I managed to shield Liam from the worst of it. (I wonder if the need to do that sustained me, because we spent wonderful time together in the middle of this.) My mother was less fortunate, as were some of my friends.

I desperately — not a pretty word, I know, but accurate — sought something, anything to hold on to. To comfort me. To stop the descent. Some of those somethings were not, ummmm, productive. Or very healthy. Then I stumbled upon Naada Yoga.

Now, if you know me, this is where you start giggling. You know that I HATE yoga. The whole visualize-the-yellow-light-and-breathe-in-the-universe bullshit of it. I would point out, and still will, that this practice is from the same folks who brought us sati. Chew on that. Twenty years ago I spent a month in an ashram learning to do massage — and I managed to skip yoga most every day.

But I desperately needed to take care of myself. And I knew that part of this meant physically. Getting out of my head and negativity and into my body. Consistently. So I decided to research Ashtanga yoga teachers in the Mile End. I had done some Ashtanga in the past and found it to be less annoying than most.

At Naada, Elizabeth Emberly and her partner, Jason Sharp, have created a wonderful, welcoming space. Their approach to yoga is practical, simple, and supportive. The mixing in of sound sends me to a far away (or far inside) place. The best part? They serve tea afterward and folks are invited to stay and chat. And they do. Aaaaaah, community space. My favorite thing. Feels good.

Naada is sanskrit for sound, vibration, rumbling. Like a river. I’m going most everyday. Helps (miraculous?) that it is five minutes from my house, and right next to Station C. Last week I did seven hours of yoga. It does make a difference. Making space for myself matters. It is healing.

I just watched I, Robot… You, Jane (Season 1, Episode 8). Woven throughout the story is a debate  between the librarian, Giles, and the computer science teacher, Jenny, about adopting technology. Giles is uneasy about technology: “I don’t think something is good just because it’s new.” (Although many Buffy episodes feature a hacker, Willow, who provides Giles with critical assistance using the library’s computer.)

Jenny explains that technology is creating a new society. Her students echo this: “The printed page is obsolete. Information isn’t bound up anymore. It’s an entity. If you’re not jacked in you’re not alive.” Giles is horrified. (And that particular student later gets killed by a nasty demon.) Near the end of the show Jenny asks Giles why he has such an aversion to computers:

Jenny: Honestly, what is it about them that bothers you so much?
Giles: The smell.
Jenny: Computers don’t smell, Rupert.
Giles: I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a – it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It’s-it’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.

Clearly I love my computer. And sometimes I hate it. Have not been sniffing my books enough lately. Something to think about.

I’ve heard this again and again. So, why’s it so hard? I’ve come to suspect that part of it has to do with the structure of communications within organizations. The centralized structure is a problem. We need to figure out how to make a distributed model work (see an early stab at how this could happen for a network or distributed team). You hear all the time about user-generated content. Well how about staff-generated content? Then the communicator becomes facilitator, supporter, curator. No longer struggling to find out what’s going on but rather focused on packaging and outreach.

This also has implications for knowledge sharing (or whatever KM is called these days) and organizational development. It’s about documenting learning, mistakes, victories. Taking the time to stop and think about process.

So as part of this thinking toward a new model I’ve developed (with help from my friends) a list of observations from my last ten or so years of experience. Mostly these are with international development organizations, most of which were implementing research or social change projects. They all had similar characteristics and issues:

• Multi-cultural teams made up of passionate, opinionated researchers and development professionals (read: herding cats)

• Partners who are at other times competitors

• Far-flung teams and partners facing similar issues and or learning things that are relevant to each other’s practice — they have things to share and are hungry for knowledge

• A “boss” (read: donor) who’s not at home — or several absent bosses each with different (sometimes shifting) priorities and stakeholders — so important spend time building understanding, updating, and demonstrating return on investment

• Disincentives to document or openly discuss failure stifles learning and innovation (this is the down side of the performance-based contract)

