I am so excited about this conference. I am very English language sensitive, so getting just the right words is important to me. Words matter. They tell a story of possibility. And these words speak deeply to me. So let me explain…no, let me sum up…
In 1998, I curated an exhibition call Text and Territory: Navigating through Immigration and Dislocation. Curating art is all about caring for it, putting pieces together to tell a larger story, and caring for all the people connected to the exhibition.
In 2010, I curated a book- Thrivability: A Collaborative Sketch, gathering writing from over 65 people and pairing it with artwork to begin to explore what thrivability is. They didn’t all agree what it meant, and they didn’t need to. Curating the work was about pulling all the different voices together to make sense. To offer a first sketch of what thrivability might mean. Curating isn’t control. It isn’t about the author/creator/writer. With the Thrivability Sketch, the very first piece someone contributed surprised me, and I knew then that the collective work would be better than what I could do alone.
—
A good friend of mine, Steve, is a scientist and inventor. I would bet you have some tech you use that he was involved in creating. Something of a typical physicist, he wears one of those shirts that say “Over 1000 scientists named Steve agree…” We have spoken at length about creativity over the years. We keep coming back to ask, “what are the conditions that give rise to creativity?” While we can’t control creativity – or generativity – we can, like good gardeners, give all the ingredients to support creativity arising.
Curating the conditions is about creating the nutrient base for what you want to emerge. It is about nurturing the substrate for things to evolve from.
—
Last year at a brunch I hosted, we got in a debate about sustainability, resilience, and thrivability. So we made this chart to help people understand how we see the difference. Thrivability’s motto is “Game on!” It is about metastable states, live giving rise to more life, and anti-fragility. It is about striving for greatness. Play. Aliveness. Joy.
Thrivability doesn’t replace resilience or sustainability. It transcends them. Life strives to thrive, in whole or in part.
—
You could say I have had a passionate obsession with efficacy since I was a kid. It is a long story. Including a long tango with social change and philanthropy. And at the end of it what I found tied to efficacy were levers for transformation. What can I do to make a difference in curating the conditions for a more thrivable planet? My answer may differ than yours of course. My answer comes from Donella Meadows work on Places to Intervene in a System. I want to shift people to think about better goals, change the paradigm, and even give people more power to transcend paradigms. 1, 2, 3.
—
My strategy in curating the conditions for a thrivable world is planting the seeds of thrivability across the world. Planting the idea in people who are ripe for some story of greatness and possibility. People who are working hard to expand the possibility space. And to offer a story to people that includes joy, delight, and awe. Because awe and joy expand the mind and increase the possibility of creativity and connection.
—
Ouishare started as a small social media group focused on collaborative economy. They started to have local gatherings in Paris. They connected with like-minded groups in other cities.
Ouishare organized around values of open, sharing, and empathy. They scaled in 2 short years from small group to global collective. They produced a list of shared values: Openness, Transparency, Independence, Impact, Meet People in Real Life, Action, Permanent beta, Feedback, Inclusion, Play. All values that help curate the conditions for thriving.
They came together to host an event: Ouisharefest. I heard about it and promoted it to my network. I got feedback that there weren’t enough women and minorities speaking from a friend who believe the collaborative economy is based in the emergence of the divine feminine. When I brought that back to the Ouisharefest team, they invited me to help with programming.
—
Part of the curation was about clear process. They used RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) for clear accountability and relationships. Ouisharefest came together with a scrappy startup vibe, using the very practices of the sharing economy that they promoted. They created a space for interaction to occur, and invited inspirational speakers to attract attendance. When someone like me offered feedback, they invited that person to take leadership on that activity. Pretty soon it wasn’t just a conference, they had an open space time slot, a hack day, and evening festivities, all organically grown from the invitation and shared values.
They used collaborative software to make it visible who was doing what, what decisions were being made, and even enabled voting up of ideas. They aimed at as much transparency as possible while being reasonable about what information people wanted access to.
—
Yes and culture – build on others, offer appreciation, look for assets and resources instead of deficits or needs.
Attractor Force – had the technology savvy and marketing gloss to pull in speakers, sponsors, and participants. Plus the connections and operational skills to deliver.
Success: The conference was a success. Another conference came quickly in Spain a month later.
More energy made them more visible which attracted more people who felt they had something to offer aligned with that vibe and felt empowered to act on it grew more visibility and activity all self-managing.
