionary Philanthropy. The evolutionary change with the highest opportunity for impact includes all the other approaches, because it perceives them as pieces contributing to the health of the whole ecosystem.

To work at this Evolutionary level, we must appreciate our differences while bonding over our similarities. Valdis Krebs of orgnet.com uses the phrase, “connect on your similarities and profit from your differences” to capture the idea that if we are too much alike, we don’t add to our creativity by connecting. My ideas are like your ideas. If we have too much difference, we can’t find common language, perspective, or understanding to be creative together. However, the middle range, enables us to use the friction of our differences to increase our creative ability. Thus, by coming together, whether from social justice work, resilience, or from autonomy, the creativity of the whole can be increased.

So how do we get more creative together in building the DIY Economy? We can borrow from the strategies being employed by others and merge them – mashups – with our own. Here is a draft map of some of the ways people are practicing and innovating in the DIY Economy.

To move forward together, we need to continue this conversation, building out our shared goal and the diversity of the tools and strategies. We have several audiences to reach – not just the general public. Here is the map of the spectrum of people for us to be speaking our DIY language with and to:

The next steps for coalition building from here could be:

organizing strategies by which camp and making a more exhaustive list
discovering and mapping specific examples of the strategies
creating a DIY Economy toolkit or game with selections from strategies
map the strategies across domains, for example, which ones are through the legal system and regulation?
inviting event attendees to tell stories on blogs and in magazines, answer DIY economy questions on quora, using the language of our shared goal and being clear which audience from the engagement spectrum they are speaking to.

Much gratitude for all who attended our session including: Josh Middleman, Caroline Murray, Robert Leaver, Rachel Berliner Plattus, David Brodwin, Grace Kim, Mark Frasier, and who else did I miss? Eli?

—

Some of this harkens back to the work I was fascinated with: Field Building – Digital Media, Play, Persuasion, and Field Building, Motivating Participation, and What is Field Building.

We_b2 and Ci2iGlobal

by Thriver

I am incredibly excited to announce our affiliation with ci2iglobal, the Collective Impact and Innovation Institute. We have been hard at work behind the scenes for over a year, working together to share our wisdom, create useful tools, and facilitate powerful events and laboratories. Our event, We_b, in January at the HUB Brussels brought together some of the inspiring innovators we know in the social sector to test out our individual offerings as a collective.

Standing on the wisdom of that experience, we will be having We_b2 in Brussels June 16-17.

Are you (or someone you know) looking for new ways to:

Break through some big challenges that have been baffling you?
Play with new ideas in a collaborative, cross-cultural context?
Explore frameworks that help you make decisions and navigate risk?
Expand your own impact?

If so, then make plans to come join us.

Why am I incredibly excited about this collective and our events?

Because this is the most phenomenal team I have ever been honored to work with. We are 6 women with a cumulative experience of over 100 years in facilitating social change in global contexts! How often are you in a room with that much experience? More than that, we live and work on three continents now, but we have lived and worked on 6 continents. It doesn’t get better than that until you go to Antarctica!

We have experience scaling up social initiatives around the globe, fostering international collaborations, bringing micro-finance to developing countries, measuring impact for Ashoka fellows, and working with the European Council.

I think it is also important that most of us are old enough to have had long careers in international development while being young enough to be early and eager mavens in social technologies. We get social technology. We get cross cultural dialogue. We get impact assessment. Not just ideologically, but practically and experientially.

The power and capacity that puts in the room when we hold an event is enormous, but that isn’t all. There is more! All of us have done enough of the personal development and group process work to show up in these spaces with egos in check, curiosity in front, and driven by purpose focused on the group outcome.

Somehow the magic combination of this led all of us to explore system sciences and thus we come at our social change work with a core value being the health and evolution of ecosystems – be they human or environmental.

I find that to be incredibly exciting. Intoxicating, in fact. come get intoxicated with wisdom for your life and social change efforts. June 16-17, Brussels HUB for the We_b2 Co-Creation Lab.

Incubating Entrepreneurs

by Jean Russell

I am picturing some very driven inspired individuals under a warming light. But we know it takes a lot more than that.

Co-creating the world we want and doing so in new ways takes a network of people and some great mentorship, resource sharing, and support. This weekend we will be incubating some social innovation through COSI10Chicago. We will tell you all about our intense weekend with the warming light of collaborators soon.

If you are in or can make it to California, you can help entrepreneurs succeed (and pay forward how you have been helped) by attending Incubate 2.0, November 17-18, 2010 at the HP Executive Briefing Center in Cupertino. And Thrivable offers you a discount for Incubate 2.0!

