Free Burma

Dear Imaginers,

An international collective blogging action is happening today, and may give some impetus to the 15th October environment blog action focus.

Have you heard about the crisis in Burma?

Burma is ruled by one of the worst military dictatorships in the world. Last month Buddhist monks and nuns began marching and chanting prayers to call for democracy. The protests spread and hundreds of thousands of Burmese people joined in — but they’ve been brutally attacked by the military regime.

I just signed a petition calling on Burma’s powerful ally China and the UN security council to step in and pressure Burma’s rulers to stop the killing. The petition has exploded to over 500,000 signatures in a few days and is being advertised in newspapers around the world, delivered to the UN Security Council, and broadcast to the Burmese people by radio. We’re trying to get to 1 million signatures this week, please sign below and tell everyone!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/tf.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK

This image is one of a few of this kind being placed in ads in China this week.

Thank you so much for your help!
Sofia

More info to take part in the action:
Go to www.free-burma.org. You will be able to register as a participant of the campaign and keep up to date.

“Dead long enough”..I’m strong enough. Music with a conscience

Dear people that dare to I M A G I N E

It’s great to hear the kind of words we believe in being rolled out in rhythm and song….

Deeply connected to the Imagine Community are the Pioneers of Change.. Tim Merry is a pioneer who has made some exciting music…

You get to hear it early! these songs at this link are all available for download.. (the album will come out later on this year).

Download the songs here:

I love “dead long enough…”.. it really strikes a chord..

ENJOY !!!

hugs from London,

Sofia

The Taliban Hostage Challenge: how one org is taking this on and what we can learn from that

Dear Imaginers

A new crisis is on the table with the women taken hostage by the Taliban

I wanted to communicate a great example of how some people and organisations are taking on this kind of challenge.

Have a look below at the email that I got in my inbox today, (from avaaz.org) and how it carefuly and powerfully presents the challenge, draws you in to the story and shows you exactly how you can contribute AND the potential impact of that contribution.

Of course, I am also asking that you sign the petition (it took me 22 seconds) but have a look and I am pretty sure you will want to do so after reading this below…

But apart from the petition, I think that anyone close to avaaz.org will learn about what it takes to engage poeple. I have heard the founder Ricken Patel speak and he inspired me greatly as to how to go about campaining in general and also how the new technologies have great potential to be used in countries of the south. I think we are often in a state of campaigning about the things we believe about, whether we are an activist or simply someone within an organisation that wants to make something happen and would like to do this with other people.

——————– BEGINNING OF EMAIL I GOT IN MY INBOX TODAY

Dear friends,

23 South Korean aid workers, most of them young women, have just been taken hostage by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, who are threatening to execute them this week. Not only are these aid workers’ lives at stake, but their execution could trigger a mass evacuation of life-giving humanitarian aid from all of Afghanistan.

The situation is desperate, but there is hope. The Taliban are all from the ‘Pashtun’ ethnic group, and observe a strict code called Pashtunwali – the “way of the Pashtuns”. This code demands, above all else: “hospitality to all, especially guests and strangers”. There are rumours of infighting among the Taliban over these kidnappings, because they clearly violate the code.

A global outcry for the Taliban to follow their own code would certainly be covered by media in Afghanistan and Pakistan where the Taliban are based – creating more local pressure on them to free their prisoners. But these hostages are living under a 24 hour death sentence. We have seconds not minutes to act. Sign the petition below, forward this email, and let’s report a truly powerful outcry to local journalists:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/honour_the_afghan_code

Pashtunwali has real power among ordinary people in Afghanistan. In 2003 Bettina Goislard, 29, was shot by Taliban gunmen while she was working for the UN High Commission for Refugees in the town of Ghazni, near where the Korean aid workers were kidnapped. Incensed by her murder, local people chased down the gunmen and beat them before handing them over to the police — then they gathered up her body and marched several hundred miles to Kabul to show their sorrow to the world.

Recently, global pressure helped free BBC reporter Alan Johnston from his captivity in Gaza. It can be amazing what happens when we speak together around the world. So let’s try our best, for these 23 young people and their families, and the millions of Afghans who need their aid — With hope,

Ricken, Iain, Graziela, Tom, Paul and the rest of the Avaaz Team
——————– END OF EMAIL

Have a great day,

Sofia

New Ideas for Africa

Sofia participated in this event…

Hello folks,

I know you haven’t heard from us in a while and I have gotten numerous individual messages wondering what’s happening with the group.

Well, we are still ALIVE AND KICKING!!!!!

