Author Archives: Venessa Miemis

Future of Facebook: Environment [video]

25 Friday May 2012

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Will the distinction between the online world and the offline world soon dissolve? Might our physical world soon have a Facebook-powered augmented reality layer? Will we become nodes and sensing objects in a new kind of location-based web experience? And what role will social networks play in climate change?

The “Future of Facebook: Environment” is the fourth video in a six part series exploring the implications of social networking technologies on our lives.

Using the Open Foresight model, we’ve generated forecasts by combining expert opinion with insights from the public. All content is licensed under Creative Commons, making it free to remix and reuse, with attribution.

Add your voice to the mix by creating a video response on the futureoffacebook youtube channel, sharing your thoughts on twitter with the hashtag #fofb, posting on the Facebook page, or putting in your 2¢ on our Quora questionnaire. Follow the full project at futureoffacebook.com.

Produced by Venessa Miemis, Alvis Brigis, Sean Park, Shane Valcich and Innotribe.

experimental highlight video 1: unMoney Convergence 2012

22 Tuesday May 2012

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Here’s a short video assembled from some clips I took at the unMoney Convergence unconference in San Francisco in April.

I’m trying to get into the habit of filming and interviewing wherever I go now, with the intention of getting into more video-based production. This might evolve into a once a week ‘show,’ highlighting cool stuff happening and emerging ideas on the edge. I welcome any feedback on the concept, and if you’re a patron of the arts, let me know if you’re interested in sponsoring upcoming videos.

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thanks to Shane Valcich for help with video editing!

Birth of a Meme: The Rise of Culture Tech

03 Thursday May 2012

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I’ve been tracking emerging trends for a while now, exploring the co-evolution of humanity and our technologies, and building visions of the kinds of futures I’d like to see. Lately, I’ve found myself a bit restless, wondering “what’s next?”

The conferences and gatherings I’m attending are beginning to feel stale, the conversations needing new framings and lenses through which to look at our world and ourselves.

I’ve been on the hunt for a word or phrase that can encompass the essence of what feels important and resonates with me right now.

The search has been prompted by my decision to start a new project — writing my first book. (yay!)

I’ve spent the past few weeks reviewing everything I’ve written so far on the blog, reflecting upon what I’ve observed, what I’ve learned, and identifying the deep values I’ve chosen to serve as a compass and foundation for what is meaningful and significant.

At the same time, I’ve been surveying the landscape to get a sense of what’s being constructed out in the global mind, and see where the two intersect.

The general narrative is that we‘re facing increasing complexity and uncertainty in the world, information overload, distraction, shallowness of critical thought, and a lack of foresight. On the silver lining side, we have an overstock of creativity and imagination, sufficient to level up humanity and change the world and our crumbling systems, if we could only figure out how to unlock and unleash it from our billions of minds.

While some will posit that the ‘solution’ is technological (better algorithms! quantifying trust and reputation! big data! innovation!), I lean to the side that our breakthroughs will occur when we acknowledge and confront our most raw and human issues. Continue reading →

Personal Alignment Precedes Group Flow

26 Thursday Apr 2012

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I spent last week in an immersive personal development / coaching / business development retreat with a colleague, which spurred me to some new insights and opinions about collective intelligence, co-creation, and the general pursuit of goals and growth in life.

The hosts were the same team that ran a culture-hacking bootcamp at Agile Boston a few months back, who were kind enough to invite us to Seattle to be facilitated through a longer team alignment process together.

I went in with curiosity moreso than expectations, having a general understanding that we would do some kind of work that would clarify our agreements as well as sketch potential business models and strategies. I found myself a bit surprised by the deep dive we took into exploring emotions and desires as the entrypoint for the sessions. Continue reading →

The Story of your Life as a Work of Art

21 Saturday Apr 2012

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The passage below was posted in our Next Edge community group by R.E.F. Fiskin, and I’m compelled to share it.

I’ve been spending a lot of time of late working on personal alignment, deeply exploring my values and desires for life, what I really care about, and what I want to manifest in the world. As I become more consciously aware, identifying what I want, having the realizations that I have choices, and taking responsibility for that knowledge — I see that life can very much be lived as a form of art. We can each choose to become multidimensional, a unique creative expression, a story of elegance, beauty and grace. The cultivating force is love.

Enjoy!

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via R.E.F. Fishkin:

It doesn’t just seem simple. It is simple. Life is simple. That is the beauty of it. Narratives define the relevance of antagonistic complexity and the centrality of that which is beautifully simple to us, that which in our universe has become tame to us. There is that which gives us each the kind of strength we need or wish for, and there is that in the world and our world we would do with that capacity if we could. Life is that simple, thankfully.

Between all human beings on the planet. “Being the change you wish to see in the world”– microcosm and macrocosm should model one another for humanity’s definition to not be devalued. Art is creating a narrative that is infinitely local and profoundly global. The import from good micro and export to all macros is the business of being human.