What is the purpose? Answering the critical question: “How do I help my entrepreneurs succeed?”

Who should go?

a local incubator
an angel network
an economic development agency

How Incubate 2.0 tells the story:

Over the last decade, entrepreneurs have not only created successful businesses but applied their understanding of technology, their vision of the future, and their passion for growth to help fellow entrepreneurs. The innovations that entrepreneurs have created for each other include global mentoring programs, angel funds, massive networking events and virtual incubators, etc…

Incubate 2.0 will showcase the most cutting-edge programs that help business founders start and grow startups. Join us on November 17-18, 2010 at the HP Executive Briefing Center in Cupertino to gain insight into what works and what does not, meet the founders of these programs, and meet business leaders that have turned them into a global successes.

More at www.incubate2.com

COSI10 in Chicago

by Jean Russell

I am super excited to be organizing the Chicago event of COSI10. We will be gathering on November 6th and 7th to learn, share, and breakthrough together. We welcome social innovators from nonprofits, for profits, and blended hybrid efforts as well as those who champion social innovation. Together, we will discuss the field of social innovation, our networks in Chicago, our own efforts. Share your skills. Learn or develop your skills. Find collaborators and champions. Register today!

See our fresh flyer below!

Fiscal Futures

by Thriver

This evening I attended (with a brand new twitter friend) the MacArthur Foundation and Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s America’s Fiscal Future: Making Difficult Choices event.

Oh, I have lots of thoughts to share, but sharing them usually only gets half done… so I am shifting modes and sharing with you just a light dose of the questions and notes that I jotted down in my notebook as I listened to the panel. Think of it as live blogging. Does it provoke anything interesting for you? I would love to hear if anything sparks for you.

This talk seems to be focused on the deficit…with a lot of concern about how in debt the government is. (Oh geez, what about all those families who are in debt? hmmm….) Debt is actually quite difficult for families but at the governmental level, it is a floating issue (the being in debt isn’t so bad, it is the lack of confidence others have in the dollar that is troubling)…

Yikes, we have a debt-based currency, so please don’t tell me debt is bad. All our money is based on that!

I wonder what these panelist would say if we talked about the depression of 1873 and how that crisis in confidence was resolved through regulation (which lasted fairly well until computers made complex math easier and thus derivatives possible).

How much of this is fear-mongering. Really? They aren’t speaking to some current crisis (which we actually have on hand) but threaten some future crisis with terrible things like “triple digit” …was that inflation or interest rates or something?

I wonder, in a system of debt-based currency, as the economy grows, how does that work, really? Is that dependent on the growth of debt? Who holds that debt? Doesn’t something have to give?

I hear a lot of “uncertainty” but not yet a recognition of black swans and a system living in extremistan… How do these complex adaptive systems respond? How can you possibly predict them? I am so often frustrated by long term thinking that assumes some consistent or steady trajectory.

While there is acknowledgement of the Baby Boomer issue (how can we pay for all these people about to enter retirement age?) – do we understand that this is an issue in many other countries as well?

Fiscal responsibility is getting framed as if government manages a pocketbook like a family does. URgh… it is NOT like that at all. And framing it that way feels like a pretty nasty way to DUPE people.

Huh, fundemental tax reform. Suggesting two tiers 10% and 25% ... hmmm… by the way, in case you didn’t know your tax history, I looked it up again for you:

“By 1917 a taxpayer with only $40,000 faced a 16 percent rate and the individual with $1.5 million faced a tax rate of 67 percent.” then… “By 1936 the lowest tax rate had reached 4 percent and the top rate was up to 79 percent.” oooh, and if you think that was high, check out “By the end of the war the nature of the income tax had been fundamentally altered. Reductions in exemption levels meant that taxpayers with taxable incomes of only $500 faced a bottom tax rate of 23 percent, while taxpayers with incomes over $1 million faced a top rate of 94 percent. These tax changes increased federal receipts from $8.7 billion in 1941 to $45.2 billion in 1945.” And numbers of people paying count too, so “Beyond the rates and revenues, however, another aspect about the income tax that changed was the increase in the number of income taxpayers from 4 million in 1939 to 43 million in 1945.” http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/taxes/ustax.shtml

And where oh where did this gigantic deficit come from…

“By 2001, the total tax take had produced a projected unified budget surplus of $281 billion, with a cumulative 10 year projected surplus of $5.6 trillion.” http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/taxes/ustax.shtml

Oh never, mind, those deficit deniers are crazy…

One option is to phase in a carbon tax. Hmmm, interesting… Another is focusing tax increase on consumption rather than income (and especially tie this to healthcare)

Healthcare costs keep going up! Oh my! Let’s really call this ILL-care, because the costs of keeping me heathy are not so bad, it is the cost of being ill and treating illness with hospital and medicines that is expensive.

