The Green Kangaroo

In a session at the annual conference of the American Society of Association Executives (still working on a post about that), William Taylor (Mavericks at Work) advised advised us to focus on our "architecture of participation." A Google search takes me a Wikipedia article and from there to Tim O'Reilly's June 2004 "Open Source Paradigm Shift."

The "architecture of participation" has been one of the most persistent focal points in the greenroo space during the past months -- and will be for months to come.

I began thinking about this in association space -- trying to facilitate broader discussion on a 2005-2006 study from ASAE and the Center for Association Leadership on major trends affecting associations. Many association executives are serious readers -- probably not a surprise to those of you in the library world. So, we took the mechanism of a existing association executives book club -- a monthly teleconference on a specific book -- and tweaked it a bit. We shifted the discussion focus to a trend area -- but sent out an advance reading list for each session and asked the month's facilitator to use books, journal articles and web-based resources (including blog posts) as "springboards" for the discussion. That lead us into some interesting explorations.

At the same time, an association colleage -- Ben Martin at the Virginia Society of CPAs -- built a discussion group within an online community structure. That discussion, the exchange of stories in that community month by month, trend by trend, was very rich.

Then, Ben and I worked together to present a session at the ASAE conference in Boston this August. Well, we started down the path of doing a panel-style presentation -- then changed our architecture. We decided to facilitate a series of small group discussions. There were groups at tables, on the floor, clustered in the doorway -- a full house. People in each cluster took rough notes -- which we added to the website. Our change in approach came after the program deadline -- so people came expecting talking heads. Presented with an opportunity to sit or stand and share their worries and their success stories with colleagues -- people not only adjusted and stayed, the energy level zoomed upwards. Maybe we all need more opportunities to do that.

On the library side, the ALAL2 prototype was an intense six-weeks or so before the New Orleans conference -- and taught me, and others, a lot about what works, and what doesn't work, in architecting participation in the 2.0 environment. We've spent time thinking through feedback and have more thinking to do about next steps. I'm watching with considerable interest the "Five Weeks to A Social Library" (sociallibrary@gmail.com) educational opportunity being developed and managed by Meredith Farkas, Michelle Boule, Amanda Etches-Johnson, Karen Coombs, Ellyssa Kroski and Dorothea Salo.

ALA has had a small explosion of blogs and wikis in the past few months. This past Monday, Meredith Farkas -- who built and managed both the ALA2005 (Chicago) wiki and the ALA2006 (New Orleans) wiki -- spent a day here talking to ALA staff about wikis, sharing what she's learned, and providing us with some basic training. She created a lot of enthusiasm and energy around the concept of using wikis -- and we'll see where this path may take us. There is a wiki up and ready for your use for the 2007 ALA Midwinter in Seattle.

This, though, begins to bring us to place where we need to think together as we build an "architecture for participation" in the 21st century world. How do we effectively and respectfully blend different concepts of experience and participation? How do we facilitate without stiffling? How do we honor the needs for both experimentation and persistence? ALA President Leslie Burger has appointed a special task force to look at "member participation." The committee is chaired by Jim Rettig and includes some active bloggers, such as Michael Stephens and Karen Schneider. Jenny Levine is the staff liaison. This is a discussion of importance to all of us -- those who blog and those who don't, members and staff, regardless of generation.

This is a path -- architecting participation -- that will get wider and deeper with use over coming months. In the meantime, I keep exploring, reading and listening -- watching for the direction signs, the unexpected options.

On my reading stack now is Tom Kelley's The Ten Faces of Innovation, which has me thinking about the need for a serious talk with an organizational anthropologist. A couple of posts ago, I quoted from James Paul Gee's What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, which brought me a recommendation (from Jenny) to read Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever by John C. Beck & Mitchell Wade, which I've just finished and passed along to ALA colleague John Chrastka. I think the dynamics of the gaming environment have something to tell us about architecting participation -- but I have a lot of thinking and listening still to do. Finally, for late-day trains, I've picked up a book by an environmentalist who took a year to look -- seriously -- at her backyard: Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn, by Hannah Holmes. We won't talk about the growing stacks of unread...

