Self-Organization Systems Conversation LO12606

SEErickson@aol.com
Sat, 15 Feb 1997 00:08:56 -0500 (EST)

INVITATION:

An Invitation from Margaret Wheatley, Myron Kellner-Rogers and The Berkana
Institute, to join in a Community of Conversations. . .

We know that there is a significant, global conversation going on focused
on a broad field of inquiry: Can we create organizations, communities, and
systems capable of supporting us in the fullness of our humanity? The
more we travel, the more people we meet who are engaged in this question,
and who want to connect with others.

The Berkana Institute, through dialogues and conversations, has been
exploring this question for several years. We are excited at what we see
emerging, in both thinking and practice, that points the way to radically
new forms of organizing. We believe that as we understand the processes
by which life organizes itselfoas we understand how to work with life's
creativity rather than controlling against itowe are discovering a path
filled with new possibilities for how to work and create together.

Many of you have been engaged in this inquiry. We hope that you share our
sense that it is time to surface what we know, and to see what else we can
discover through conversations with this growing community. We also feel
that it's time to publicize the practice of this community, so that each
of us gains confidence for our individual experiments and acts of courage.
Some of us feel crazy to be holding the thoughts we hold, and dreaming the
dreams we dream, but in fact we represent the new sanity. Our belief in
alternative forms of organizing that support and sustain life is the only
path to a meaningful future.

We'd like to invite you to join us in an experiment. . .

We are convening an on-line community of conversations. We have several
hopes for this. We want to surface the knowledge and practice that
resides in all of us. We want to develop new knowledge and practice. We
want to use electronic communication intentionally to create ourselves as
a self-organizing, learning community. We want to experiment with the
possibilities and limits of this mode of conversation. We want to
experiment with what we already know about how global systems arise from
the interactions of local networks. We want to experiment with
intentional self-organization around a question we deeply care about.

In our experience with other electronic conversations, we have learned
that certain conditions and structures facilitate the quality of learning.
In the following pages, we describe the initial design with which we will
begin this conversation. Please note that this endeavor is an experiment:
we start with something, we all watch it carefully for its results, and
together we change it as we go along. If each of us adopts this
experimental posture, and agrees to be watchful and responsive, together
we will create something that is extraordinary.

We hope you will join us in this delightful experiment.

Meg Wheatley
Myron Kellner-Rogers
Tenneson Woolf
Sheryl Erickson

The Berkana Institute is a 501-C3 charitable educational and research
foundation that seeks to create communities of support and inquiry for
exploring new thinking and practice about organization.

.oOo.

A Berkana Community of Conversations

OUR INTENTION

To convene a learning community, through multiple, electronically linked
conversations, focused on exploring this question:

What are we discovering, in knowledge and practice, that helps us develop
organizations that can support the fullness of our humanity?


AN EXPERIMENT

We view this endeavor as an experiment in creating an effective,
self-organizing learning community through electronic means. The initial
phase will be for six months, from March 10th 1997 to September 10th 1997.
As experimenters, we begin with certain ideas and structures, watch
carefully for their effects, and together change things as we go along.
At the end of six months, we'll see what wants to happen next. As
co-creators, we expect everyone to be actively engaged, willing to play
and tinker, patient and truthful with each other, and intent on
discovering what's possible.

OUR BELIEFS

We are all learning a great deal. We create new learnings by being
together.

We need one another to hold us to the integrity of a new world view, and
to give us the courage to continue.

Conversation is a primary means of surfacing and creating knowledge and
shared meaning.

This is a self-organizing process, designed from what we know about the
conditions that support self-organization. There is a self that
materializes into different forms as people have access to information,
one another, and a shared context that matters to them.

Global systems of surprising capacity arise from the independent activity
of local groups that also are connected to the whole.

In living systems, connections that are webby, non-linear, messy, and
impossible to track, give rise suddenly to new capacities.