Invest in and become emotionally involved in the narratives that can pay you dividends. Have a narrative for every discipline you care about, every person that you care about, every part of your body, every part of yourself, every idea you bring into this world, imagine the world as it would be without your presence, then imagine if you had infinite love and finite time. Identify an infinite variety of possible quests that relate to the narrative of each, define your diversification strategy so that you seek returns of the right forms of meaning for who you are and who you wish to become, and review the top pages of that list prioritized by feasibility and your own constraints. Redesign iteratively until the parts of yourself symphonically agree that having a specific implication in your world would be an act of art worthy of the identity you would wish to gift yourself. Always be complicit in the feasibility of utopia’s accessibility for the citizens of the world and in particular for those you care about. Know the degree you care about them. Have the right exchange rate within the gift economy of the universe and the people in your life- not transactionally but relationally- so that you can honor all with the economic balance of justice and truth in trade in life.

Leave everything you care about better off to the degree to which it is in your life as a matter of art, the grace of only being traceable by our love and not by the degree to which we are a burden to our world. Be visible only in the love we create in our world so that when we look in the mirror if we see what the world sees then all we will see is love. Speak our truth in all the languages we know so that the parts of our soul that don’t understand English are nonetheless supportive of our life. Learn more languages for truth telling. Learn more truth to tell.

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image via http://media-cache3.pinterest.com/upload/30117891227545905_dHW8bgNn.jpg

A Rant: When Will More Women Demonstrate Their Power??

06 Friday Apr 2012

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I’ve just finished reading The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women, by Harriet Rubin. The book looks at powerful and outrageous women throughout the ages who left their mark on history, and points out the similarities in the strategies and tactics they used to reach their goals. It celebrates women’s unique gifts – passion and intuition, sensitivity, and cunning – and urges us to use them to claim what we want in our lives. Continue reading →

5 Trust Builders & 5 Trust Destroyers

07 Wednesday Mar 2012

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This is a guest post by Bernd Nurnberger. The original on his blog – Community of practice and trust building

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A few days ago I shared my crude model how we go from words to trust. I strung it along: word, definition, context, grammar, meaning, concept, understanding, salience, insight, trust, reputation. I believe each prior step must be present and perceived by both partners in an interaction before the next step gets good traction.

Being in the people business of establishing technical trust – as I am – is an interesting combination of challenges: engineering, salesmanship, diplomacy, organization and administration, combined with awareness for the needs of future users of what we test and certify, and the needs and expectations of society.

Seeking a competitive edge in this usually means working without a model, or just making one up and test it, see what sticks and build on that. We might see whether we get closer to the goal. That matters. Insight into what’s best comes with routine, where do we have that at the edge?

Trust is a non-negotiable essential in business. (via ingenesist blog)  So, being in business is basically about trust. Establishing and verifying trust, documenting it, so it can be shared, swiflty, without every business partner having to redo what led to the trust.

To me, competitive edge is all about faster, yet secure trust building, towards more intense knowledge flows and learning from each other.

Trust-builders

  1. open personal profiles (self-declaration)
  2. shared conversation, activity stream, searchable (enabling independent verification)
  3. recommendations, awards, certifications (independent third-party opinion)
  4. co-action, collaboration (co-creating work products)
  5. success , and sharing it (experiencing demand for work products, or admiration)

Trust destroyers

  • Making excuses or blaming others.
  • Jumping to conclusions without checking facts.
  • Avoiding taking responsibility.
  • Sending inconsistent or mixed signals.
  • Acting more concerned about your own welfare than anything else.
    Source: The Challenge Network Whom Do We Trust?

Out of self-preservation our minds are programmed to scan for suspicious signs to prevent having our trust betrayed, and if it happens, we almost automatically score the loss of trust. If it is about a product or an organization, we may drop it. If it is about people, we may react with deep emotion.

Losing trust is much faster than building it, which could be a reason for feeling that trust is eroding everywhere. What if this is a cognitive bias? What can we do to accelerate trust-building?

Image credit: Map of Online Communities , (CC) by D’Arcy Norman

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German by birth, graduated electronics engineer, B2B salesman for electronic measurement equipment, some design and programming experience, product safety inspector, management system auditor, department builder, coach, seminar lecturer, collaborative learner.

follow Bernd on twitter @CoCreatr

Reclaiming the Undomesticated Feminine

27 Monday Feb 2012

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It feels like there’s a lot going on right now.

I’m consciously pushing myself to be better, trying out different ways of doing and being, existing much of the time outside my comfort zone, feeling afraid of failure or just plain confused.

I’m finally learning the importance now of self-care as I try to learn and grow. (thank you to all my friends who remind me of this constantly).

The week before last was super emotionally turbulent, and I felt like I was in a transformation period. I could *feel* old habits and ways of thinking and believing slowly loosening and dislodging themselves from my psyche. I felt like I was getting ready to step into something new, to sprout wings, and have a new stage of experimentation ahead.

I wanted help and guidance, and so turned to one of my healers, Eileen O’Hare. Eileen is trained in a lineage of Andean Peruvian shamanism, and uses various indigenous techniques (inquiry, dialogue, song, art, visualization) to aid people in their personal growth and healing. I went to her last Sunday for a session. It was supposed to last about an hour and a half, but we ended up going for nearly 4 hours. It was a powerful experience I’d like to share, with the intention that it inspires a path to healing or self-inquiry for you. Continue reading →