Wed, Feb 27, 2008
The Artist in All of Us
#
HowardRheingold's tweet last week about his mother reminded me of a story CharlieDunton told me last fall. There was a guy who used to go around elementary school classrooms to talk about art. After introducing himself, he would ask all of the artists in the room to raise their hands. What he found was that, up until the third grade, almost every student would raise their hand. Everyone saw themselves as artists. After the third grade, however, almost no one would raise their hands. The artist in each of them had been socialized away. (MTI)
I wonder what the world would be like if more of us viewed ourselves as artists. (MTJ)
/forbenefit |
Posted at 2:06pm
Mon, Mar 26, 2007
Hold Your Horses!
#
GavinClabaugh tells a
wonderful
story about the origins of the saying, "Hold your horses," and cites a
number of every day examples of our inability to adapt to change: (M10)
Confronted by today's rapid pace of technological change,
organizations hold a lot of horses; the faster the change, the more
horses. We all do it. We treat web sites like magazines, databases
like report producers, voicemail like a "while you were out" pad,
and email like it was direct mail.... (M11)
Non profits are not immune -- in fact they're probably worse. Working
with nonprofits as a consultant, I've often walked into what felt like
an imaginary stable, horses being held steady to the left and right; a
regular day at the races. To quote again Dr. [EltingMorison], "The
tendency is apparently involuntary and immediate to protect oneself
against the shock of change by continuing in the presence of altered
situations the familiar habits, however incongruous, of the past." (M12)
... (M13)
Language too, can show you where the horses are stabled: it's slow to
keep up. When things are in flux, language usually reflects the
associated angst. That's why you still here the phrase "in the can"
when a news crew finishes a video shoot -- it refers to the act of
putting the film into a sealed container or "can." Film is gone, and
so is the can, but the language has failed to adapt. The examples are
everywhere: "b-roll," "post-modern," "post-industrial," "login," and
"boot," or for that matter, "reboot." Our brains hold horses and we
don't even notice. I shudder, for example, when I hear voicemail with
a message like: "Can you call me back. I need to ask you a question."
We're thinking pink "While you were out" pads. Sadly, I am not immune. (M14)
There are several good stories like, "Hold your horses." PaulGraham
relates a great one from
PrimoLevi on varnish recipe that called for one raw onion. And I've
heard several people tell the story about the family recipe for roast
that called for slicing off the end of a perfectly good hunk of meat.
(The grandmother originally did this because her oven was too small to
hold the entire roast.) And if you like similar stories about the
origins of our language, check out BillBryson's, Made In America: An
Informal History of the English Language in the United States. (M15)
I don't mind the fact that language doesn't adapt with the times. But
I definitely mind when people and organizations fail to adapt. Not
that it's easy. Gavin's conclusion is especially important: (M16)
Organizations too, fight back against change, eliminating all but the
slimmest possibility of "change from within." In the same study,
Morison concludes that "[T]he deadlock between those who sought
change and those who sought to retain things as they were was only
broken by an appeal to a superior force, a force removed from, and
unidentified with, the mores, conventions, and devices of the
society." The argument, the great generalization, here is that no
institution can reform itself. Truly, it's a rare institution that
can. That reform requires rare bravery, rare vision and even rarer
leadership. And, it is why, the view from without is so valuable
sometimes. I could see the bridles in the hands of the cabin
attendants. They could not. (M17)
/forbenefit |
Posted at 12:33am
Mon, Feb 19, 2007
Leadership Learning Community
#
In the second half of 2006, I took a hard look at my list of projects
and opportunities. I decided that I needed to be brutally honest
about what I wanted to accomplish with BlueOxenAssociates, and that
ultimately, I wanted two things: (LTL)
- To have a wider impact (LTM)
- To give more quality time to fewer projects. (LTN)
That meant not renewing existing commitments and saying no to a lot of
great people. (LTO)
In the midst of all this, I got an email from ElissaPerry asking if
I'd be interested in becoming a board member of the
LeadershipLearningCommunity (LLC). LLC is a community that takes a
network-centric approach to leadership development, focusing
particularly on the graduates of the many foundation leadership
programs across the entire sector. Elissa had participated in our
first two FLOSS Usability Sprints,
and we had chances here and there to chat about our respective work
and organizations. We were definitely on the same philosophical
plane, and I loved hearing about the great work LLC was doing. (LTP)
That said, my first instinct was to say no. But I decided to sleep on
it, and I started having second thoughts. When I started
BlueOxenAssociates, I originally wanted to focus on the nonprofit
sector, and while we shifted our strategy midway through our first
year, my heart never left that space. Over the years, I met many
great people in the sector, I worked with a number of foundations and
two nonprofits (PlaNetwork and People for the
American Way) as clients, I joined the board of a nonprofit
(TomorrowMakers), and I did several projects with Aspiration, most
notably the usability sprints. But I never got the chance to really
get my hands dirty with one particular group. Focus was always the
issue. (LTQ)
Joining the board of LLC would give me the chance to focus my energies
on one nonprofit and simultaneously impact the entire sector. If I
were going to make that commitment to one organization, I wanted to
make sure it was a good fit. I decided to research LLC a bit more,
and the more I read, the more I felt kinship to the mission and the
execution. In many ways, they were trying to do the same thing for
leadership that I was trying to do for collaboration. I loved their
emphasis on
learning as well as their methodology. Most importantly, I saw ways
that we could learn from each other. (LTR)
In the end, I said yes. I was confident about my decision, but after
participating in a board meeting and in one of their
learning
circles last month, I am ecstatic about it.
