Tag Archives: Web of Change

Web of Change: Yeast Dressing, Ladders, OMPA and Love

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Web of Change - Innovation and Collaboration to Transform our WorldThis is a post about the tenth anniversary of Web of Change, a conference held every year at the Hollyhock Institute. To everyone who could not attend this year, you were missed. And to those of you who have never been, I urge you to consider coming next year. Financial help is available and the carpooling is a gas.

I wanted to write a post that recognizes the many hundreds of participants who have attended the Web of Change conference over the years as well as those who have always wanted to attend and haven’t made it out. You all deserve to be kept in the loop.

It’s humbling to write and reflect back on the Web of Change experience knowing just how many brilliant minds and wordsmiths make up the conference each year. A handful of catchphrases don’t do it justice. However, I’m all about sound bites, brevity and wit and what have you. So here’s a little something to whet your appetite — Web of Change 10:10 divided into four flavours: Yeast Dressing, Ladders, OMPA and Love.

Yeast Dressing: Sounds Gross, So Good **

The Hollyhock Institute is on Cortes Island in beautiful British Columbia. Surrounded by the kind of beauty that inspired Emily Carr, Hollyhock devotes itself to personal well being and community building.

And it just so happens that Hollyhock is home to the best yeast salad dressing you’ll ever taste. That is, if you’re brave enough to try a dressing with a name like yeast.

It’s over this very dressing where the spark of inspiration and understanding first appears as groups of people from across the continent and a precious few from overseas sit down and break bread together. Web of Change, in particular, is an opportunity for social, tech, and not-for-profit leaders to converge in one place over a very short and intense period of time and share practices, successes, failures and, above all, stories. I know, without a doubt, that each and every person who has ever attended Web of Change values the power of storytelling on some level.

Ladders: We’re Listening

Whoever first came up with the idea of personal shoppers most have felt the same giddy sensation I felt when I first learned about “Engagement Ladders” at WoC this year. Personalized, profound and practical, Engagement Ladders are like stepping into Macy’s and receiving top-notch shopping service, only Macy’s is a not-for-profit and you’re an organizer. This exquisite tool that circulated the conference this year was directly responsible for a lot of innovative talk. With apologies to the many voices that helped shape this conversation – I’m going to try and do my best to describe what an engagement ladder is but for the love of Gibran, keep the definitions coming!

Within any given organization, there will always be a variety of supporters willing to take up the cause on any number of different commitment levels. Several organizers who attended Web of Change this year have begun tracking these supporters and taking a good long, look at which level, or in this case, which step they sit on the “Ladder of Engagement.” Engagement Ladders help us focus on what we should be measuring so we can not only reward each supporter, we can introduce them to the next step in a practical and profound way.  Web of Change 2010 attendee, Steve Anderson, has provided an excellent example of how his company, Salesforce.com, utilizes Engagement Ladders. A must watch video complete with a “Back-to-the-Future” moment for Steve as he listens to his voice, circa 2007.

OMPA: What He Said

I want to share with you an expression that one of our facilitators passed on: “OMPA.” It means “Our Mother of Perpetual Amazing” and I think it sums up some of the “ah-ha” moments many attendees had this year.

A conference is really just one big conversation and like any lively and successful exchange, it requires facilitation. This year at Web of Change, some extraordinary hosts were charged with bringing together two groups of people: front-line organizers and tech-strategists. I think it’s safe to say that unbeknownst to either group, both were in need of an uncomfortable and ultimately transformative conversation.  I have no doubt that the details of the conversation will continue to come to light over the next few weeks. All you need to do is Google search Web of Change and see what comes up.

Another beautiful sound bite that deserves to be featured is a question that was poised early on in the conference: “Are you on a mission or simply working for an organization with a mission statement?”

Great question.

Love: “Propagate Love With Gratitude”

The above comment was left below fellow participant Ian Rhett’s video of his Pecha Kucha presentation on love. (In lou of a talent show, participants prepared Pecha Kucha presentations. They were all remarkable and I hope they’re all eventually posted.)

His presentation eloquently reminds us, whoever we are, whatever we do, that we own our work. From leaders to linchpins, as Ian puts it, we “make the choice to stay involved.” His presentation also came at a vital moment: the conference halfway point. It’s for anyone who has ever felt frustrated or helpless in their work (um, that’s pretty much all of us, right?) It reminds us of the power we have to at least try and move mountains or remove ourselves in the best interest of love. “Life is short. Do what you love and love doing it.” Thanks, Ian. Rock on.

These are just a few snippets from the latest Web of Change conference, or rather, (un)conference. I don’t pretend to represent each and every voice that attended. I only hope to add to the conversation which, to my delight, continues to grow. I welcome all Web of Changers, and anyone else interested for that matter, to join in.

One final note. I just read this status of a fellow Web of Changer:  “listening is a willingness to be changed by what you hear.”  What a glorious sentiment and for past and future attendees, one I know you take to heart.

Much love and plenty of “word.”