• Ability to see organizational issues but no way to fix them — Because of the nature of their work (talking with many team members, needing consistent updates, pushing for clarity on audiences, messages, activities) communicators’ work is affected by organizational issues and information flows, yet addressing these is outside of their mandate

• A “core + support” staff structure, where support staff often feel marginalized, their contributions and needs misunderstood or unacknowledged because they don’t do what the organization does (administration, finance, human resources, communications)

• Communicators not invited — and often must lobby — to attend meetings, events, or site visits that would allow them to better understand issues and activities, create richer content, and build relationships that improve information flows
• The staff closest to the work are least likely to communicate, so key information, learning, and stories often remains hidden
• Expectation that communicators can create compelling content from a mix of existing documents: proposals, contracts, presentations, various reports (coded, jargon-laden, sanitized, noisy)
• Communicators not in direct or regular contact with activities or colleagues in the field must use an investigative-journalist approach to dig up stories, which may annoy field staff as they’ve been preparing reports and communicating regularly with project managers

• Little attention or resources dedicated to internal systems (infrastructure + practices)

• Lack of coordination of basic information such as travel, events, and contacts leads to missed opportunities
• Productivity lost finding and re-finding assets
• Little time allocated to reflect on how the organization is working, what can be learned, and how to work better

Have you observed this? What’s the same? What’s different? How do you think these issues can be avoided or overcome? Any ideas for solutions?

This stuff tastes like flowers, but it’s not sweet. Magnificent for a hot summer day. Their website describes it this way: “Lifted aromatics of tropical fruits combined with the traditional nettle and herbaceous aromas of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.” Yeah whatever. Blah, blah, blah. Flowers, I tell you!

It costs almost $20 a bottle here in Quebec. Comes with a classy screw top. But don’t let that put you off. I saw it a Trader Joe’s in Seattle for $15. Not fair.

Tim Hwang looks like a super cool guy. And not just because Joi Ito took his portrait. Nope. Most important? He founded ROFLCon, the internet culture/celebrity conference. (Which my amazing friend Kate covered for CBC radio’s Spark. Yay!)

Maybe he’s cool because of his work at Harvard’s Berkman Center, where he does research with Yochai Benkler as part of the cooperation group.

Or maybe because he helps out on the Internet & Democracy project.

Or maybe because he knows so much about online community and the history of internet culture. Ethan wrote a nice post on Tim’s explanation of Internet memes. (Some of it is gross. But you may, nevertheless, find yourself compelled to look at it. You’ve been warned.)

I wrote previously about the rocking good job that the Participation Camp organizers did. Distant participants felt like they were right in the room. I couldn’t “attend” the second day, so I missed Tim’s talk — Gaming Open Government Data. But now here it is for you and me. It’s pretty damned cool. Games and citizen engagement. Some great ideas in here. Maybe this is why he’s super cool. Hard to decide…

News of the day is this fantastic wine made from syrah grapes. Crozes-Hermitage, 2000. From Les Vins de Vienne, Cuilleron-Gaillard-Villard. Loved it. Get your hands on a bottle if you can.

I’m just learning about wines. And have largely avoided French wines, favoring Portugese, Spanish, and Argentinian producers. But this was lovely.

According to The New York Times’s Eric Asimov:

Crozes-Hermitage is the largest appellation in the Northern Rhone… A good Crozes-Hermitage offers the particular smoky, spicy Rhone expression of the syrah grape, with flavors that are more olive, bacon and thyme than sweet fruit. Acidity gives freshness, and fine tannins add structure.

I still don’t have words yet to describe wines. But here’s my best shot: soft tannins, tobacco, smooth. Really lovely and gentle. And the smell? Beautiful. Like leaves on the forest floor on a warm fall day. I love smelling wine before I drink it.

Throw a dinner party. Invite social revolutionaries. Drink a few bottles of this stuff. Change will happen. I promise you.

Groups is another awesome Identica feature. By placing an exclamation mark in front of a word you can make it part of a group. Example: Tonight I discovered !shortrecipes. Recipes in 140 characters or less. Do you need any other reason to love this app?

