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A recent day trip to the Main Headlands revealed an unexpected musical interlude when the wind whistled through the open pipes of a structure built near one of the old forts just north of the Golden Gate bridge. I Googled it when I got home, but couldn't find anything. I did however, find evidence of a Wave Organ built on a jetty east of the bridge - I'll have to check that out. I also found the Singing Ringing Tree in northern England and this video of the haunting sounds it makes.
I get a lot of email communications, and most of them are fairly easy to delete, but one I almost always pay attention to is Very Short List, because it's full of really cool things and it's delivered in a concise and nicely laid out format.
The lastest issue of vsl featured this beautiful book by Frank Chimero. I'm probably the ideal target audience for an hook like this and I followed the link to find an elegant little website dedicated to the book, with a wonderful design sensibility, fancifully illustrated chapter headings, and a great story at its core.
Chimero raised the money to write the book through a campaign on Kickstarter. The disarmingly simple video he created to sell his idea to potential funders (who gave him a total of $112,159 towards the project) talks about the book being not only for designers, but for everyone who makes things. He says that's all of us, and that "The Future is Something You Make".
There's a video of him presenting at the 2011 Build Conference in Belfast, which is not short but what I watched of it was compelling and if the topic thrills you like it does me, it's probably well worth watching.
Of course I ordered the book (which is offered in both print and digital format), so I'll let you know if it's as great as his promotions for it are. I know I'm excited to find out!
I've just completed a round of projects for people and organizations that are so fabulous I want to tell you about them.
BERRETT-KOEHLER PUBLISHERS, with whom I recently served as main consultant and designer for the launch of their new BK Community site. Read more about this brilliant company and my work with them here.
ALAN BRISKIN, a great friend and extremely talented thinker, writer, and photographer. I love working with him, and our latest project - his new web site/blog, The Power of Our Collective Wisdom - has been no exception. Read more about Alan and our work together here.
GISELA WENDLING I've just completed a creative collaboration with this remarkable German artist and academic who recently moved from California to Australia to immerse herself in Aboriginal culture. Liminial Songlines is the result of our collaboration and the product of her deep reflection and explorations. Read more about Gisela and our trans-continental journey together here.
CAROL HALLYN I've been working with this amazingly persistent and courageous woman for over 2 years now, as she has been her finishing doctoral work in intuition and new business leadership. On June 14th we launched her website CarolHallyn.com and blog IllamaSpeaks. Read more about our story here.
When I was in China I had several chops made, and I asked one of them to be the Chinese word for Beauty. "What kind of beauty?", the artist asked me, explaining that there are many kinds of beauty in the Chinese language. I replied I wanted the characters that meant the beauty of life itself. "Ah!", he said, and carved me this chop. It means "Everything is Beautiful".
I've just finished building the website for a wonderful new book called The Power of Collective Wisdom and the Trap of Collective Folly. It's just been released and I have a feeling this book is going to be important. It has a very down-to-earth yet critically timed message, grounded in clear examples of how we as human beings behave in groups - for good and for ill.
This beautifully crafted book shows us how we can learn from our past follies - a recent post the authors wrote for the BK Communique gives five ways we fall into collective folly - and it gives us inspiration and stories that remind us we can also work together consciously and powerfully to do great good that would be impossible alone.
It's been enormous fun to work on this project, and I'm pleased with the result. We (I worked closely on the website with one of the four co-authors, Alan Briskin) had the best feedback I could ever have wished for from one of the other authors, who has an exacting eye and doesn't waste time on false praise (which makes her words all the sweeter): "... it is a well crafted carrier of very good energy ... (my) gratitude for bringing your aesthetic eyes and careful design to this part of the work."
Many people have asked for more details on the First Peace work I experienced in New Mexico ... so I thought I'd show rather than tell you. The venerable RainbowHawk has created a series of paintings that illustrate the Eight Universal Principles of the First Peace. These powerful images tell the story better than I ever could, and I've added some of the words that accompany each principle in the First Peace Circle Handbook.
But first, a little background; the concept of "First Peace" comes from a quote by Black Elk;
" The First Peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the Universe and its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the Universe dwells Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, and that this center is everywhere, and it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and others are but reflections of this.
The second peace is that which is made by two individuals and the third is that which is made between nations.
But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace is within the souls of the people."
The Eight Universal Principles are the foundation for the consciousness of the First Peace, so by working with them in our own psyches we truly begin to seed lasting peace in the world.
With this universal principle is the call to realize that, as humans we are a manifestation of light in human form, a manifestation of the Divine, and as such we are called to develop this consciousness that has no restraint or boundary.