May New Ideas for Africa Output

Since that event and following the positive feedback we got from attendees, we have been trying to put modalities in place so we can continue to run the events sustainably but also so we can create a proper framework for us to be more than a talk-shop, but an active practical player in Africa’s development.

To this end, we now have an extended team of 7 people all working on the project now. The extended team met to work out our strategy for moving forward on Tuesday 3rd of July and will keep you updated as we progress.

We have also gotten a number of invites to partner with existing organisations working on development of the continent.

All in all, things are looking good and we will be sending details for the next New Ideas for Africa session in London as well as plans for a picnic in August.

We have also gotten requests from different people who want to run similar sessions in their own cities outside London. We are trying to put together a format on how this will operate and will send through once we have it. If you would also like to host the conversations in your city, let us know.

Take care and keen to see more activity on the group.

Cheers,

Femi & Lesley
For Africa++ Core Team

‘Monday9am.tv’ : Cool 3min. video on ‘the perilous journey of becoming a someone’

Dear imaginers

Nic Askew (monday9am.tv) manages to reveal the amazing human being in the inspiring people he films in these short bursts of weekly film.

SEE THIS WEEKS SHORT (<3 mins) FILM HERE

This particular one made me really laugh - especially as I have recommended some of the books you see in this.

I know someone who watches one of these videos every week to keep remembering what is possible. You can link, RSS or simply get an email alert each week.

Warning: they are powerful and could have unintended consequences.

Have great Mondays!

Sofia

Are you blogging this?

I have just been to the statistics page of our blog and have noticed that Sofia’s and Kirsten’s sites continiously produce traffic to the IMAGINE blog!!!

Check out this entry on Kirsten’s blog

And Sofia writes on her website:
Turn Up the Courage blogging comes to life

I am also now blogging!

For the last few months I have held back on the newsletter and have been wanting to start blogging but had not got round to initiating this. As is so beautiful when one sets an intention without needing to know HOW it will happen, along came along the perfect opportunity to do this in community.

I will be sending a newsletter out again in the next couple of months but in the meantime feel free to check out this blog that I am contributing to.
It is great to be contributing to a blog with a few other committed people. It feels like we pass the hosting stick around. See how we do:

IDEA FOR YOUR COMMUNITY?
52 weeks in the year and more than 52 people in this network. So each person can agree to host the blog for one week of the year. Sharing, inspiring or informing. All are valid contributions to a community.

This concept emerged out of the vibrant community: IMAGINE Network

So, a few of us (myself included) have agreed to host this process, inviting people into it; cultivating the community. Ie we are editors but it is a very open system anyone can be an editor if they register on the blog and if they dont want to they can always send posting to us and we will upload it for them. I really have to acknowledge Frauke Godat from the We Are What We Do organisation for her incredible drive here.

Here is the link!”

Keep blogging
FRAUKE
P.S.: If you want to join the editors team just send me an email to fgodat@aol.com

Facilitator’s Guide to Imagine Reflection Session U-Process /Collective Intelligence Workshop

Dear Imaginers,

At last this guide is ready. I have attempted to create a ‘one size fits all’ version, which aims to cover most practical aspects as well as some of the concepts behind this workshop design.

In this guide are also references for further reading

Please feel free to give feedback. The idea is that this was meant to be a helpful guide, that had concrete starting points for someone who wanted to run it, as well as some of the ‘big-picture context.

Download the facilitator’s guide here:

U-Process and Collective Intelligence Workshop Facilitation Guide

In my foundation training on facilitation, back when I was working at British Airways, the external consultant who trained us said about the references he gave us:” take these and go beyond.”

So please do!

Thanks again Stefan for highlighting the creative commons concept so accessibly. I have put this guide under a CC license. (My first use of this! It feels good ;-))

“We live in a time in which most people believe there is not much inside them, only what teachers, parents and others have put there.” Michel Cassou and Stewart Cubley, authors of Life, Painting and Passion

How the power balance is (slowly) shifting to the collective

This trend-watching site is worth keeping an eye on. Each month there is a free report. One of such reports that caught my eye was last December’s Output, as shown in the image above.

The concept of Generation Cash meeting Generation Consumer (Dec 06 Version)

Now that we are all potential content providers ( producing our own blogs, news (citizen journalism), videos and more), there is a move within the corporate community to harness this. For example, companies have for a while started to offer the customer community the chance to win a prize for coming up with the next innovation. Procter and Gamble even set the target that 50% of their innovations were to come from the customer community.

