Here are the slides from my presentation/conversation hybrid that I hosted last weekend at the Digital Media in a Social World OSU event. All in all the event was good and I believe that my session went fairly well. Unfortunately I don’t believe I did as good of a job engaging the room as I’d hoped for but that is the risk you take when you try something new.
The topic was basically about making your offline presence (particularly as an organization) much more responsive and flexible to the needs of your supporters and community – the way it is with your online presence. Here are the slides:
Growing up I watched a lot of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (watch here) and I’ve always had a love for the show and the man behind that show, Fred Rogers. The thing about this show and the man himself is that he wasn’t interested in teaching people what actions specifically are “wrong” and what actions specifically are “right” – he instead nurtured an understanding of how our actions affect others and how our feelings have an effect on our own self.
I’ve been thinking a lot about anger lately, about how quick we as a culture are to get angry and point fingers and choose sides; I’ve been witness to where that leads – we all are. Crisis after crisis because we aren’t satisfied to let cooler heads prevail.
Well, today in my RSS feed I found this nugget courtesy of Coudal Partners: it is Fred Rogers testifying before Congress about PBS funding. Listen not just to the words he has chosen but to the calmness of his delivery. He doesn’t need to get his ire up because his words reflect the deeper honesty of his being.
I’m grateful for the chance to continue to learn from Mr. Rogers, no matter what age I am. If you haven’t seen the video take the 6 minutes to watch it and really let the ideas settle into your mind.
Life has been extremely busy over the past month or so which made me all the more thankful for a few hours to slow down and speak from my heart with several friends about inner and outer climate change.
The conversation was held at the Ohio State University Urban Arts Space in the newly renovated LEED certified Lazurus building. I was honored to have a chance to work with Rick Livingston on hosting this event and we couldn’t think of a better space for this conversation to occur.
Who was called?
A wide net was cast for the invitation but a take-away for me in this conversation is that there is a real need for some focused invitation in the future. In attendance at the conversation were many wonderful people who had already started to explore what their inner climate change was happening in response to what they see as the global climate change crisis.
My dream for this conversations potential however would be to bring people in who do not currently feel that immediacy or crisis, or perhaps even a connection to global climate change. I believe it is important to engage with those individuals and find that place of commonality between the two sides of this issue. As one participant last night spoke, “This issue is inclusive because of its ramifications. So even if you deny the reason for climate change happening there is still room for you to participate in guiding action.”
Harvest
Even without the realization of my dream of full inclusion on this conversation there was still an amazing synergy that took place. I can’t thank the participants in this conversation enough, they were all lovely. Below I would like to share the visual harvest from the evening with you.
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