Should there be an income cap on Social Security? Hmm, I don’t know. I guess I have grown up expecting that social security won’t be around when I get to retirement age. So I just shrug at this. There might be an age hike for full payout… great, add a few more years and decrease the number of people that can live to retirement. And let’s not even begin to discuss what that does to employment issues… (especially in an information age where many of these people don’t intuitively navigate computers)

How will State and Local governments be impacted by our deficit issues? Well, expect more unfunded mandates. (ouch) and if they raise taxes at the federal level it will be harder for States to raise their taxes. If we create federal consumption taxes, those hurt States too.

Sure our treasury is allowed to borrow at low rates- we are the best looking horse in a glue factory. No, really he said that.

If you look, he says (it doesn’t matter which him- the antiquated white guy at the front of the room pontificating) – if you look at the history of deficits in many countries over hundreds of years, you can see that it often looks like borrowing is fine… then everything collapses fast. There is so much uncertainty. (Which is about as close as they got to admitting these are complex dynamic systems that a panel of old school “experts” would not be able to predict or sufficiently analyze (in time).

Haven’t we been living on mortgage debt for a long time? Is that what grew money in our economy? The issuance of debt to families?

He admitted the system is broken! Yeah!!! Now we get somewhere!

Huh, it won’t compromise national security to cut some of the defense budget, but… ummm, it does impact jobs (which can be tracked to a specific district making those cuts politically very unpopular no matter how obsolete or irrelevant the defense product is).

A great question – one that was mentioned on my European tour this summer – Is immigration something that can help solve the deficit and social security? Antiquated white guy says – well in the short term maybe, but in the long term they pull out from the system too… and anyway we just want bright enterpreneurial innovators as immigrants – that helps the economy. Okay, maybe that wasn’t in one sentence… but the parts were all there! <insert invective of choice>

Another question is about the recent G20 meeting and their commitment to lower deficits by 50% by the year 2013. Aggressive! Answer: well, some of those countries are emerging economies growing very quickly, which makes it easy to reduce debt.

Huh, you didn’t mention that before – that emerging economies grow quickly and that makes it easy to reduce debt. Why don’t we do THAT?

Another wonderful question from the floor… uh, sir, so we have all these subsidies for corn… and corn products are what leads to obesity and diabetes… which are major healthcare costs… so um, would it be prudent to reduce subsidies? (answer: well subsidies blah blah blah…. umm, yes)

Someone else asks about unemployement issues, to which they say – we didn’t look at that. What? You didn’t look at how unemployment impacts the economy, taxes, and the deficit? What experts are these?

Enough, I am out of here…

Europe Tour Post 4

by Thriver

(I will get back to post 3)

Stockholm

Stockholm

The conference is ending, and I am leave right before the final dinner. Vans take us to the train station. I plug in my ticket confirmation number to the machine to get my ticket printed. (Someone points out the little British flag, so it displays in English.) However, I can’t read my ticket – which word is train car and which one is seat? No matter, someone is always around to help kindly with these things. I sit in a strange glassed in area of first class. In my compartment at the table is a gentleman from Switzerland who works with an international labor organization, Mertin. He was raised in Bolivia, schooled in Germany, and now lives in Geneva. We talk all the way to Stockholm (over 2 hours). I learn all about his organization, his travels, and his city. We discuss thrivability, microfinance, and effective training and development programs (on and offline).

I arrive in Stockholm around 7pm. I am tired. Not as tired as you might imagine I would be, but tired. I have not prepared. I don’t have a clear map to Nadia’s place. My phone isn’t working properly. I give up calling her, and I take a taxi to her address. However, ringing her doorbell has no effect. I sit on my luggage looking around at this strange city. My technology is failing me. Foreign rates on data while roaming are significant, so I don’t turn data options on. What to do?

I pull out my computer and search for free and open wifi. Luckily, I find some. (You usually can in residential areas – some kind soul leaves it open.) I use skype to contact Nadia. She comes to the door apologizing for not giving me the code to get in. And immediately everything feels in flow again. We drop my stuff in her place before going out to eat. The restaurant she wants to take me to has a sign saying “gone for long weekend” on it. So we head to our second choice. Huh, gone for long weekend? What a quirky place! I like it. We eat Indian (although they say they are about to close, they stay open for us).

