​​A-H Intros for the DandDTrans Inquiry
​​A "community of inquiry and action" regarding the role that dialogue and deliberation can play in addressing the mega-crises of our time.
​​Image courtesy of www.NewStories.org
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​​Please share a bit about yourself using a blank template below the current entries. Make sure the first line is just your name, in bold.  
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​​Note: this entire page is editable! Please be careful to only make new entries and not delete what is here. To edit, you must sign into hackpad, using either Facebook, Google, or an email and password you set up. ​+More on how to use hackpad here.​

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​​@John Abbe​
​​Contact info:
​​johnca@ourpla.net
​​617-678-3155 (voice), 541-708-2300 (texts)
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
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​​I am a long-time process artist, interested in all scales from personal to interpersonal to groups to communities & networks to local-to-global society, including both explicit communication and the implicit communication in our legal, political, and economic structures, our cultures, and our arguably impossible but always crucially important attempts to transcend our stories and live in the experience of our interconnectedness.
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​​I was one of the developers of the Group Works Deck (favorite cards: Guerilla Facilitation and Go Meta), serve on the board of the Co-Intelligence Institute, have been a software designer of Wagn, lived for almost a decade in intentional community, and this year walked across the United States with dozens of other people to inspire action on the climate crisis. I grew up around Boston and have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sri Lanka, and Eugene, Oregon. My favorite processes include Nonviolent Communication, Citizen Delberative Councils, Open Space, World Cafe, meditation, and ludicrously long and wide-ranging conversations with long-time and new-found soulmates. As I get older I find myself more and more interested to actually Get Things Done. My biggest struggle is with my Self. It keeps insisting that it exists!
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  • ​​Some touchstone articles for me
​​Systems thinking:
​​Basic Trust: Chapter 6 of Facets of Unity, by A. H. Almaas
​​Listening: Tell Me More, by Brenda Ueland
​​(looking for a similarly excellent article on speaking up)
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
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​​The combination of the assumed immense power of conversation with the clear articulation of the scale and urgency of the crises we face. It's like peanut butter and chocolate, but to the Nth degree.
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​​That, and the hope of meeting passionate yet equanimous people with whom to work, play and perhaps even live as we stumble forward healing the world.
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​Linda Ellinor
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​​(707) 217-6675
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​I spent most of the 90s and early 2000’s training organizational development, facilitators, and other HR professionals in Bohm’s proposal of dialogue.  I also worked with the Center for Creative Leadership for about 13+ years in their leadership development program as an executive coach, feedback provider, and trainer.  I also worked as an outpacement, career coach with Drake Beam Morin for over 15 years.  Prior to that, in my 20s, I worked in several large Fortune companies in new product and market development and have an MBA from Columbia.  I then went back for a PhD in Jungian Psychology and worked for about 5 years to develop a wellness center in S. Tucson.  I have recently returned to my work with Bohm’s Dialogue and am looking for new ways of applying it to today’s more chaotic and rapidly changing world.  David Bohm had some things right about how we human’s create fragmentation in the world due to the way our minds work.  He knew that it was  our underlying cultural beliefs, assumptions and values that go largely unexamined that can be at root to some of our most critical social problems.  I think he also had part of the solution which is to learn how to “collectively think”together before jumping into even further fragmented actions. Of course, his approach takes  time and much effort.  Time is what we don’t have much of any more.   But, this is the nature of what I bring to this conversation:  a way of looking deeply into the cultural roots of problems ( a systems perspective) and how to create contexts for collective thinking.  
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​For me there is nothing more compelling right now than to join with others in the organizational and process field in thinking through together what might be uniquely contributed in moving the agenda forward to a cultural paradigm that supports and sustains all life on the planet.  
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​​I am motivated by wanting to connect with others who see the need as clearly as do I and who are willing to devote time and attention to this subject.  I am also motivated to actually “DO” something that can contribute to the resolution of what feels like an increasingly impossible position that we humans have gotten ourselves into with respect to climate change, income inequality, resource collapse, and so many other intractable problems that we have swept largely under the carpet during our life-times.  