Finally! The long awaited new World Cafe online community has taken wing! We've been working on it for several months now, starting with an extensive comparison of features, costs, ease of use, etc. on over 15 platforms. We finally decided on NING, a popular social media platform which met our needs and more.
Once the site was designed and built, we invited a "beta" team of experienced World Cafe hosts to seed the community with their wisdom - the stories, ideas, images, and sounds that inspire them, the questions that keep them up at night. This period was very sweet, and I was touched to see people who were new to the technology willing to overcome their fears and jump in to share their knowledge and dreams.
With the ground thus firmly laid, we invited the rest of the community to join us. And boy, did they come! In the 11 days since we've been launched, over 700 people have arrived and registered. It's been fascinating to watch the numbers rise. You can literally sit there with the "People" page open and see a new person join every few minutes. The real thrill, though, is to see where they're from.
They are coming from Brazil, Israel, Italy, Finland, Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, the United States, Russia, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Chile, Mexico, Portugal, the Phillipines, France, Ghana, Indonesia, Columbia, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Belgium, Spain, Croatia, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Yukraine, Poland, Switzerland, Peru, Dubai, Slovenia, Tahiti, Venezula, Jamaica, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, Bolivia and Austria. Watching this confluence you get a palpable sense of a new kind of community - a truly global World Café - taking form before our eyes.
I'm very excited about it all, and deeply appreciative of the generosity which has been called forth from this diverse and dynamic group of people. I can't wait to see what evolves there.
There is an external order to my web design work that usually begins with some some variant on the following:
These are all elements that I can share with my client, they are what I say "out loud". But lately I've begun to become aware of another, subtler process that is happening internally, right alongside these external steps. As soon as I start gathering the data in step one, if I pay attention I notice that I'm listening more deeply for the things that are not being said: hopes, competing needs, dreams, aversions and aesthetic quirks, what they want the result to "feel" like, etc. etc. and often without my knowing when or how, a process of incubation begins.
Much of the time I'm only half-aware of what is happening, but inevitably, in its own pace, what I can know with my external senses begins to dance with my intuition and the as-yet unknown. The creativity that flows in my underground streams starts to converge and sooner or later images and sense impressions begin to take form.
I learn about them in my dreams or when I sit down to work on a design and something wholly unexpected emerges. Or, I find I'm always thinking of the project on some level and sometimes I catch a reflection of my thoughts or a disguised version of what I'm silently looking for.
As I become more aware of this process, I'm able to move with it more fully. When that happens my work feels lighter and more "fun" while the results get better and more satisfying.
What about you? Do you have an internal work process that runs parallel with your external routine? What's it like? Are you aware of it? How does it make itself known?
I've been working with Kara Brown on an avatar for my social networking sites, and am pleased to show you the jewel she came up with... and share what a wonderful experience it's been working with her on this project.
First she looked at my other avatars, which were mostly photographic, and then we talked about who I am and what I want to say about myself in this medium. She was totally open to my thoughts and feedback, and really heard the essence of my message.
I love what she did with the background, indicating a magical web of connection and inspiration, a green web that connects us to each other and to the natural world.
If you'd like your own, completely customized avatar, or have other illustration needs that could use her playful impressionistic style, give Tara a call! She's talented, intuitive, reasonably priced and I can't recommend her enough.
There's something tremendously satisfying about really helping someone. These days my joy is in helping others navigate their way through web 2.0 challenges. Maybe that's because I know what a little knowledge and confidence in that realm can open up for them.
In the last few days I've helped several people get their bearings in Second Life - get their avatar to look the way they want it, learning to move around and use the menu controls, etc. I love seeing people gain confidence in themselves and enjoy participating in that magical world, but I think my favorite thing is helping people get to grips with blogging.
Each blog is as unique as its author, so it's important that the design and structure of a blogging platform be totally aligned with what the blogger wants to say; what kind of experience they want to convey and evoke in their readers.
Whether it is something as simple as customizing an RSS feed or helping someone through the initial stages of conception, there's something fascinating for me about my work with blogging. Blogging is so personal in many cases, so creative and authentic and raw - something new venturing out into the world, a harbinger of fresh wisdom and beauty and knowledge. There's a particular thrill for me in having a part in introducing these new voices and their new visions.
One thing I've found is that no one knows it all. We can always learn from each other, and I love being part of the chain of sharing what I have learned as much as I enjoy learning from others. This flow of generosity and freedom is really the essence of the gift economy upon which so much of web 2.0 rests, whether or not money is involved.
There's something deeply magical about this, and it goes far beyond web 2.0. In fact, part of the power of web 2.0 may be in its awakening of this deeply human impulse to share what we know with each other. Whatever it is, it sure feels good to me, and I plan to continue being of help when I can, as long as I can.
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