Oh… and I nearly forgot. Karl made this t-shirt. Made me laugh.

And think of that naughty Wii vs. PlayStation 3 video. Which, yes, I know is evil ;)

Visualization is powerful because it gives you a different perspective. Which helps you think differently. I like to tell my friends that I’ve figured out what enlightenment is: It’s the ability to see all different perspectives simultaneously. Imagine that. Of course I’m not able to do it. Apparently I’m struggling with a gap between theory and practice.

Come to think of it good communications practice — to persuade, for social change — is at its core about providing a different perspective in a way that others can receive and act on it. There are lots of ways to do that, from good ol’ one-way broadcast to a collaborative approach, where the focus is on engagement, conversation, and creating together.

Okay so back to Wordle. It’s “toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.”

Pretty nice, huh? You can generate your image from a text, a blog, or a Delicious account. I put in this blog. Didn’t turn out so good. “Chopped” and “Pasta” are the biggest words. So clearly it’s fixating on my Spaghetti alla Puttanesca post. Not that I blame it. That is one wicked recipe.

So instead I put in my Delicious account. (I love Delicious. To find great leads you can go to the “popular” section and type in any tag. For example, here’s what’s hot for infrastructure.) When I saw the results I thought “yeah, that’s right.” Uh… but I don’t feel enlightened. Just a nagging feeling that I need to tidy up my tags ;)

Click on image to see it bigger.

Information
By Daniel Donahoo (2009)

she closes the lid
and unplugs the device
no bigger than her thumb
from the computer.

My lifes work, she says. But, it isnt her lifes work.

You see, we store information like an Escher painting.
It shouldnt all fit in there. But, it does.
And every day we manage to fit more and more into smaller and smaller spaces until one day
she says,
we will be able to fit all the information the world has
everything that everyone knows and believes and dreams
into nothing.

It will all be there. Stored and filed.
Tagged with any keywords you might imagine.

Our hard drives will be thin air.

They will make nanobots look like elephants.
And elephants will be in there too. Tagged. Accessible with search terms
like grey, ivory,
and the largest land dwelling mammal

We will process away at nothing and understand everything.
We will think of a word and the information will slip in, not through our ears or eyes
but straight thorough our skin. Information will breathe in and out of us,
permeate our skin.

Our knowing will be as deep as it is wide.
You see our work here is to learn so much,

to be so full of knowing,
that all there is left to do is unlearn.

Humanity must get to a point where we let go.
We leave the useless ideas and the spent ideologies in the recycle bin.
like an adolescent brain shedding neurons.
like a snake slithering from its old skin.
like an old man who has come to understand so well the point where reality meets the intangible that he is able to decide which breath will be his last. And, he will enjoy that breath more than any that he has taken in his entire life.

And, her lifes work is more than a four meg flash drive.

My lifes work, she says, is the impact that this has.

This is not about what I produce. It is all about what others receive.

Via Hugh. Part of the In B flat spoken word project.

Via Karl.

Pasta Puttanesca

80-100g jar of anchovies, drained (I used Allessia 80g)
1/4 to 1/3 cup capers, drained (measure after drained)
370-400ml can of black spanish pitted olives (I used Fragata)
400ml can chopped tomatoes, mostly drained (I used Pastene Chopped Tomatoes)
parsley, chopped (most of a bunch, say 3/4)
2 large cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped
1 tomato, skinned, seeded, chopped
olive oil (good amount, say 1/8 cup? just wing it)
spaghetti, cooked al dente

Tip: While pasta is boiling throw in the fresh tomato for a bit so it becomes easy to peel. Cut horizontally (along its equator) and squeeze to push out seeds.

Chop all ingredients and mix in a bowl. (I did not chop the capers. Added them after.)
Cook pasta. Drain and toss with generous amount of olive oil.
Toss pasta and sauce. Serve.

Serves three people. Four with appetizer, salad, and dessert.

