Network

I was on Twitter earlier this year, holding our nation accountable for the Canadian genocide by reminding the Prime Minister that he is a liar and he is misrepresenting the intentions of the Government of Canada as reconciliation with the Indigenous Peoples, the First Nations, the Inuit, and the Métis while buying a pipeline, effectively enabling the economic annexation of Alberta to appease the fascist dictator of the United States in his trade war.

Susan Koch reached out to me on Twitter and invited me to help her with her project to build the 2rowflow Cultural Commons. In a video chat, we conversed about how she was exploring Holochain as a decentralization technology for building her education platform. A Holochain meetup was happening in Seattle, so I signed up to attend. Reports of the spreading Coronavirus forced the relocation of the meetup to Portland. Eventually, I cancelled the Airbnb booking in Portland to attend remotely, because a state of emergency was declared. Susan invited me to attend the second Trimtab Space Camp offered as a course through the Buckminster Fuller Institute.

I became a member of the Buckminster Fuller Institute to continue taking courses. I applied to be a member of the first cohort of the Design Science Studio and was accepted at the beginning of August.

Wednesday, I was in a Design Science Studio Visionary Session with Dave Zabowski, who shared his strategies for creativity based on his work with Pixar and Disney. I forgot that Pauline Lai, Events Chair, GDC/BC, was hosting a Coffee Break. I also received an email from Kevan Gilbert at Domain7 about ideas he is exploring. I left Domain7 when it had become a little too top heavy as it had been colonized by an HR manager from Accenture who broke up our creative, collaborative, self-organizing learning community by hiring project managers and marketers instead of designers. The hierarchy and corporatization killed the culture. They have since evolved into a design-centric digital transformation organization with Kevan leading facilitation and their podcast, Change is in the Making.

Thursday, I met with the Shift Podcast team to prepare for the third episode on the theme of imagination.

Friday, I met with Langdon Roberts, Jeremy Lubman, and Nate Etsitty to explore ideas for our Regenerative Ventures.

Saturday, I was meeting with a world building group, moderated by Rūta Danyte where Curt McNamara was presenting on Design Science Strategies. That evening, we shared a meal and played with the children of friends we made because we reconnected with Kevin and Nancy Boese. I had played keyboards in the worship band for Kevin Boese at the Abbotsford Vineyard, which led to the community organizing work we did with Love Abbotsford to spread random acts of kindness. He was let go because of theological differences with the hierarchy.

Sunday, Shift podcast was being recorded as a video stream from the United Church of Langley with Sophia Ducey. Brad Jarvis, whom I had met through the WeMakeStuff project and who is a partner in BLDRS Collective and a fellow student in a course on Faith Arts + Culture at Bez Arts Hub, hosted a conversation with Richard Topping from the Vancouver School of Theology. I received an invitation to the pod captains for the Design Science Studio to have a planning meeting for GYSHIDO Mondays to plan our collaboration meeting. Roxi Shohadaee invited me to present an intro to the Design Science Studio collaboration session, to participate in Leaders on Purpose on Thursday, and to lead a fireside chat the following week.

Monday, I talked with the Design Science Studio about imposter syndrome and reframing competition as a collaboration loosely based on ideas that I wrote about on Medium and added to my site on social architecture and on focusing our time, energy, and resources. I moderated the conversations of our pod with Casey House, Marieam Shohadaee, Peter Lokken, and Forest Stearns.

Tuesday, I was meeting with Ilaria Forte in Hamburg, Germany, whom I had met through the Design Science Studio. I was also meeting with a couple Designlab students. The Happy Hour meeting that evening was a chance to introduce my Mission for Trimtab Space Camp Thermosphere: A Learning Community.

Today, I will be meeting with the Design Science Studio for the next Visionary Session.

This shift from introvert to community builder was made possible by Mike McHargue and Michael Gungor of The Liturgists, Rob Bell, and Tim Nash of Nomad Podcast as a result of my participation in a church group who had gathered at the home of the teaching pastor of the Abbotsford Vineyard who had been let go over theological differences with the church hierarchy.

Why do I have a bone to pick with the hierarchies? Because I am a member of the network, a designer who is intentional about building community. Hierarchies are community killers. When their purpose is growth and profit at all costs, they are planet killers.

They need a different purpose, a humane and human purpose.

That purpose is what we all live for: love.

Krista Tippett is working to bring that overused and abused word back into the lexicon of our public discourse to encourage civil conversations. It is the way she has organized her book on Becoming Wise.

We are on Team Human.

CEOs have lost trust because the hierarchy are killers of community and democracy. The lives of 200,000 Americans are gone because of CEOs who voted for a fake CEO to become President. Now you have a fake democracy. This is on you.

What are you going to do about it?

We don’t expect you to lead any more than Greta Thunberg or Anand Giridharadas believes you have the ability to lead. So we lead from the ground up.

You don’t change things by fighting the existing reality. You change things by creating a new model to make the existing model obsolete.

If you don’t change, you will be replaced.

Susan Hendren asks What Can a Body Do? Hillary McBride answers in a beautiful conversation about the shift we are all experiencing as we reconnect our minds to our bodies. We are not bifurcated. We are one.

Designers and scientists are the sensemakers of our species. We are tuned into the physical and metaphysical messages that have been preserved by the geological record and the cosmological frequencies that surround us in this universe. We must be present and aware to witness what is happening. Atoms are relationships of energy. The universe is in process. We are energy in flux. Neuroplasticity is rewiring our minds to adapt to our changing environment. We are evolving.

Change is in the making.