OS Topic 4: Prototyping Crisis-Inspired Change through Hybrid Communication Technologies
for"DandDTrans," a"community of inquiry and action" regarding the role that Dialogue & Deiberation can play in addressing the mega-crises of our time
Description:Document and describe what are we doing here-and-now that is a courageous model of civic engagement leading to definite, concerted and collective action
or: +Demonstrate how we can use Hackpad(and other online tools) to"... slow down the process of thought in order to observe it while it is actually occurring”(p. 3). Dialogue: A Proposal by Bohm, Factor, Garrett(& Burg).
or: Strategy? as +Mark Spain suggests"more dialogues...exploring how to scale this possibility" and"being simultaneous members of several overlapping circles of people in action and/or conversation locally, nationally and internationally."
Open Space for Conversation
GOAL:
Proof of concept of this online/virtual communication prototype for adaptation and future use.
Quoting @Ben Roberts' email, DandDTRans World Cafe follow-up:"many of you really appreciated the meta-level process experiment with virtual convening, and are inspired by the potential for what we are prototyping here to be applied“out there” in powerful ways."
NEED:
"How to think together in multiple perspectives? Interlocking dialogue circles to create a coordinated way of staying connected as we move through the tumult ahead"(from the notes of BOHM dialogue #1 (Jan 9). E.g., Hexagon cells. How can this model of self-organizing structures be designed and supported to go viral?
participants identified as"toddlers" with this technology, but many(many!) people are quite savvy; they just aren't Here-and-Now. Also,
someone generalized(?) that participants are experiencing this as"a listening event rather than an advocating event." Is this because of people's reported tiredness from the Jan 6 call? Or is advocacy something missing?
Two emerging questions: Where are the most ready/valuable points of intervention in the system for dialogue projects? How do the virtual and f2f dialogue worlds best overlap and support each other to sustain heart?
Are we at Kitty Hawk?
The first thing that comes to mind is, have we left the ground? How long can/will we stay aloft? Can we land without crashing?
Tom Atlee +says,"We just need to make some vital connections and to upshift our collective inquiry on this subject - and establish such groups in key places in our social systems, particularly political."
We could read that as criteria, hmm?
Evaluation Criteria for this DandDTrans meta-level process experiment with virtual convening:
1) Making vital connections
Is this happening for folks? I loved the way you designed the Jan 6 World Cafe call to have the 1st round involve people far-flung across the globe, and the 2nd and 3rd rounds of that call involved people in as tight a geographic area as possible. But were/are/will these connections become vital?
2) Upshift our collective inquiry
Again, the use of technological innovations in-and-of-themselves does not constitute an upshift. In fact, it could be rather passe, actually in keeping with the mainstream flows of digitalized capitalism. What would need to be different in the inquiry processes themselves, to represent an actual upshift? What would have to change about the nature of our collectivity to represent an upshift?