Everyone there is smart,
action-oriented, and full of heart, starting with the executive
director, DeborahMeehan. That also goes for its board. The board
meeting felt like... well, like one of BlueOxen's workshops. Except
it wasn't a workshop, it was a board meeting! This was not your
typical, sign-off-on-the-budget-so-we-can-go-drink meeting. This was
a welcome-to-the-family, stretch-your-mind, now-get-down-to-business
meeting, and it was infinitely more effective and fulfilling that way. (LTS)
The learning circle, for me, sealed the deal. Not only did I get to
watch the LLC staff do their thing, I was also blown away by the
caliber of the participants, who were mostly from foundations. I live
in an area and work in a field where I am constantly surrounded by
brilliant people, and to be very frank, I have always been
underwhelmed whenever I've attended gatherings of foundation people.
This was a notable exception. I was struck by the breadth of
experience, the depth and rigor of thinking, and the respectful and
authentic discourse among the participants. My brain was overflowing
by the end of the workshop. (LTT)
As I said a
few weeks ago, a week with the LLC generated enough thoughts to fill a
thousand blog posts. I won't write that many, but I hope to spit out
a few, starting with this one. In the meantime, if you're interested
in leadership, check out the web
site, participate in one of the
learning
circles, and come participate in the annual
Creating
Space workshop in Baltimore, April 11-13, 2007. (LTU)
/forbenefit |
Posted at 12:41am
Fri, Sep 22, 2006
Catalytic Communities Awarded Tech Museum Tech Laureate
#
Congratulations to TheresaWilliamson and CatalyticCommunities for
winning a 2006 Tech Laureate award from
TheTechMuseum in the Equality category! Besides starting an
organization with a great name, Theresa is one of those folks who does
really good work while thinking deeply about the big picture. She's
one of those action-oriented, yet thoughtful do-gooders I love so
much. Of course, you don't have to take my word for
it. CatalyticCommunities was selected from a pool of 951 applicants
from 58 different countries. (L7D)
/forbenefit |
Posted at 2:09pm
Sun, Jun 11, 2006
Why Nonprofits (and Foundations) Should Care About Open Source
#
Why should nonprofit organizations care about OpenSource? I've had an
ongoing conversation about this with KatrinVerclas for a while now,
and I thought it would be worth outlining the arguments here. I
actually think philanthropic organizations should care a lot more
about OpenSource than nonprofits, and I'll explain why below. (KOD)
Forget, for a moment, the question of whether nonprofits should be
investing in technology or what the long-term return on investment
might be. That question is a bit of a red herring, because a lot of
nonprofits have fundamental problems (poor management,
under-resourced, etc.) that can't be resolved with technology. (KOE)
Instead, assume that there are specific needs that can be addressed by
technology. The question is, what do nonprofit organizations need to
leverage that technology? They need two things: (KOF)
- The tools themselves (KOG)
- Capacity -- the ability to install, maintain, and use the tools (KOH)
If there's an affordable tool that meets your needs, and if you have
the capacity to install, maintain, and use it, then it doesn't matter
whether the tool is proprietary or OpenSource. Use it. (KOI)
If there's no tool that meets your exact needs, then that tool becomes
a candidate for fundraising, and the conversation likely shifts from
the nonprofit itself to foundations. If you're a foundation and if
you're going to invest in the creation of a tool, there are all the
reasons in the world to invest in OpenSource. (KOJ)
- You get more for your money, because others can invest in the same
codebase as well, and you can use what you develop across your
entire portfolio. This is especially true if you're investing in a
project that already exists. (KOK)
- You decrease the likelihood of lock-in. This is a bit misleading,
as the cost of switching technology is not necessarily lower if your
software is OpenSource. However, you avoid the problem of legacy,
unsupported software where the supporting company disappears,
because the source code is always available. (KOL)
Most importantly, as a foundation (or nonprofit), you're more likely
to be skilled at connecting people than you are at developing
software. And this is exactly what developers need to build better
tools -- a greater understanding of their users. Commercial companies
aren't likely to care about a market unless it is mature, and the
needs of most nonprofits don't fall into that category. But
OpenSource developers will care. Many OpenSource developers share the
same underlying "do good" attitude that folks in the nonprofit world
have, and they're more than happy to improve their tools for the
nonprofit community. By focusing on connecting with a pre-existing
software development community that is already predisposed to work for
the social good, you are likely to get better tools sooner than you
might from proprietary software companies. (KOM)
More importantly, the process of connecting has a powerful
side-effect: It helps build organizational capacity. When you connect
your community to developers, you're also connecting your community to
each other. There will be some who will feed off the knowledge of
developers, and that's critical. Even more critical is what your
community will absorb from each other. People are far more likely to
learn from their peers -- those they perceive are as lost as they are
-- then they are from authority figures. (KON)
/forbenefit |
Posted at 8:57pm
Mon, Jun 05, 2006
Katrin Verclas: New N-TEN Director
#
Congratulations to KatrinVerclas, the
new executive director
of N-TEN! Those of you who follow my blog know
what I think about Katrin: Quite simply, she's awesome. (KM3)
Katrin is someone I've bonded with over the years, because she truly
understands the importance of networks and how to catalyze them. More
importantly, she's a doer. She's already planning a roadshow across
the country this summer, so go say hello to her when she's in your
area. (KM4)
Katrin's got what it takes to catalyze N-TEN's latent potential, and
I'm looking forward to seeing her jolt it to bigger and better things. (KM5)
/forbenefit |
Posted at 11:19am