Indicators:
when an outcome from the event is listed as answers to the question “how can the government harness its potential to be a sharing platform?” you know that they were not playing blame games and instead were focused on what assets we have and how to build forward.
—
Curating conditions: values and process. The values attract the energy and the clear process gives the energy a path to follow.
They grew up from an emerging space – the Sharing Economy. They increased the network connectivity before and during the event. Ouisharefest increased the visibility of the sharing economy and bolstered those within the field. Ouisharefest grew and strengthened the field of sharing economy, which in turns should increase the likelihood of their success in upcoming events.
—
Most of the projects that I see where people are striving to curate the conditions for thriving need to work on 3 improvements:
Clear process. What are the simple principles that form the paths for emergence to happen? Structurelessness is dangerous. Rules are too bureaucratic.
Playfulness. Thrivability emerges from play. Expand the possibility space. Find ways to reduce the pressure and seriousness in the system. Chunk it down to lighter parts where play can happen.
Layer up and down – create the conditions for those upstream and downstream of you to thrive.
—
Wishing you the best in curating the conditions for a more thrivable planet.
Thank you
Collective Intelligence: Swarms, Molds, and Forest Webs
by Jean RussellAbsurd Scenario Planning
by ThriverSlow Poem of Selected Dreams
by FierceInterview with Thrivable Society Fellow, Deanna Zandt
by ThriverInterview with a Thrivable Society Fellow: Katie Teague
by ThriverExpressing Thrivability: Michelle Holliday
by Jean RussellToday, I want to express gratitude for Michelle Holliday. She is a facilitator, organizational consultant, researcher and writer. She brings people together and helps them discover ways they can feel more alive, connect more meaningfully with each other, and serve life more powerfully through their work.
I first encountered Michelle when my network was excitedly sharing this slideshare:
Michelle clearly gets how aliveness, integration, and living systems are the key to thrivability. A year later, she gave this ted talk.
More recently, she co-created this amazing and playful community inquiry that went around the world, Thrivable World Quest. I am such a big fan of her work that I gave her the thrivability twitter handle I had been holding onto.
If you are interested in how organizations can be resilient, adaptive — indeed, how they can thrive using living system principles, talk with Michelle! And keep an eye out for her forthcoming book, The Age of Thrivability.
Expressing Thrivability: Lonny Grafman
by Jean RussellGratitude. I want to highlight some people I feel grateful to know and experience, people who are expressions of thrivability.
He is a Practivista. He is head of product for Nexi, a startup being incubated at HighwayOne. Lonny is so multi-dimensional. Sometimes he is in the Dominican Republic building homes out of local materials with his students. Sometimes he is in NYC working on an art project that gets us thinking about living systems design (http://www.thewaterpod.org/).
While Lonny is the epitome of hacker engineer, he is also deeply rooted in what it means to be human, how to honor and respect each other, and how to be with each other in practice. I admire what he does. More than that though, I admire how he is – his beingness. Human. Funny. Compassionate. Solution-focused. Present. Perceptive.
Lonny holds several of the keys to thrivability for me. Thank you Lonny.
Come to the Thrivable Future Salon Oct 14 in SF
by Jean RussellMark 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:
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
Future Salon by Mark Finnern.
“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.
Curating the Conditions for a More Thrivable World
by Jean RussellSlides and notes from a talk for the ISSS57 conference.
I am so excited about this conference. I am very English language sensitive, so getting just the right words is important to me. Words matter. They tell a story of possibility. And these words speak deeply to me. So let me explain…no, let me sum up…
In 1998, I curated an exhibition call Text and Territory: Navigating through Immigration and Dislocation. Curating art is all about caring for it, putting pieces together to tell a larger story, and caring for all the people connected to the exhibition.
In 2010, I curated a book- Thrivability: A Collaborative Sketch, gathering writing from over 65 people and pairing it with artwork to begin to explore what thrivability is. They didn’t all agree what it meant, and they didn’t need to. Curating the work was about pulling all the different voices together to make sense. To offer a first sketch of what thrivability might mean. Curating isn’t control. It isn’t about the author/creator/writer. With the Thrivability Sketch, the very first piece someone contributed surprised me, and I knew then that the collective work would be better than what I could do alone.
