Can non-for-profit enterprise become the central model of local, national and international business by 2050?

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reposted with permission via Ronin Institute

[Update (5/29): Eric Weinstein will be giving a follow-up lecture this Friday (5/31) at 2pm at Oxford’s Mathematical Institute in lecture room L2 (which, I believe, is at location 22 on this map).

Physicists and mathematicians in the area! I hope some of you will be able to attend, and will post your thoughts / reactions online. Note: if you are friends with an Oxford Physicist, please invite them to attend this lecture — this is apparently a necessary step. Update update (5/30): see also the update at the end of section 2, below.]

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via May Wong on pinterest

I was on a job interview recently (yes, I am on the market!!) for a position in communications strategy, and was asked a bunch of questions of what I would do to help raise awareness of the organization’s presence in the world, make it clear as to what their goals and objectives are, make it easy for aligned partners and projects to engage, and help weave together the many siloed communities out there who are all technically part of their nascent ecosystem, but mostly unaware of each other’s work/existence.

It was fun to think about this as I reflected on everything I’ve learned so far in developing my own brand and presence here at Emergent by Design, the various online communities and collaborative learning environments I’ve helped develop, and the in-person events and conferences I’ve helped organize.

I’ve found it important to focus on the deeper human side of things rather than just the surface tools or tactics, so here are a few insights I’d like to share about the essence of brand and community building, from a people-centered lens: Continue reading →

I just saw a tweet go by from Richard MacManus, founder and editor-in-chief of ReadWriteWeb, saying he curated the new SAY 100 Tech list — and was honored to see my name within those 140 characters!

According to the project website, Say Media worked with 10 category experts to identify ‘100 voices that matter’:

The SAY 100 is a collection of authentic and knowledgeable online voices that create engaging content, drive conversation and shape opinion. At SAY Media we believe the power to shape opinion is shifting from the faceless editorial voice of mainstream media to individuals, many of whom are taking advantage of simple technology to create their own properties and build their own media brands.

Thank you, Richard, for thinking of me!

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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!

—–

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

I recently had an email exchange with a colleague, who was sharing his frustrations about “following one’s passion.” It seems he’s looking critically inward at the alignment between his drives and motivations, and checking that against the reality of his actions.

Is change being made, or just spoken about?

He acknowledges the comfort of his siutation, which enables him to not have to act, but seems to be coming to a place where he chooses to act anyway. It may be more scary than philosophizing from the sidelines, but it means a direct experience of life.

I’ve been going through a similar thought/emotional process myself, and could relate to what I interpret as feelings of hypocrisy. The raising of self-awareness has been forcing me to ask myself continuously if I’m practicing what I preach, and realizing that if/when the answer is no, I’m best to just keep my mouth shut.

I was touched by this friend’s courage to face his own truth, and what appears to be a coming to terms with choosing what to *do* and not just what to say.

Below is his reflection, posted with permission. Continue reading →

Thanks to Innovation Excellence for listing me in their Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2011 roundup!

I plan to keep the creative juices flowing throughout 2012 and beyond! 🙂

Last year around this time I put together a mixtape and encouraged others to make their own playlists so we could discover new music together.

I just put together this year’s list on grooveshark. For your listening pleasure, click here!

Not quite sure the theme…. some mix of soul touching, revolution inspiring, flow inducing, and calm producing.

Enjoy, and please share your mixes with me 🙂

Here’s the playlist:

Mumford & Sons – Awake My Soul
The Head and the Heart – Lost in My Mind
Yael Naim – New Soul
A Fine Frenzy – What I Wouldn’t Do
The Avett Brothers – I And Love And You
Wintersleep – Weighty Ghost
Spoon – The Underdog
James Vincent McMorrow – If I Had a Boat
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Home
Mumford & Sons – White Blank Page
Feist – 1234
M83 – We Own The Sky
Muse – Uprising
Florence and The Machine – You’ve Got The Love
MGMT – Kids
Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks
Blackbird Blackbird – Letting Go
Pheonix – 1901
Passion Pit – Sleepyhead
Peter, Bjorn and John – Young Folks
Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out
Beirut – Elephant Gun
Florence and The Machine – Cosmic Love
Mumford & Sons – Little Lion Man
The Cinematic Orchestra – To Build a Home
Barcelona – Please Don’t Go
Keane – Everybody’s Changing