This Occupy “movement of the people,” though started without a designed plan, represents possibly the most obvious call to systemic action we have seen in our lifetimes. Without presenting the media fodder of demands or talking points, a clear and common vision for creating a responsible political and economic system has taken shape.

For November 2011, DwD invited the emerging and expanding Occupy movement with global and local citizens to a dialogue on the future of responsive democratic governance. The call was to help frame the emerging democratic engagement, not as activism or problem solving, but as visioning and caring for a shared future.

(Video) Presenting the purposes of Occupy as visions for the long-term expression of the values, goals, and actions of the movement. (Below) Collaboratively constructing a field of purposes in a hierarchy from personal to the transcendent.

The purpose of this session was inspired by George Lakoff’s call for the Occupy movement to clarify its purpose through its shared morality:

“If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands…”

In a series of 4 fast cycles (circle, cafe, purpose tree, and circle) we explored the shared territory of several questions:

• How might an Occupy moral vision inspire everyone?
• What underlying forces do we all share as the 99%?
• What are we really asking for?
• How can Occupy lead with their story, so that all might hear?
• Where might the movement go next?

]]> http://designwithdialogue.com/2011/10/dwd-nov-9-2011-occupy-dwd-the-innovation-of-disruptive-democracy/feed/ 2 http://designwithdialogue.com/2011/09/dwd-oct-12-2011-whole-health-approaches-to-wealth-and-wellness/ http://designwithdialogue.com/2011/09/dwd-oct-12-2011-whole-health-approaches-to-wealth-and-wellness/#comments Thu, 29 Sep 2011 02:06:48 +0000 greg http://designwithdialogue.com/?p=435 How can I gain confidence that the choices I make will allow me to thrive? What implications do my choices have for myself and my community?

In October’s DwD, Eric Rosenberg shared how concepts from financial asset management might craft a broader ‘human portfolio’. We investigated the principles and practices of ‘value investing’ and its connections to wealth and well-being. Participants examined their inventory of existing prosperity tools recognize ‘expenditures’ for which they’re taking responsibility, and began creating a ‘choice architecture’ designed to realize a Life Well Spent.

About the host

Eric Rosenberg is a nature-inspired city guy with strong curiosities and big talent for turning what he learns and how he sees it into forms and content that engage us. He has a post-industrial sensibility, meaning his inclinations are toward a small-scale, grassroots way of life, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. Eric has degrees in finance, fine art, and education, which feed his passion to voice and gather people around the idea of developing their own human portfolio that serves as a foundation from which they design a life of their own choosing – a life well spent. Learn more about Eric’s own developing portfolio at healthymoney.ca.

DwD’s “Barefoot Edition” summer workshop hosted an interactive drumming and dialogue workshop  for exploring the primacy of musical rhythm as communication and mindfulness.

With over 20 drums and a wide assortment of percussion, guest leader Terri Segal guided a group of 18 in learning the West African djembe and other percussion as extensions of voice and conversation.

Drumming with Dialogue from Peter Jones on Vimeo.

Terri Segal is an Expressive Arts Therapist, Facilitator, and Educator who is dedicated to sharing the therapeutic value of creative expression through Group Drumming and Expressive Arts workshops. Through her business, Rhythmic by Nature, Terri facilitates Group Drumming Programs at schools, social service agencies, and for small and large businesses for the purpose of team-building, wellness, recreation, and education. In her innovative, fun, and memorable workshops, Terri focuses on how the process of music-making can enlighten her clients in areas of communication, stress management, and inter-personal dynamics.

Please join us on second Wednesdays, monthly. If you are interested in sponsoring a session, please contact one of the organizers, Peter or Greg.

May 2011 DwD was hosted by Zahra Ebrahim of the architecture and design think tank, archiTEXT.

THE WORKSHOP
“Play”….it’s the four-letter word that petrifies the establishment.  It’s messy, the process is different every time – as is the outcome – and yet, it remains the tool that best produces honest, creative, innovative, and unique results. This workshop will explore the process of using play to uncover possible solutions to issues challenging corporations, governments, and not-for-profits.Participants will be encouraged to explore the following principles in order to fully engage with the possibilities that using play to create impact can uncover

1. Play is not easy.2. Play is difficult.3. Play is necessary.4. Play is not frivolous.

Zahra is the Principal, Partner, and Founder of the architecture and design think tank, archiTEXT.  Zahra has spent the last two years as Innovator in Residence at Canada’s National Design Museum, the Design Exchange. Ebrahim brings together diverse groups to tackle the intersections of architecture and design with social change, the environment, politics, economics, equality, health, and pop culture. Using various methods ranging from curation to public engagement to conceptual art, she engages a broad spectrum of the public across the country in design discourse.

Globe and Mail article or video

What might the Toronto Star look like in the future as a dynamic and thriving content platform that effectively serves a range of audiences from loyal traditionalists who are used to paying for a singular authoritative newspaper product to younger ‘digital natives’ who participate in real-time news and meaningful content from a distributed network of sources utilizing a variety of devices?

The session unpacked the context, trends, audiences, and possible approaches for The Star to take with its platform to continue with its civic imperative and remain a thriving commercial business.

Results of the session are not provided publicly, as this was an invitational event and was held for the benefit of aiding the Star in its strategic innovation by drawing on the experience and intellectual and creative diversity of the DwD community.

One person endowed with PASSION & PURPOSE can make an ENORMOUS DIFFERENCE , we are looking for 38. … Now consider spending three years of your life at a school located in Denmark… together with other highly motivated people who want to make a difference.

From an interview with DR. Michael Gardam, UHN:

One of the things we do here is a program called TRIZ, where we ask people to design a system where you would spread infections to every single person in the hospital. How would you design that? And within about two minutes health care workers will yell out, “Don’t clean your hands,” “Don’t clean the room.” They all know exactly how these things are spread. But then when you talk to them about washing their hands, the answer is “Sometimes.”And from HIROC health news: Positive deviance refers to encouraging a hospital’s front-line staff members to develop methods for controlling superbugs in healthcare settings.

More from www.positivedeviance.org:

Positive Deviance is based on the observation that in every community there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers, while having access to the same resources and facing similar or worse challenges.

The Positive Deviance approach is an asset-based, problem-solving, and community-driven approach that enables the community to discover these successful behaviors and strategies and develop a plan of action to promote their adoption by all concerned.

Dotmocracy is a transparent, equal opportunity, and participatory large group decision-making tool. It is a simple method for recognizing points of agreement among a large number of people. Participants write down ideas on specially designed paper forms called Dotmocracy sheets and use pens to fill in one dot per sheet, recording their levels of agreement. The result is a graph-like visual representation of the group’s collective opinion. Note, this is not sticky dot voting like you may be familiar with. It focuses attention on each idea in turn, as shown here in the session:

Dotmocracy has been proven to:

• Recognize collective priorities and direction from all participants.
• Engage and empower diverse groups of people.
• Recognize agreement on unique and specific ideas, as well as general and thematic ideas.
• Give an equal voice to even the quietest of participants.
• Help avoid verbal debates and “soap box” style speech-making.
• Support friendly discussions while efficiently leading to practical conclusions.
• Provide fully documented results that can be easily turned into action plans.

We will learn the details of facilitating this technique and apply the tool in a real life scenario, discuss approaches to various challenges and hear stories from Jason’s experience in Venezuelan communal councils, Canadian co-operatives, un-conferences and public consultations.

You can download a free PDF of the Handbook and learn more about Dotmocracy at Dotmocracy.org