Ridiculously good with red wine. We had it with Vila Regia Douro 2006, my favorite cheap ($9) and delicious Portuguese wine.

Enjoy!

On passing through the immigration control at the airport in Tehran, she was asked by the officers if she has a Facebook account. When she said “no”, the officers pulled up a laptop and searched for her name on Facebook. They found her account and noted down the names of her Facebook friends.

This is very disturbing. For once, it means that the Iranian authorities are paying very close attention to what’s going on Facebook and Twitter (which, in my opinion, also explains why they decided not to take those web-sites down entirely — they are useful tools of intelligence gathering).

… we have to be fully prepared to be quizzed about any online trace that we have left

… this reveals that some of the spontaneous online activism we witnessed in the last few weeks — with Americans re-tweeting the posts published by those in Tehran — may eventually have very dire consequences, as Iranians would need to explain how exactly they are connected to foreigners that follow them on Twitter

We’ll hear more of this. Karl, chalk one up for opacity.

Via Carl Nordlund and the fabulous SOCNET list. I love you guys.

If you’d like to contribute to the preservation of the garden as a wild space Emily posts community updates on her blog. And imagine (le) mile-end has been doing lots of great organizing. Here’s their report from the last meeting.

From the introduction:

Lot #2334609 is a terrain vague — owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway, owned by the City of Montreal as of June 2009, used and cherished by the community, the only green space in the Mile End. People feel free in this space. They don’t ask for permission to picnic, grow things, create art, or gather around a campfire. It’s open and wild, unlike most city parks.

To outsiders, it may look like an abandoned field. But, as you will read here, the community has appropriated this space and wants a say in how it will be developed. Development is scheduled for 2009-2010, as part of the city’s $9-million revitalization of the neighborhood.

Emily Rose Michaud, through the Sprout Out Loud! gardener’s collective, created the Roerich Garden project in November 2007. Using this project as a starting point, this book provides a history of the meadow and documents the many ways the community uses and relates to this space. It then connects what’s happening in the Mile End to similar local, national, and international initiatives. It documents what the community wants for this space, as captured through a series of participatory consultations. And it asks questions about how we engage as citizens to imagine and create more open cities.

If you’d like to get (infrequent) updates about this project and the book you can sign up.

Most memorable were Cornell West, Avital Ronell, and Slavoj Žižek. But probably only because I already knew about them. In fact, I’ve been carrying around Ronell’s The Telephone Book for the better part of twenty years now. I’ve never been able to understand it. Because there’s a lack of philosophy on the streets (see paragraph one). Anyway I only bought the book because of the design and typography. I had to have it. Richard Eckersley was brilliant. In fact, this was the first book he ever created using a computer. From his obituary in the New York Times:

In 1989, however, Mr. Eckersley made a radical departure from his signature restraint, shaking up the field with his design for Avital Ronell’s “Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech,” an unorthodox study of Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger and the philosophy of deconstruction. This was the first book Mr. Eckersley designed on the computer, using new page-making software programs to interpret the author’s complex postmodern ideas typographically.

Although the stark black-and-white cover of this long vertical book was rather quiet, he radically dislodged the interior text from conventional settings, and the book’s layout sometimes upstages the text by deliberately impeding the act of reading, which is just what Ms. Ronell wanted. Throughout the book there are unexplained gaps and dislocations between sentences and paragraphs, forcing the reader to work at reading. On one page is a mirror image of the page that faces it. On another, snakelike trails of space that come from careless word spacing (called rivers) are intentionally employed. Some words are blurred to the point of being indecipherable; one line runs into another because of the exaggerated use of negative line-spacing.

Though some adventurous graphic designers were experimenting at the time with idiosyncratic computer type design, this was first attempt to apply a “deconstructivist style” to a serious book.

Well maybe I suck at philopophy and reading hard books. But at twenty I could pick out rocking design. Clearly I’m all about looks ;)

I digress. The point here was to focus on Žižek and to share with you this video.

Thanks to Hugh for blogging the movie.