Open Space eBook
July 21, 2008This morning I read “Living Peace: the open space of our lives.” edited by Raffi Aftandelian.
This eBook is Raffi’s attempt to look at the question: what have we as Open Space Technology facilitators learned about living in Open Space? It’s a wonderful collection of heart-felt anecdotes and honest reflections of OS practitioners from around the world. In typical open space style - he has trusted the resources of the group (contributors) to get the work done in the time and space available.
In terms of presentation and style it chops and changes from narrative form to poems, to lengthy reflections on practice, to the short missive. But that adds to the sense of the emergent nature of the editorial process and trusting that whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
What strikes me most about the book is the extent to which practitioners are really ‘living open space’, rather than simply using it as a facilitating tool. The more I learn about facilitation the more I realise that it is yourself that you must facilitate first.
Sincerest thanks to Raffi and to all of the contributors.
You can now download the e-book here.
Welcome to Flying Solo Readers
June 24, 2008
Just a short note to welcome readers from Flying Solo. Robert Gerrish just let me know that a book review I recently wrote was featured on the site and linked back here. Wow!
This is probably your first time here - so let me give you a quick low-down.
This is both my business and personal website. I believe that the two roles can’t be neatly separated, so I don’t try. We take who we are into everything we do.
I’d like to think that my website is an outpost for divergent thinkers, but in reality it’s more of a parking lot for some of my thoughts and interests.
I recently started my solo journey, and freelance as a facilitator. I’m passionate about discovering more human, productive, and creative ways for people to work together. A lot of the work I do involves face-to-face meetings, which I love. I also have a lot of experience in the online space, using social software (blogs, wikis, twitter etc.) and other technology to create loose ties and foster collaboration.
Thanks for dropping by. If you’d like to get in touch with me and have a conversation, you’ll find my details on the contact page.
Giving It Away
December 7, 2006I’ve been an advocate of open source for a number of years now, and the number one ‘objection’ I encounter is “but you can’t make money out of open source”. Well, who say’s so?
I’ve been giving away my books ever since my first novel came out, and boy has it ever made me a bunch of money.
Cory Doctorow is certainly a shining example of how giving it away CAN reap huge rewards, both financial and otherwise. Cory tallked a little bit about this when he visited Melbourne recently. You can see my wrap up if you missed it.
Life Imitating Art.
June 6, 2006Life imitating Art. I could have written this exact post. Perhaps less eloquantly, but nevertheless, an amazing coincidence–or have I unconciously given in to some form of blogosphere social pressure? … and no I’m not merely link-baiting.
I too have spent the last couple of weeks with my head in books, switching off the ‘idiot box’, taking the dog for a walk and spending more time meditating. I don’t have anything against TV per se, there just seems to be little on it that I find interesting or that entertains me. The exception to this is Spicks and Specks and RockWiz (Music quiz shows), which I really enjoy.
Reading also makes me want to write more, although to date this hasn’t really translated into keystrokes. I’ve been reading a fair bit of Beat poetry and the history of the Beat generation, including its influence on music and artists such as Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison. I’ve got a vague idea about writing an essay of sorts on the similarities of the Beats and bloggers, but I’m still clarifying my thoughts on this.
I also thought that as a consequence of the increased level of reading that I’d be blogging more, but that hasn’t happened either. Perhaps it’s a case of too much input making it harder to process the information and translating this to output? There doesn’t seem to be a direct correlation between input and output, that’s for sure.
Open Source Guide
November 30, 2005via NetSquared
O’Reilly has just released Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution “a collection of insightful and thought-provoking essays from today’s technology leaders that continues painting the evolutionary picture that developed in the 1999 book Open Sources: Voices from the Revolution. Both those links provide tables of contents and sample chapters — in the latter case, the whole book is accessible.
The latter is a fantastic resource. I’m looking forward to checking out ths new offering.
