From 10:00 – 3:00 today, a small group tested a new gathering type called “There from Here”.
The theme was straight forward, with three parts:
What is the current state of the world. As a species and a planet, what are our Strengths and Weaknesses? What are the Opportunities and Threats?
At our best, what could we realistically become as a species? What would society look like, from the daily life of the individual up to the Global system
How do you get there from here? As if building a bridge, what steps take you from here towards there, what intermediate steps might there be?
The process was simple too. In brief:
A host offers a time and place, at least three hours
An organizer selects who to invite
A facilitator brings a schwack of notecards, mindmapping tools, and/or general supplies
Start by having folks introduce themselves: who they are, why they came, what they bring to the table.
Next brainstorm around the current state of things for our species on the planet. We started with Weaknesses and Threats, and moved to Strengths and Opportunities.
Next brainstorm around what things could be, daring to dream big while doing a bit of ‘black hat’ thinking to see the challenges with different elements.
Next brainstorm what steps (anywhere from immediate to part of later transition) could move us in the right direction.
Any aspect of things is on the table. At this first session our areas of focus included:
Recognizing our own excellence
Claiming, Creating and telling our own Story
Psychology
Empowerment
Environment
Transportation
Education
Governance
Housing
Food
Economics
Income
Conflict
We let things be organic: we kept the rough trajectory of here -> there -> how we get there, but hopped around a bit, and switched back and forth between brainstorming a range of ideas and exploring one in more depth and detail.
The results?
It was inspiring. I came away with some new ideas, a more full picture of the challenges facing us and some solid ideas of what could be done not just generally to move in a better direction, but ideas of what I personally could do to make some of that change more a part of my own work – as well as a better contextualization of my current work in terms of this process.
I’ll be following this post with a post giving more detail of what today’s group came up with, one describing our process better along with an invitation for others to both participate in a similar process either with us or on their own (and to share the results with us), and a post on some of our ideas around how this could grow from a single event into a force for positive change with minimal fuss or overhead.
Huge thanks to Jacob for hosting us today, and to Pascal for completing today’s trio. I’d welcome any additions y’all would like to make (what the experience was like, your take-aways, ideas, etc.)