I'm rich in the people I know, As I think of them my heart lifts at their uniqueness, their mix of vitality, originality, big vision, stubborn determination, humour, curiosity, change-making, "amazing journeys made up of small steps", generosity of spirit, "imagination combined with deep realism", skills, knowledge, readiness-to-learn, wisdom, insights, and breadth of experience.
I was asked....
Recently several people have wanted an idea of who I connect to and how, so I started to think about it. The list below is the result. Initially I thought of the individual people I value, but I was uncomfortable with the idea of writing that. Some people know how much I value them, others may have little idea of the positive influence they have had. To list people would be too unwieldy, unbalanced, and somehow inappropriate. Then I thought of how we know each other and where our paths tend to cross, and it got simpler.
It's how we connect up in the 21st century
None of the personal connections I'm thinking of here existed before the turn of the century, many are more recent, but that doesn't mean they are like the impersonal "friends" of Facebook etc. The growth reflects the realities described in RSA, Venturists, and #LandscapeOfChange
Where paths cross
I clustered us all together in within various organisations, groups and meeting places, that we connect with, and I made the alphabetical list below. Some organisations are central to my life, some are much less so. Some are in the past (but connections between people remain) some are new. I've only included people's names where they seemed necessary for clarity. To me this isn't really a list of organisations. It's a memory jogger of nodes in my network, each reminding me of connections to individuals and to influences and to "knowledge in the room". It's about people, and in some cases deep friendships and long term collaborations, unrestricted by any organisational boundaries suggested by the impersonal, alphabetical, organisation-focussed list (I've added links to the ones I thought might not show quickly in a search)
- Centre for Distance Learning (London University)
- Civil Society Forum
- Coalition of the Willing (Tim Rayner)
- Dadamac Community
- Dark Mountain and Uncivilisation (separately and together)
- David Pinto and his networks - currently through the ha-ha experiment
- Diversity in Communities
- Pattern Language project (Doug Schuler)
- Fantsuam Foundation
- Global Villages (Franz Nahrada)
- GlobalNet21
- Hub Westminster
- ICT4D (Information and Communication Technology for Development - online community and Meetup group)
- Kabissa
- Minciu Sodas
- Oke-Ogun Community Development Network
- Online discussion groups of many kinds over the years have led to many helpful contacts
- Peer-to-Peer Foundation
- PRADSA
- RSA - (especially FRSA Reboot and Social Entrepreneur Breakfasts)
- School of Commoning
- "Truth and Beauty" and "Beauty and Truth" (Vinay Gupta)
- Tuttle
- Unplugged
- University Project (Dougald Hine)
Scope
My work is related to Life-Long-Learning, Lifestyle-choices, and Livelihoods. The list is incomplete and impoverished by the lack of names, but gives an idea of the scope of my interests and networks. There is a mixture of cultural norms, there are long-established organisitions and new ones, there are people from cities and rural areas, several continents are represented, the Internet is important (in many different ways) but so are Face-to-Face meetings. The list is full of opportunities to learn, and connections to innovative people who "walk their talk".
There is my usual dance between theory and practice to consider. Given that my theory is what I'm thinking and writing for my WikiQual on the Landscape of Change, then the list could be seen as providing me with a mixture of research tools, theoretical frameworks and practical field work to feed into it - or of course - it's simply a list of where I do my work, learn new things, and meet my friends. Welcome to my network.