Blogs continue to provide ideas, book citations and discussion threads -- which reminds me that I made a note to check out Edward Tufte's latest book (Beautiful Evidence) after I picked up the citation from Paul at Thinking About the Future, who picked it up on the O'Reilly Radar ... and so it goes.

Of the content meetings I attend from time to time, one of the most interesting is the annual conference of the World Future Society, which met in Toronto at the end of July. It's a small conference by ALA standards -- taking place entirely in one hotel. That said, it is always very international -- this year with delegates from 34 countries. The organizational and professional background range is equally broad -- education, engineering, design, librarianship, criminology, financial services, government, association management, and so on. There are also people who think of themselves as futurists -- by training, orientation and practice. Given this diversity, the opportunity for different perspectives -- even profound disagreement -- is large. I go to have my perspective shifted, to be jolted out of an habitual way of thinking about something, to attend a session on something I didn't know I'd find interesting.

Plenary session speakers ranged from David M. Walker, the U.S. Comptroller General, who opened the conference, along with reporter and editor Joel Garreau, to inventor Ray Kurzweil.

In between, there were as many interesting sessions as I could absorb. I also shared panel duty with an association colleague, Marsha Rhea (Anticipate the World You Want; Learning for Alternative Futures, from Scarecrow Education)and Chris Lowry from BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) in Toronto, who distributed a interesting list of "Resources for Sustainability Education, K-12." Being on this panel gave me an opportunity to point an audience of primarily educators to the March 2006 report of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Results that Matter: 21st Century Skills and High School Reform. (The American Association of School Librarians is a member of the group and AASL's announcement of the report provides a clear statement of the link to school library media centers.)

Recapping the whole meeting exceeds my present capacity -- but here are some of the references, ideas and sources I've added to my list...

- Artin Kiani, a student from Vancouver, talked about facuty-student "cyber salons" on critical issues. You can check this live project at the Applied Foresight Network site.

- Thomas Frey from the Da Vinci Institute, whose paper on "The Future of Libraries" caused some stir on discussion lists earlier this year, teamed with William Crossman (VIVO)for a discussion on "The Future of Libraries." So, I was extremely happy to find myself in a meeting room with a lot of librarians -- from public, academic and school libraries -- to get our voice into that discussion. Thanks to all of you who were there and added your voices to the debate! It's important for us to be in this discussion.

- In the category of "presentations I didn't know I wanted to hear" -- but found interesting -- Stan Gibson from the Ecologos Institute in Mississauga did a quick presentation on his idea for reinventing regional action to advance a "just and sustainable" future. Even at 7:00pm, it was interesting. (Even by ALA's high standards, the futurist crowd attends sessions! This was one of a wide array of quick, half-hour programs at 7:00pm on a Saturday night, preceding a later two-hour session. With my meeting planner hat on, I wasn't optimistic -- but sessions were well attended.)

- Futurist Wendy Schultz, who has presented at library events, pointed us to some interesting sites to explore (here,here and here). She urged us to "get loopy" or to think in "geodesic" -- not linear -- terms. Other people in this session -- mostly focusing on digital communication strategies -- were Wayne Pethrick from The Futures Lab in Australia and Joseph Tankersley, senior show writer with Walt Disney Imagineering. This was a lively discussion ranging from graphic novels, to wikis to games to literacy in a visual age. Ideas from the mix... Don't be blinded to new communication options -- and needs -- by "the tyranny of text." In literacy, we need to be teaching - -and learning -- how to "deconstruct" images. Try "backcasting" -- what are the elements, how did we get here, what assumptions were made.... An interesting turn-of-phrase I'm still pondering -- "innovative familiarity." We are telling stories -- always. We need to put the technology in the service of the storytelling, in the service of the participants. Be inclusive. Let the audience be proactive -- not reactive. We need to provide "sturdy handrails to the future" for our members, our staff, our users. Another site to check is that of the Media Ecology Association (MEA). (It's true; there's an association for everything.)