INITIAL CONDITIONS AND DESIGN

We want to support three primary conditions: participation, learning, and
connectedness. We have developed the following structures, each as
electronic listserves, to create these conditions.

HOME CIRCLES

A home circle is no more than 18 people (randomly assigned). These
circles are deliberately small, to ensure greater intimacy and to prevent
being deluged with messages. The number of home circles in our community
will depend on the number of participants. Each participant will be a
member of one home circle. A home circle is the place to begin the
conversation and a place to return to for on-going reflection and
connection through the entire six months.

THE COMMONS (Open Space)

During the first ten days of each month all participants will be linked
together to post interests, describe needs and locate others with similar
desires. (Actual conversations will not occur in this space.) We expect
this Commons will help us find new connections, seed new ideas into the
whole, spur our inventiveness, and give birth to new small conversation
circles that will then continue simultaneous with the home circles. This
is a space where the local community of conversations is able to notice
and connect with its global self.

LIBRARY SPACES

The library is a series of separate listserves for participants to
contribute and receive different kinds of information. The library has
discrete electronic spaces, each available separately, and used by
individuals as they choose. Open to all and easily accessed, anyone can
make contributions, and exchange or access information in these spaces.
You will not, however, automatically be deluged with materials. These
library spaces are:

-Questions. Provocative and powerful questions that surface anywhere in
the on-line community, contributed by participants.

-Learnings. Insights, observations, and practices discovered through
these conversations.

-Resources. Personal offerings and tangible resources recommended to one
another.

-Writings in Progress. A repository for short pieces of new writing that
have been catalyzed by these conversations e.g. thought pieces, poetry,
teaching stories, essays.

-Directory. A place where participants can introduce themselves to the
collective by posting information about who they are and how to reach
them.

-Process Watch. Where we describe what we're learning and noticing about
this process of conversations and electronic connectivity. A place to
notice what might want to happen next, and where we invent new approaches
to this experiment.

ELECTRONIC STRUCTURE

We are using basic electronic connections: personal emailboxes and group
listserves. These low end technologies are easy and inexpensive. They
enable conversations that can be easily accessed by a diverse body of
participants and easily expanded to link together as a global community.
We will use these basic technologies in inventive ways, i.e. nested in
various groupings within a larger framework of the conversation. Each
person will be on the listserve of their home circle, and have access to
other listserves, i.e. the Commons, the Library. We will frequently ask:
"What's possible using only this very simple means of electronic
connection, while holding our collective focused intention to create a
meaningful and expansive conversation?"

SUBSCRIPTION FEE

To participate in this six month community of conversations, there is a
subscription fee of $30 per month. This fee covers basic administrative
costs and nothing more. We believe a six month commitment greatly
facilitates our learning--we can rely on one another to stay engaged as
partners and co-creators. To minimize our administrative tasks, we ask
that you make one payment of $180.

We will keep the electronic doors open and be welcoming in new
participants on the 10th of each month through August 10th. Those who
choose to enter the conversation after it has begun will be charged $30
per month for the number of months remaining.

TO REGISTER

Please complete a Berkana Conversations Registration Form and return it to
us by March 5th. (You can obtain a Registration Form by emailing your fax
number to Berkana Conversations c/o Terri Seever at SEEVINTNL@aol.com.)

We go on-line March 10th.

ANY QUESTIONS?

Please contact either:

Tenneson Woolf
Telephone= 801-377-2996
Email Tenneson_Woolf@msn.com

Sheryl Erickson
Telephone=508-278-6603
Email SEErickson@aol.com

We hope that your choice is to join us in this experiment.

[Host's Note: My good friend Sheryl Erickson was the primary force behind
the Bretton Woods meetings a couple of years ago and her events are
*always* interesting! If you want to reply, please do so directly to
Sheryl or Tenneson, not through the LO list. ...Rick]

-- 

Sheryl Erickson SEErickson@aol.com

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>