Diary Dates for December 2011

My December diary - heading towards the Christmas break and the close of the year. It's a varied collection of diary dates - and I hope during 2012 it may become more obvious how all these things are connected with each other.

• Thursday 1st - GlobalNet21 webinar - Supporting Local Groups and Activists - Given that I'm developing "Landscape of Change" workshops that will feed into collaboration groups (and those groups will be active in their local communities) I appreciate learning more about community organisations.
• Monday 5th -  Eirenicon Africa Public Lecture Series inaugural lecture by Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Governor of Ekiti State in Nigeria. Dr. Fayemi was sworn in on 16 October 2010 after winning a three- year battle in the courts to prove his opponent, then the sitting governor, had rigged the results. (postponed) - Now Dadamac's online connections between UK and Nigeria  are so good there's no need for me to go to Nigeria so often for on-the-ground "reality checks". This means that I do appreciate opportunities to connect with various Nigeria-related events here in London

• Tuesday 6th - Council for Education in the Commonwealth - Commonwealth Educational Futures: the Technological Challenge - The Gladwyn Lecture by Tim Unwin  - the slides should be available online - ideal for anyone interested in the rich picture and the realities behind the hype about ICT in Africa.  I've been an admirer of Tim Unwin for years, not only for his positions of authority and influence, and what he knows and how he communicats it, but especially for the ways that he connects with what happens in practice, and is a champion of the people who are being left out. I always feel he is genuinely connected to the issues and concerns facing people in the kinds of locations that I know in rural Nigeria and Kenya. The event also raised questions for me about the Commonwealth and  what it has been and what it might become in our rapidly changing world.
• Tuesday 6th - After the lecture I went on to the Westiminster Hub to catch one of Vinay Gupta's "Truth and Beauty" sessions  (The Westminster Hub hasn't been open long, but I've already  been there much more often than I've been to the Islington and Kings Cross hubs. I'm wondering what my relationship with it will be in the long term.)
• Thursday 8th -  GlobalNet21 - Development & Networking Meeting - (GlobalNet21 is joining the Westminster Hub) I was delighted to be at this informal meeting where we were all reflecting on GlobalNet21 (past,present and future) and what it means to us.(The Dadamac meet-up group owes a lot to GlobalNet21 and in some ways is a spin off from it)
• Saturday 10th Michel Bauwens spoke at two "Occupy" venues in London Introduction to P2P and the Commons as the new paradigm of change (10am) Transcending State & Corporations: Introduction to Peer-to-Peer and the Commons (2pm) - I went to the afternnon one. I appreciate Michel's influence on my thinking, his Peer2Peer work and his clear explanations. His analyses of trends and examples of things that are genuinely happening provide such useful context for many of the ideas I introduce to people as part of the Landscape of Change".

• Sunday 11th Sustainable Urban Spaces (more of Michel) - Creating and Sustaining Urban Spaces for the People, by the People

• Wednesday 14th  "Wisdom, a conversational tango" by David Pinto and Wendy Lobatto book-launch - another event at the Westminster Hub. It was an unconventional launch  - starting with a tango demonsration, and some simpler leading and following activites for the rest of us. I was interested to know what David and Wendy had been doing in this "conversational tango" as I once spent a facsinating evening "orchestrated" by David, round at Wendy's home. It included a discussion under unusual rules. There were five of us, and we were only allowed to say one sentence at a time, then fall silent and let someone lese speak a sentence, and so on. It's worth trying. It really concentrates the mind and leads to a totally different level of listening and thinking about what is being said. 

• Friday 16th Dadamac meetup Our rapidly changing world - learning from each other to influence our futures  (and Westminster Hub Christmas party - which I went to briefly on my way to the meetup) At the Dadamac meetyps I'm exploring some of teh Landscape of change ideas - especially practicalities of collaboration and being "stronger together".
• Wednesday 21st School of Everything: Unplugged!  - My professional background is in education (and all kinds of issues around how, what and why we learn). Most of the things that I do have some kind of connection with education in the broadest sense - asking questions, finding things out, learning-by-doing and such-like.  I can't get to "Unlpugged" very often, as but it was holiday time so I was able to go along.

@tonyhall says - Every Wednesday morning, from 10.30 till 12.30, School of Everything: Unplugged! brings people together to talk about education, technology and society. It's a space in which you're equally welcome to talk about big ideas or personal experiences - and our most rewarding conversations often come out of the connections between the two.

Reading my diary for December (and reflecting on what ties the events together) I remembered  another diary I experimented with earlier in the year - my learner's diary. It began with Dadamacadamy learner's diary–Pamela: May 2011 and ended with Learner's diary 6 - collaborative learning on 26 June. Digging deeper I found a post at the start of the year - explaining about my approach to learning -  January 8, 2011 Are you a Dadamac Learner?

Maybe I'll read through it all later to help me see how my learning has progressed throughout the year.