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​Brian G Dowling
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  • ​​briandrpm@gmail.com
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
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​​I used to work and still live in the San Gabriel Valley of California. My day job was economic development professional for the redevelopment agency of a California city government. I'm retired now and have taken a different path, exploring new areas of inquiry. Through my blog Pathways to New Community Paradigms and the related wiki of the same name, I began focusing on larger questions impacting community development, regional economics and arenas beyond. These efforts have to do with what I learned in government and what I learned through interacting on the web regarding governance and community participation. Previously, I had participated online with the effort to get the word out in support of actions being taken to accomplish the UN Millennium Development Goals (no longer active). The biggest lesson I came away is that people cannot connect with empowering others to find the means of overcoming economic and political challenges if they don't have and use that ability themselves. Now I am seeking to apply the lessons learned to local governance and community transformation through the creation of new community paradigms.
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
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​​It was the word systemic in the title that attracted me. One of my new pathways of inquiry is systems thinking. I have been experimenting with the intergration of systems thinking with direct democracy (by which I mean the effective combination of participatory democracy and deliberative democracy). That led me follow a recently ongoing NCDD Codigital project to use as proxy for a thought experiment in democratic collaboration. I want to find ways of getting past what Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton named the Knowing Doing Gap. I am also just starting to learn about the work of Christopher Alexander and am in the very early stages of exploring ways to integrate his work into my explorations, particularly how patterns thinking could better fit in with systems thinking (not my map).

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​Jimmy Betts
​​Contact info (plus a pic if you wish--you can cut and past or use the + insert tool above)
​​​@Regina sneed​
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​I retired four years ago from a career in government working on consumer protection, civil rights and discrimination in employment and education. Perhaps more important to this discussion is that I have worked as a community activist and leader in San Francisco and as an activist nationally and internationally on such issues as women's rights, human rights, poverty, the environment, housing etc.
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
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​​ My motivation comes from a desire to connect with the  activist members who may be motivated to assist in, an informal way, NCDD members to step up and be directly involved in their own community efforts to respond to what us happening right now.   I was hoping we could track what we offered in training community members to use our tool box to start building capacity now..

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​​@Robert Corman​
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​​rcorman@gmail.com
​​973 540 1900 
​​973 229 6719 cell 
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​My work over the last 10 years has been a melding of my professional work and my avocational labors from the previous decades.  In my case, the former meant criminal and environmental lawyer, grantmaking executive, organizational visioner/developer, international survey research executive, and management consultant - while the latter meant shamanic apprentice, student of Sufism, Kabbalah, the blues, conflict resolution and eventually dialogue.  Today I am an executive level coach to university and organizational leaders and their boards, a vision facilitator, a mentor to emerging environmental leaders, and a teacher of sitting and navigating in the unknown even as the odds seem to mount against the lot of us.  I care deeply about good data and approaches to the future that see well beyond the inclination to focus on specific "issues" as if they exist outside of a whole system. 
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​The pattern that connects all issues, that de-siloes them is where I like to reside in my work. I’m interested in consciousness raising that begins with whole systems thinking.  It is apparent to me that "problem solvers" for the most part find it easy to say what’s wrong and come up with solutions while having no capacity to understand implementation of them, let alone ensure their sustainability. My interests are the singular relationship between the micro (bioenergetics and heart/mind that make us human and connect us to everything), and, the macro (the planet being as ultimate model of a whole system that we can/must align with if only we’d let go of some carbuncular belief systems).  To inhabit this space with awareness and breath is to be present and ready for thoughtful conversations about the future. I care about the human and institutional support of the armature that is constructed to help advance the clear ideas that ultimately emerge from these sessions. 

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​​@Andrea Houchard​ 
​​andrea.houchard@nau.edu
​​928-523-7153
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​​Philosophy in the Public Interest creates opportunities for people to think about themselves, each other and the world in more creative and careful ways. We think it is important to continually assess the reasoning behind our beliefs and positions. We believe that, in many cases, consensus is an unreasonable standard. The free exercise of human reason and the ideals of free speech result in sustained disagreement. This is as it should be. The trick is to figure out how to live cooperatively and share basic principles of  justice in a diverse society under such conditions. 
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​​Philosophy in the Public Interest takes philosophy out of the classroom and into the community. You will find us in movie theatres, art museums, historic hotels, private homes, libraries, and in the beautiful outdoors of Sedona, Flagstaff and other northern Arizona sites of natural beauty.
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​It appears to be solution driven.