—
A good friend of mine, Steve, is a scientist and inventor. I would bet you have some tech you use that he was involved in creating. Something of a typical physicist, he wears one of those shirts that say “Over 1000 scientists named Steve agree…” We have spoken at length about creativity over the years. We keep coming back to ask, “what are the conditions that give rise to creativity?” While we can’t control creativity – or generativity – we can, like good gardeners, give all the ingredients to support creativity arising.
Curating the conditions is about creating the nutrient base for what you want to emerge. It is about nurturing the substrate for things to evolve from.
—
Last year at a brunch I hosted, we got in a debate about sustainability, resilience, and thrivability. So we made this chart to help people understand how we see the difference. Thrivability’s motto is “Game on!” It is about metastable states, live giving rise to more life, and anti-fragility. It is about striving for greatness. Play. Aliveness. Joy.
Thrivability doesn’t replace resilience or sustainability. It transcends them. Life strives to thrive, in whole or in part.
—
You could say I have had a passionate obsession with efficacy since I was a kid. It is a long story. Including a long tango with social change and philanthropy. And at the end of it what I found tied to efficacy were levers for transformation. What can I do to make a difference in curating the conditions for a more thrivable planet? My answer may differ than yours of course. My answer comes from Donella Meadows work on Places to Intervene in a System. I want to shift people to think about better goals, change the paradigm, and even give people more power to transcend paradigms. 1, 2, 3.
—
My strategy in curating the conditions for a thrivable world is planting the seeds of thrivability across the world. Planting the idea in people who are ripe for some story of greatness and possibility. People who are working hard to expand the possibility space. And to offer a story to people that includes joy, delight, and awe. Because awe and joy expand the mind and increase the possibility of creativity and connection.
—
Ouishare started as a small social media group focused on collaborative economy. They started to have local gatherings in Paris. They connected with like-minded groups in other cities.
Ouishare organized around values of open, sharing, and empathy. They scaled in 2 short years from small group to global collective. They produced a list of shared values: Openness, Transparency, Independence, Impact, Meet People in Real Life, Action, Permanent beta, Feedback, Inclusion, Play. All values that help curate the conditions for thriving.
They came together to host an event: Ouisharefest. I heard about it and promoted it to my network. I got feedback that there weren’t enough women and minorities speaking from a friend who believe the collaborative economy is based in the emergence of the divine feminine. When I brought that back to the Ouisharefest team, they invited me to help with programming.
—
Part of the curation was about clear process. They used RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) for clear accountability and relationships. Ouisharefest came together with a scrappy startup vibe, using the very practices of the sharing economy that they promoted. They created a space for interaction to occur, and invited inspirational speakers to attract attendance. When someone like me offered feedback, they invited that person to take leadership on that activity. Pretty soon it wasn’t just a conference, they had an open space time slot, a hack day, and evening festivities, all organically grown from the invitation and shared values.
They used collaborative software to make it visible who was doing what, what decisions were being made, and even enabled voting up of ideas. They aimed at as much transparency as possible while being reasonable about what information people wanted access to.
—
Yes and culture – build on others, offer appreciation, look for assets and resources instead of deficits or needs.
Attractor Force – had the technology savvy and marketing gloss to pull in speakers, sponsors, and participants. Plus the connections and operational skills to deliver.
Success: The conference was a success. Another conference came quickly in Spain a month later.
More energy made them more visible which attracted more people who felt they had something to offer aligned with that vibe and felt empowered to act on it grew more visibility and activity all self-managing.
Indicators:
when an outcome from the event is listed as answers to the question “how can the government harness its potential to be a sharing platform?” you know that they were not playing blame games and instead were focused on what assets we have and how to build forward.
—
Curating conditions: values and process. The values attract the energy and the clear process gives the energy a path to follow.
They grew up from an emerging space – the Sharing Economy. They increased the network connectivity before and during the event. Ouisharefest increased the visibility of the sharing economy and bolstered those within the field. Ouisharefest grew and strengthened the field of sharing economy, which in turns should increase the likelihood of their success in upcoming events.
—
Most of the projects that I see where people are striving to curate the conditions for thriving need to work on 3 improvements:
Clear process. What are the simple principles that form the paths for emergence to happen? Structurelessness is dangerous. Rules are too bureaucratic.
Playfulness. Thrivability emerges from play. Expand the possibility space. Find ways to reduce the pressure and seriousness in the system. Chunk it down to lighter parts where play can happen.
Layer up and down – create the conditions for those upstream and downstream of you to thrive.
