Author Archive for George Nemeth

Surrogate

Published by George Nemeth on November 17, 2007 in Examples. 0 Comments

On his blog, Jack Ricchiuto writes:

Voting is at best a surrogate for direct engagement in one’s community. When I vote for a specific public action, like giving money to a school system, I am not taking a direct part in that action. I am voting to have someone else do that for me, holding someone else accountable for the choices I and a majority of my neighbors make. They are a surrogate to my engagement. I am not going to a school of my choice and giving my money to a teacher, custodian, or coach for a specific project that I have passion about. The surrogates who execute the intentions of a majority of my neighbors mediate a task I never personally engage in…

If you choose not to engage in community, do it intentionally, but don’t misconstrue casting a vote for an idea as taking action. It’s not.

Rediscovering

Published by George Nemeth on November 8, 2007 in Recipes. 0 Comments

Jack posted something to his blog that illustrates AIM on different levels: it’s about conversations, small acts, inviting participation, being engaging. This is an excerpt from a flight chat with a seat mate who joins neighbors in regular small acts of connecting people in his SanFrancisco community. They were talking about the Kerouac stories of natural communities a couple generations ago.

I started to say, “Well, you know this year is the 50th year of …” he [Bob, a San Franciscan electrician] finished with “Yea, On The Road … Kerouac”, leading to another hour of recounting the rich tapestry there. The routine he and some of his neighbors have is once a week or so, they’ll set a bench out front of their home near the Mission District and drink wine, offering to anyone who shows up. It is magic in bringing people out of their houses and into community. No surprise that he is one of the entrepreneurial members of a thriving non-profit board…

Neighborly Benchwarming is a great example of something we’re including in the book—Recipes for building community. It’s one of the areas Jack and I are looking for your ideas on. If you have any tips or techniques on creating community that we could include (with attribution of course), please email them to us, or leave them in a comment below.

jack/zen » Blog Archive » On the road

Begin

Published by George Nemeth on November 7, 2007 in An Intentional Model. 0 Comments

Where to begin? Jack Ricchiuto and I began talking about what has become An Intentional Model of Building Community in the fall of 2006. It was in the Summer of 2007 when it started taking the form for a book—Radical Transitions.

The crux of our model for me is that we’ve all been in meetings that tend to get stuck in one of the four conversations. Even worse, they reach an impasse because they deteriorate into a shadow conversation. When that happens, how do you get back on track?

Our proposal is that if you have the right process to begin with, it’s easy to keep the momentum going—driving the conversation ultimately to small acts. I’ll give you an example. This blog (and its companion wiki) were the direct results of the first workshop Jack and I did. He blogged about it on JackZen.com here, and I expanded on it at my blog.

One of the things we learned is to be very explicit with the narrative for the model. From the example above, here are the four “conversations” that resulted in the small act of having a wiki and a blog:

What would you love to be possible?

We’d like to be able to share these ideas with others and have them respond with their feedback. Since the book is based on stories and recipes, we’d like to have others be able to contribute theirs.

What talents and assets are we each bringing?

I’m bringing my skill and experience setting up wikis and blogs, as well as an excellent hosting company that’s responsive when I request domains set up. Jack has been creating graphs and has written plenty of content so we can start building pages immediately.

What can we get started on a small scale?

The smallest scale is one site with one page. With the right platform, Jack and I can collaborate wherever we are at anytime. A blog starts with one post.

Who else should we invite to the table?

Anyone with a story to tell about intentionally building community. Our framework is descriptive, not perscriptive. Both of us know many people who do this sort of work—let’s invite the to tell their stories of dreams, gifts, invitations, and small acts.

So as you watch this space, expect to see more examples, more invitations to kick the tires of AIM, but most importantly help us identify great groups to include in the book!