For a while, ‘us’, the collective have been largely happy to settle for a small reward (relative to the market value of that intelligence). We are however wisening up slowly, and corparates are becoming aware that they may have to start paying/rewarding content providers more substantiantially for their content provision.

With the onset of a myriad of peer-2-peer payment systems (e-bay, pay-pal, barter currencies etc) , it is possible the content be paid for, even if it is small and pretty invisible in the large scheme of things.

Where there is economic reward for smaller actions, power is transferred to the collective.

This has implications for those consumers that produce content for free ‘for the love and not for the money’. They may gradually be more substantially rewarded. With the systems in place to reward small contributions, this means that it could be easier to build your career on what you do as your hobby/your passion, if you can see a market value for it.

It is early days but this is a definite trend to watch.

Have a read of the briefings produced for the incisive monthly reports so far;

http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/

New p2p Paradigm: If there is one must-read for 2007…

Following on the themes of technical development from Frauke and Stefan, I wanted to introduce a concept that opened my a year ago, at a conference on P2P.

The people at this event were all practitioners of some aspect of p2p, from working with ‘collective intelligence’ concepts to ‘enabling p2p process technology developments’. Most of us came to actually understand- what is this p2p thing? Prior to the event we were encouraged to read a certain 10-Page essay. In this last year I have seen many applications in my work and in society of the principles that I have gleaned from that one essay.

P2P does not just mean just Napster and file sharing. P2P as was indicated to me at this eventng ab, is beiout a paradigm shift as significant as when Marxism entered the political landscape. (wow, that caught my attention, and I listened on!)

One example of this shift is something that you may have noticed about how options/choices are screened within a group. In the old paradigm, within a community, new suggestions are first screened by some kind of small representative select group, and then only those selected suggestions will be put forward for voting/discussion to the wider community.

In a peer to peer paradigm, new suggestions are bubbling up all the time, and they are ’screened’ by the collective only AFTER they have been put forward. It is almost impossible to know which ones will carry more ‘weight’ with the community; which ones the community will select.

This has a HUGE impact for the way we govern, make decisions as a community, and for grassroots to have more powerful channels to be heard.

Introducing Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens has set up the Foundation for Peer 2 Peer Alternatives and was the keynote speaker at the conference last year. Aside from several years of research on this topic, Michel and his team have maintainted a blog, online resource centre and more.

see more at http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Main_Page

Key Must-Read for 2007:

What I recommend you to read at some point during 2007 (no pressure!) is Michel’s foundational article. (Yes that 10-page essay was his). I am convinced every person in this network will have at least one ‘aha!’ from this excellent piece of work.

This is not a lightweight article, it is in fact very comprehensive analysis. But persevere; because of the impact of this paradigm shift, I believe it will help you to be aware of one of the most significant shifts in our culture in this decade. It is an utterly fascinating read.

Link to article

Here is a link to the shorter (10 page) version of this article:

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499

Synopsis

“The Political Economy of Peer to Peer Production.

Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a deeper transformation of the fundamentals of our social life. As political, economic, and social systems transform themselves into distributed networks, a new human dynamic is emerging: peer to peer (P2P). As P2P gives rise to the emergence of a third mode of production, a third mode of governance, and a third mode of property, it is poised to overhaul our political economy in unprecedented ways. This essay aims to develop a conceptual framework (’P2P theory’) capable of explaining these new social processes.”

In the Wombat’s Words

Well thank you Stefan to last week’s hosting..and to Frauke’s solid posting trail here I take the batton and start a week of blog hosting.

You know the idea was that each person would simply commit to one entry a week. And yet the hosts so far have posted more than one.

Funny how, often when the the first step in any venture is not too big, it is likely you will overshoot and do more. Isn’t that so much more effective than aiming too high, and being demotivated to continue. A trick I use to start a task that I am avoiding is to set the first step to be really small and tell myself I can stop after this point if I should wish, or take a break. This really works for me and chances are I will keep going.

SHORT VIDEO ANIMATION

Well I wanted to introduce you this week to The Wombat. He is in this very short video clip, and comes with a strong and simple message that is relevant to every concerned citizen. Amongst my colleagues we have also used the video in training purposes to lighten the topic of sustainability and ecology. You may want to do the same.

This is how it is described at Global Mindshift’s website:

“The Wombat speaks, and he’s smarter than you so, so listen up!. In less than a minute, this rapid-fire animation tells you everything you need to know about how to get along on earth for the next million years.”

Just click on the link below to see it:

http://www.global-mindshift.org/amplify/spread/wombat.asp