—
Wishing you the best in curating the conditions for a more thrivable planet.
Thank you
Imagine, Possible, Test, Prove
by Jean RussellQuestions
I was trying to understand a paper by a friend who does evolutionary algorithms. I approached it several times and finally it was clear enough in me to spark a new awareness about the world. It was one of those moments where I saw so much more clearly how the very things in front of me relate to each other. Was this already obvious to all of you?
Prove it.
So a map of information in my head shifted. Are evolutionary algorithms within the domain of science or math? It uses both. Lots of science uses math, of course. But what I didn’t feel clear about was that math has different criteria than science. Math is deductive. Math is axiomatic. It is a field built of arguments on what is self evident, becoming ever more abstract, perhaps, but always building on what can be logically proven from what is self-evident. Math is a field for what is absolutely proven. And thus the old doesn’t get tossed out when a new piece of math becomes accepted. It is accrued and should continue to be logically coherent. Math is evolutionary by accrual.
Test it.
Science is not. I am not saying science is not logically coherent exactly. Oh wait, yes, I am. We can see that in how the explanations that we currently accept about large scale objects (astronomy) are not consistent with the explanations on the small scale (particle physics). Science is about developing explanations of the world that can be tested. Science is inductive. And current science theories are accepted under the condition that, when another theory gets presented that applies in more cases and especially in more edge cases, then the new explanation should be adopted as a more thorough and useful one. So science will replace old explanations with new – more nuanced – explanations.
These explanations are called theories. And they are built of hypothesis that are then tested using specific criteria determined by the field and traditions of science. Science is itself evolutionary by repair or replacement, not just accrual.
Sums
So Math is the realm of what is proven. And Science is the realm of what is tested. I was deliberating on that distinction, which started to seem obvious to me – as if I had known it since I was a child. Somehow as an adult, the information seemed like a revelation.
Great, but I want to know how this is useful.
For example, if we are discussing climate change, and you want to have the conversation from the criteria of math, then I need to make some computations that can be derived from self-evident axioms. And once those are known, then they are true. Period. Not up for debate, really. The proof is there or not there. But if we are discussing climate change, and I want to have the conversation from the criteria of science, then you need to form a hypothesis about some observable phenomenon, and then we can test it. The more times I can test it and get the same result, the more my explanation will be taken seriously. Right now climate deniers are denigrating climate science by saying that it fails to meet the criteria of Math – proven. And the scientists are at a loss, because of course man made climate science is a theory – a story we are testing out that isn’t proven or even provable. It is “just a theory” like gravity is “just a theory” too.
Possibilities
I was contemplating all this when I picked up “Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology“ by Žižek to read on the plane to Paris. As one does, of course. Žižek is perfect plane reading (not). Watch his videos instead. I like his RSA Animate as a gateway to his work. In any case, he is ranting about philosophy and critical theory, and he says philosophy is about the possible. Again, click. Here I am a philosophy major, and I had not thought of philosophy being about how we explore what might be possible. But now it makes sense to me.
So then I started to imagine that Logic might exist on a plane or dimension between Math and Philosophy. And that Epistemology – the study of what can be known and how we know – might exist on the plane between science and philosophy. A foam of fields started to emerge in my head, all bubbly.
And I wondered what might be missing.
Imagine
Art is the realm of what we can imagine. It doesn’t have to be proven or tested or even be considered as possible. It orients toward imagination. The Art world is having a large conversation about imagination across cultures and time periods.
Imagined, Possible, Tested, and Proven
Jay Standish has developed an alternate visual at open door.
Now what?
Chewing on all this and not seeing where to bring it up at the Climate Science event Transformations, where I was speaking in Europe, I continued to mull it over. After several conversations with people in San Francisco (Keki Burjorjee – the Evolutionary Algorithms person, John Hagel, and several others) I am sharing it with you here. What I gathered from those additional conversations is how to apply this understanding.
1. What conversation are you having? If you are struggling to make progress on a conversation, ask which domain each person is coming to the conversation from. See the climate science example above.
2. What narrative do you want to be creating? Is your narrative about tests, provability, possibility, or imagination?
3. What is the dominant narrative or where do you put yourself on the various planes? For example, I primarily come from a mix of philosophy and science. I like to consider what is possible and then I like to test it. I am only interested in the possible that can then be tried out. It is a bit like a personality quiz.