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​Tom Atlee
​​cii@igc.org / http://co-intelligence.org
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​I explore (and promote) ways to help us be wiser together than we are individually, with a focus on envisioning a wiser democracy.  I like to think of that vision as a form of conscious evolution (at the social systemic level).  There's lots more about all that on my sites and in my books.
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​Thanks to numerous emerging, converging mega-crises - from climate disruption and resource depletion, to fragile economic systems and potentially disastrous technological developments - we urgently need to upshift from collective folly to collective wisdom.  High quality interactions among diverse people and perspectives - the essence of dialogue and deliberation - are vital to generating the collective wisdom we need.  Practitioners, theoreticians and advocates in that field (of powerful conversations) who recognize the profound urgency of our situation and the tremendous possibilities buried within it could - theoretically - be the collective catalyst for the needed shifts in culture, consciousness, and societal systems.  These conversations could trigger that catalytic action.

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​Nancy Glock-Grueneich
​​nglock@post.harvard.edu
​​831-431-3869  (Fairborn, Ohio)
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​I seek to promote widespread awareness of the solutions now emerging everywhere and across all peoples and walks of life, and the hope and empowerment that awareness elicits. I help articulate conceptual infrastructures for this work—definitions, distinctions, principles, models, frameworks, and guidelines. I tend to focus institutional transformation and the realignment of all professions toward their distinctive contributions towards a livable future, especially higher education as pivotal in achieving such realignments and in promoting more fruitful understandings about who we are, and can be, as human beings. I’m interested in how we can leverage each other’s good work, help each other recover from the things that get in the way of our own higher purposes, and create a world that brings out the best in us. That would be a world in which the natural goodness of human beings is nurtured in how they are cared for while growing up and enabled by institutions that reward rather than punish right action when they are adults. Beyond even sustainability and justice, I see that as the goal of a livable future—a future in which we can live and one worth living in.    
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​The capacity to engage fully and well in dialogue and deliberation, and routine reliance upon it in most situations—with all the changes in roles and practices that implies—is a foundation for all else we would seek. I know the people in this dialogue and have seen them for many years now as sources of inspiration, guidance and hope. I am deeply moved that this conversation is happening today. 

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​​@Tom Christensen​
​​608-255-4242
​​tomc@centralmadison.com 
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​My interest at this point is in experiencial inquiry into what is possible for human being when individuals with very high cognitive complexity retain their individuality while simultaneously constituting a collective.   In my field of study, SDi, this is called the Turquoise level of being.   The project here appears to be an attempt to find and/or create such a shared space of inquiry.  The SDi theory predicts when a current level of being creates problems that this level can't solve, a new level may emerge that can solve those problems.  So the stakes are high here.  We have the cognitive complexity now to see the breadth and depth of planet wide problems....this is something new for human being.  But having seen these systemic problems, we find ourselves pretty helpless to resolve them.  That would mean something new has to emerge.  My bet is that the project here emerges out of and constitutes this new human capacity.  I'm very eager to test this hypothesis...and if confirmed, reduce suffering, and enhance vitality and thriving across our big rock. 
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​​ I am currently near completion of editing a 3 book series of case studies of how SDi has been applied to resolve real life problems.   It is full of Yellow, and Turquoise examples of human being.   From that resource, what I have found here, and similar efforts in many places in the world.....something is happening, something I don't think has ever happened before....ever.   We are in new territory, and what is sig different here is that we not only discover the territory, we now create it also. 
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​I suspect care for my fellow humans, and all other life forms, is second on my list.  I am at the core a curiosity addict.  What else is possible?!!!  I am driven to find closure, while knowing each closure is a new opening.  This endless circle has led me here, where "what else is possible?" seems to be at the core of the inquiry.   I suspect we will discoverate, that amalgam of discovery and creation, something very important here.  I want the adventure, and the comradery here, on the way to finding out. 

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​Griet Hellinckx
​​griet.hellinckx at gmx.de
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​I am based in Germany. My main field of work is in education  (Steiner-Waldorf schools). I am also engaged in inquiries concerning interspirituality and the development of forms of universal spirituality that can address the spiritual-cultural divide in today's world. 
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​I try to be part of and/or follow up on what groups working and experimenting with collective inquiry, awakening and transformation un-cover. My special interest is in groups that try to collectively access a "deeper" source of wisdom and knowing with the intention of healing and serving larger settings. 

