Category: Community

  • The Unfolding of 17th Century Amsterdam

    … reminder – you are looking at 100 years in a few minutes! via Yodan Rofe of Building Beauty

  • Bryan Ungard – Deliberately Developmental Organisations

    This came to me via Richard Bartlett and: Listening to it while reading Christopher Alexander’s A Timeless Way of Building feels almost eerie … as if Bryan is looking over my shoulder and re-whispering the book in my ear recontextualized from the architecture of buildings to the architecture of organizations. I felt a deep sense…

  • Japanese Toolmakers

    As I stand at the entrance to the space of Japanese Kumiko woodworking, I find myself also getting acquainted with the tools associated with the culture. And one of the fundamental functions in wood-working is cutting … which ultimately involves blades in many forms. A unique feature of many japanese tools is laminated metal ……

  • Echoes from Building Beauty Seminar of April 4th 2019

    1: Project as a Living Being!? In my experience as a Yoga practitioner there is only so much that can be done on the mat. Ultimately the work and qualities of Yoga push up against the realities of life. There is where the real work of change happens. What changes can I make in my…

  • Indra Adnan On New Politics, Soft Power and the Feminine

    I am increasingly feeling disconnected from podcasts (and other materials) about subjects I care about (or think I care about!). I mostly feel that ideas are not well grounded and talk about (what strikes me as) disassociated fantasies. The latest wave of disappointment comes from this list from Richard Bartlett (whose work and person I…

  • Yoga of Groups

    Yoga is a solitary practice, it focuses inwards … my body, my breath, my attention. Maybe that is one of the reasons it appealed to me. When I researched Yoga, I also considered martial arts where there seems to me to be more potential for interaction with at least one other human being. But I…

  • Elinor Ostrom and the Tragedy of the Commons

    I see the tragedy of the commons for manifesting around me, and though I do believe it doesn’t have to manifest, it seems that often it does. This article pays respect to the work of Elinor Ostrom and cites her set of design principles for avoiding the tragedy of the commons:   Clearly defined boundaries:…

  • Christopher Alexander – Recursive Centers

    “What exactly is a center? … The crux of the matter is this: a center is a kind of entity which can only be defined in terms of other centers. The idea of a center cannot be defined in terms of any other primitive entities except centers. We are used to a view where we…

  • Women of Iceland

  • Ceptr CEO

    A few days ago I was invited to listen in on a conversation where some Ceptr friends tried to deal with questions on organizational structure and whether whatever organizational structure there was needed a CEO and/or COO. I am going to try to zoom in on the CEO question as a reflection on the wider…

  • On Demurrage (negative interest) – Reply to Albert Wenger

    This post is a long comment on Albert Wenger’s post about Money as Commons (and if both our sites were powered with IndieWeb abilities then I would have been able to comment on his site and have the comment automatically posted in my own site). Demurrage in Nature – Decay If I was a grain…

  • Are You An Anarchist?

    “Many people seem to think that anarchists are proponents of violence, chaos, and destruction, that they are against all forms of order and organization, or that they are crazed nihilists who just want to blow everything up. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are…

  • Portugal National Participatory Budget

    “Portugal has announced the world’s first participatory budget on a national scale. The project will let people submit ideas for what the government should spend its money on, and then vote on which ideas are adopted. … Proposals can be made in the areas of science, culture, agriculture and lifelong learning, and there will be…

  • Three Languages You Need to Take a Project from Dreams to Reality

    A generally good reminder about speaking from and to context: “… By distinguishing these languages and the needs that they serve, certain kinds of confusion may be avoided. The Inward language is the way that those at the heart of a project make sense of what they are doing, the way of seeing the world…

  • Douglas Rushkoff at SXSW 2016

    I have been following Douglas Rushkoff since his launch of the TeamHuman podcast. I recommend it very much. This talk is a good introduction to his work. The main thing I like about him is that he builds a good bridge between two worlds that in my existence seem separate. The people in my life…

  • Thank you Ramona, Attila, Raluca and Derek for Nyeleni

    It doesn’t seem like I’ll be writing in depth about my experience at the Nyeleni Europe conference. I have much to say, but I am not motivated to say it … and this post from another participant does a good job of touching on some (not all) of the subjects that resonated inside me. However,…

  • Government as a Platform

    This may seem slightly off-topic, but for me there is some valuable cross-over of ideas and domains that do relate to Oameni. This is a presentation by Tom Loosemore about his work in the UK Government Digital Strategy during the 2015 Code for America summit. In it he describes an architectural view of a government…

  • What does it mean to be a peasant in Romania?

  • Media Literacy

    Another very good episode of Team Human. This time about media literacy … how to bring into our collective awareness that when we use digital platforms (both as consumers and creators of content) we are acting in a space that has been created and shaped by others. Others have made choices (conscious and less conscious)…

  • Trust Disrupted: Bitcoin and the Blockchain

    A good overview of some of the fascinating issues that the bitcoin and blockchain spaces are experiencing. An underlying assumption in this field, that is not explicitly mentioned, is that technology and mathematics can be used to generate trust where people (for different reasons) cannot. That is one of the main reasons I am a…