Theo

Theo is an online community organizer with TheBigWild.org, the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation, and the Women’s Health Research Institute. Her background is in radio and television production. From time to time, you can still hear her voice on Vancouver’s Bollywood radio station, RJ1200. She also thinks redheads are pretty cool and likes to write about them on her blog, GingerAiling.com.

**Props to Tony Guzman, a WoC 10:10 attendee. When I asked him where to start, he answered “with the Yeast Dressing.”

Alexandra Samuel

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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to an ongoing segment here at The Daily Gumboot. It’s called “Get to Know Your Community” and, basically, it goes like this: each and every Sunday we will profile someone from a community somewhere. Each person is asked the same five questions (see below as well as in the “Ideas from Everywhere” page). At the end of the profile, the Gumbooteer (member of this blog’s Editorial Board) who found the person will list their three favourite things about the highlighted community member. Savvy?

Here are some ideas from everywhere. Here is one way that we try to build community. Have fun with it!

Funnily enough, Alexandra Samuel is scared of robots and four other kinds of technology...

Funnily enough, Alexandra Samuel is scared of robots and four other kinds of technology, including the kind that allows cars to parallel park themselves...

1. Who are you?

I’m a social media geek, entrepreneur, and working parent. I’m the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University, which is a new applied research centre that helps BC businesses tap the knowledge, skills and creativity of ECUAD’s faculty and students. I’m also the founder and principal of Social Signal, one of the world’s first social media agency.

2. What do you do for fun?

I make stuff. Sometimes I make stuff online (online communities, blogs, campaigns, videos). Sometimes I use the Internet to help me make stuff offline — like looking at mermaid pictures so I can sew a mermaid swimsuit for my daughter. Sometimes I make stuff without using the Internet at all (tonight I made fresh pasta!) but to be honest, that hardly ever happens anymore.

3. What is your favourite community and why?

The nonprofit technology community — which often refers to itself as NPTech. There’s no one site, event, or center for that community, but it has on- and offline gatherings all the time. The first nptech gathering I attended was the Aspiration nonprofit developers camp, and I had this experience of feeling like, oh, HERE are my people! Since then I’ve had that same experience in working with TechSoup to build NetSquared.org, in connecting with the Web of Change community, in attending NTEN’s nonprofit tech conference, and in connecting with all sorts of social change/nonprofit technologists. What I love about these folks is that we all intersect on two planes of geekiness: tech geekiness, and save-the-world geekiness. These are people who can have a serious conversation about the relative pathologies and strengths of the social justice and environmental movements, and then two minutes later switch into a passionate argument about the relative merits of iPhones vs. Android phones. I love them.

4. What is your superpower?

I am a truly amazing parallel parker. We drive a massive boat of a minivan, but I can get it into a parking space with less than a foot of room on each end — often much less. And what is particularly amazing about this skill is that it seems to be completely disconnected from every other aspect of my brain. I’m just an averagely competent driver, and I have pretty much zero spatial perception — I can barely get through a door without bashing into the frame, and in fact I can barely park in a regular parking lot space. But somehow I’m a parallel parking savant. I’ve literally had strangers applaud my parallel parking.

5. How do you use your superpower to build community?

There’s a close relationship between my parallel parking abilities and my sense of connection to our local community. Because I can parallel park in about 10 seconds, I often pop into a store for a quick errand on my way home. So my local shopkeepers see me a lot, and because I’m a friendly person, I tend to use those micro-interactions to exchange a little bit of news along with the purchase of some flowers, or kids shoes, or whatever it is. So much of our lives are lived in interaction with people who aren’t part of our closest circles of family, friends or colleagues, so it’s easy to stay anonymous. But when you choose to abandon that anonymity in favor of a real conversation — about how your respective businesses are doing, what your family is doing for vacation, or even about the party you’re shopping for — it strengthens our community just that little bit. Whenever you have a chance to connect to another person a little more deeply, take it: they’ll feel better, and so will you.

My three favourite things about Alexandra Samuel are…

1. She actually talked to us: when it comes to blogging, creative currency and building online communities, Ms. Samuel and hubby Rob Cottingham are second to none. And don’t even get me started on how her parallel parking story reflects this woman’s true humility and amazing sense of humour/social-justice (our chat about the community-building nature of parallel parking may or may not have taken more than an hour). Needless to say, the Daily Gumboot is lucky to have been graced with her presence!

2. Alex is a bit of a history nerd, too. Sure, her PhD dissertation about “hacktivism” includes some powerfully awesome techno-geekishness, and it also addresses very important, very meaningful big picture socio-political issues and ideas that certainly set standards for internet pirates (and the people trying to stop them) everywhere. See, history does matter! And Alex will tell you that the past – from time to time – dictates our future.

3. Two words – entrepreneurial spirit: This young lady has it in spades, and, let me tell you, it’s always inspiring to meet someone who possesses this element of the human condition in a way the we know will bring innovation, inclusion and downright goodness to all that she touches. And that’s a beautiful thing!

…as told by John Horn…