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​Douglas Bonar 
​​Pic with my Son (Zachary) and first grandchild (Wallace)
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in private practice.  I work with clients court-ordered for domestic violence offenses.  They are ordered into my groups for 26 weeks.  I employ the standard Power and Control Model (Duluth Model) mandated by the state, and complement it with my own model entitled Roots and Wings: The Way of Wholeness.  The new model addresses not just core wounding from childhood, but collective wounding from a yang dominant culture.  Clients learn skills in mindfulness and relaxation, along with energetic tools to affect their family members in a positive way.  They also get a fresh perspective on how to recognize and address cultural ills.  I am a local facilitator for the Institute of Noetic Sciences and teach all of my clients "noetic" skills - how to work with consciousness to facilitate change.  I study the "new sciences" which offer hope for collective transformation.  I am writing my first book entitled The Way of Wholeness.  In summary, I believe in personal and collective transformation.  My Roots and Wings model addresses the Yin and Yang of Being and Doing.  It is both.  What a joy to be with like-minded and like-hearted souls in this forum!!  Namaste.  Peace.    
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​I choose to be a part of this forum to expand my Sangha, or spritual community.  I believe in our vision and effectiveness as catalysts of collective change.  I have been trained through the Berkana Institute in The Art of Hosting and know that dialogue and networking is a wonderful means of cohering the "the field" of consciousness.  I am also an Agent of Conscious Evolution through the Shift Network and the Foundation for Conscious Evolution (Barbara Marx Hubbard's organization).  What really motivates me is Dharma.  It is mine to do.  It is my purpose and calling.  I am so blessed.  

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​John Baxter
​​@jsbaxter_
​​jsbaxter.com.au
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​CoCreation.  Especially self organisation, participation, empowerment.
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​I am on the same quest.  It is not urgent, except insofar as life is urgent.  But it is still important.  It is life.

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​Laura Chasin
​​Contact info (plus a pic if you wish--you can cut and past or use the + insert tool above)
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​I am the Founder of the Public Conversations Project which is no stranger to most of you. We just launched an excellent new website (which I encourage you to check out and pass on) and are in the process of hiring an excellent new leader. This promising convergence allows me to reengage with supra-organizational concerns and interests after leading the Board.
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​I brood and noodle all the time about the self-destructive direction in which this country appears to be heading with ever increasing and look forward to engaging with fellow systems thinkings and creative colleagues for the same reasons many of you have already written.

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​Jarod Holtz
​​jarod@calabs.org
​​760.500.4028
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​After eight years as a contractor in the intelligence community analyzing terrorism, insurgency, and other global threats it became clear to me that the solutions to the problems we’ll face in the next half-century need to come from across institutional boundaries and not from government institutions alone. I think this transformation will depend on ordinary people being empowered and mobilized to help us address these issues in ways that impact their daily lives. 
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​​I am a relentless tinkerer. Since I was a kid I’ve been training to become a “master in the art of living” who tries to make little distinction between my work and my play, my labor and my leisure, my mind and my body, my education and my recreation, my love and my religion. The goal is an integrated, authentic, and balanced way of living and acting in the world. Continuously learning about how people and organizations structure, process, and make daily decisions on these same issues is profoundly interesting to me. And I believe the macro solutions for helping organizations, ecosystems, and humanity adapt and thrive in our volatile, complex, murky world are closely linked to similar individual challenges.
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​Learning from the collective knowledge and wisdom of this creative group.

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​Lucas Cioffi
​​lucas@qiqochat.com
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​Iraq War veteran, now a software developer building tools for text/video/phone conversations and for online unconferences.
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​I enjoy being a part of volunteer collaborative efforts that arise from the NCDD list.
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​​@Laurie Baker​
​​labaker8@gmail.com
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​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​I am a mystical artist.  I use my wisdom artistically in the physical art I create and the artful way I wisely share and care for others.
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​I love to listen and learn.  I love to discern the felt sense of people.
​​When invited, I love to share that which may irresistibly draw others into the powerful fertile void of the timelessness where the impossible is possible.

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​​@Jim Barton​
​​smithmillcreek@gmail.com
​​What would you like to share about your work?
​​I am interested in grassroots-based non-violent activity for a world that is more ecologically sustainable, peaceful, just and allows for people's basic needs. Most of my activism-- stopping a local Wal-Mart, stopping a local power plant, starting one of the first Transition Town groups in North America, activity in my local 350 chapter, and my service on 6 boards related to world federalism/global peace through global law-- relate to those concerns.
​​I'm a big believer in both the importance of conversation and (as you can see above) effective action. I think many people rush-rush to "action", which has an insufficient foundation.
​​I've been in Asheville, NC since Sept. 2005.
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​​What motivates you to be a part of this inquiry?
​​I'm curious about what this is.

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