I met Nadia about a year ago. She wrote the page on Power in the Thrivability book. I asked her to write to that because when I met her, it was so evident to me that she exudes it and understands how it flows. She studied user interface and design, and that makes total sense when you get a sense of how much she understands about cognitive science. She is brilliant, beautiful, charming, and funny. We talk about Swedish politics, mutual friends we adore, generational change, and human dynamics. We dig into each others stories as dessert. We have drinks in a place where all the customers are women (accidentally).

We stay up until 3am laughing and talking in her apartment. When we awake in the morning there is just enough time for a shower and walk before I head to the train again. Off to Malmo. But first, a walk by the water. Stockholm is a city of water – there are many islands. We walk past a military fort where soldiers in odd costumes (like band uniforms) march in a line while people lounge in the grass on the other side of our path. the grass is full of sunbathers of all ages, gazing out at the water where many boats float. One boat has a set of couples eating pretty formally at a table. It is so picturesque.

We walk too far, and we are pressed for time getting back. Instead of taking the subway, we order a taxi. Nadia sees me off at the train station once she has fixed the ticket. (I could not buy the ticket in Sweden – something about them knowing it was a US buyer…ordering from a Swedish IP?) So Nadia had bought my ticket for me, and there was some trouble transferring it from her mobile ticket to a paper ticket for me. We work it out though.

Now I have a 5 hour train ride to Malmo….

The conference is ending, and I am leave right before the final dinner. Vans take us to the train station. I plug in my ticket confirmation number to the machine to get my ticket printed. (Someone points out the little British flag, so it displays in English.) However, I can’t read my ticket – which word is train car and which one is seat? No matter, someone is always around to help kindly with these things. I sit in a strange glassed in area of first class. In my compartment at the table is a gentleman from Switzerland who works with an international labor organization, Mertin. He was raised in Bolivia, schooled in Germany, and now lives in Geneva. We talk all the way to Stockholm (over 2 hours). I learn all about his organization, his travels, and his city. We discuss thrivability, microfinance, and effective training and development programs (on and offline).

I arrive in Stockholm around 7pm. I am tired. Not as tired as you might imagine I would be, but tired. I have not prepared. I don’t have a clear map to Nadia’s place. My phone isn’t working properly. I give up calling her, and I take a taxi to her address. However, ringing her doorbell has no effect. I sit on my luggage looking around at this strange city. My technology is failing me. Foreign rates on data while roaming are significant, so I don’t turn data options on. What to do?

I pull out my computer and search for free and open wifi. Luckily, I find some. (You usually can in residential areas – some kind soul leaves it open.) I use skype to contact Nadia. She comes to the door apologizing for not giving me the code to get in. And immediately everything feels in flow again. We drop my stuff in her place before going out to eat. The restaurant she wants to take me to has a sign saying “gone for long weekend” on it. So we head to our second choice. Huh, gone for long weekend? What a quirky place! I like it. We eat Indian (although they say they are about to close, they stay open for us).

I met Nadia about a year ago. She wrote the page on Power in the Thrivability book. I asked her to write to that because when I met her, it was so evident to me that she exudes it and understands how it flows. She studied user interface and design, and that makes total sense when you get a sense of how much she understands about cognitive science. She is brilliant, beautiful, charming, and funny. We talk about Swedish politics, mutual friends we adore, generational change, and human dynamics. We dig into each others stories as dessert. We have drinks in a place where all the customers are women (accidentally).

We stay up until 3am laughing and talking in her apartment. When we awake in the morning there is just enough time for a shower and walk before I head to the train again.

Off to Malmo. But first, a walk by the water. Stockholm is a city of water – there are many islands. We walk past a military fort where soldiers in odd costumes (like band uniforms) march in a line while people lounge in the grass on the other side of our path.

The grass is full of sunbathers of all ages, gazing out at the water where many boats float. One boat has a set of couples eating pretty formally at a table. It is so picturesque.

We walk too far, and we are pressed for time getting back. Instead of taking the subway, we order a taxi. Nadia sees me off at the train station once she has fixed the ticket. (I could not buy the ticket in Sweden – something about them knowing it was a US buyer…ordering from a Swedish IP?) So Nadia had bought my ticket for me, and there was some trouble transferring it from her mobile ticket to a paper ticket for me. We work it out though.

Now I have a 5 hour train ride to Malmo….