- David Pearce Snyder, The Futurist contributing editor, did two sessions. In the first, he focused on the transformative nature of current information technology: "Open-Knowledge + Groupware = Communities of Collaboration." Among other points, he connected the decreasing cost of gathering information and flattening or disaggregation of organizations (virtual, vs. vertical, integration), pointing to the work of Nobel economist Ronald Coase (and Coase's Law). In his second talk ("The Future is a Funny Place") he posited four "futurist" mindsets: the discounters (nothing's certain, have a contingency plan, "muddle through"), the extrapolators (extend the trends), the modelers (scenarios, simulations) and goal-setters (big initiatives, critical path, leadership, with roughly 40% of us in the 1st category, 30% in the 2nd, 20% in the 3rd and 10% in the last. Working with this framework, he managed to cover a lot of ground. Many of David Pearce Snyder's speeches are posted; these are not yet -- but likely will be. Check here.

Finally, Ray Kurzweil also made two presentations -- a late Saturday evening talk (which did entail getting hotel staff to expand a room, when people simply refused to abandon the full-to-capacity session) and the closing plenary. In both sessions, he used a succession of logarithmic graphs to show why you can see change coming -- but, because we tend to use linear graphs, we experience it as "coming out of nowhere." Samples of his charts are in the Wikipedia article on Kurzweil. Among other points he made, the current changes "will go into hyperdrive," when we master the underlying processes (Think about the new 2.0 ways of working together.) By 2020, "information technology" will be most of the economy. With a heavy focus on bio-technology and artificial intelligence, Kurzweil pushes hard on the limits of my "futures" thinking.

For those who may be interested, the 2007 meeting will be in Minneapolis, July 29-31 -- and the process for submitting a proposal is here. You're taking libraries, information literacy and learning into the future. Be heard here. This is a diverse group of people trying to look seriously at our future and how the choices we make -- in our personal, professional and civic lives -- might make a difference.

Time since mid-June has been defined by travel and meetings, followed by more travel and meetings. This is not bad. In fact, it's been generally wonderful -- but, I found myself without the mental space for reflection that I need to be truly "present" as the greenroo. Now that my suitcase is temporarily unpacked, I discover I have been reaching out for and grabbing many of the interesting threads in my busy intersection -- and now have this somewhat tangled mess of stuff waiting for a post, or several posts.

But, then, just as I was thinking I should sort through the threads and weave something together, Jeff DeCagna, an association colleague and blogger, gave me a copy of Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie. It was irresistible!

MacKenzie, who died in 1999, defined the "hairball" as all the policies, procedures and accepted ways of doing things that make up any large -- and even not-so-large -- organization. The hairball has gravitational pull, which needs to be balanced by creativity -- and he defined "orbiting" as "responsible creativity," getting beyond accepted ways but staying connected to the "spirit of the corporate [or library or association] mission."

Amazon [yes, the book's still available] quotes the Booklist review: "There is no denying the creativity of someone who can persuade one of the 50 largest private companies in the U.S. to create a position for him called "creative paradox...." [Think about the "radical trust" that title implies in the relationship between MacKenzie and his employer!]

The book is seriously funny -- both funny and very, very serious. I can still get an inside laugh started by remembering his report (for a staff meeting) on masks. To read his reconceptualization of corporate structure as a plum tree rather than a pyramid is to make one of those mental shifts that lets you think about organizational issues in a fresh way....Or, read "A Conference of Angels" and then think about how to shake up the next way-too-serious meeting you attend.

This is wonderful, personal storytelling. Along the way he shares his strategies for staying out of the "hairball." The paths are circuitous and unexpected --but the strategies, like this one (in "Milk Cans Are Not Allowed"), are bottom-line, down-to-earth sensible: "Any time a bureaucrat (i.e., a custodian of a system)stands between you and something you need or want, your challenge is to help that bureaucrat discover a means, harmonious with the system, to meet your need." [emphasis mine] Organizational genius.

So, thanks, Jeff. I read it on the trip back from DC -- and now I'll read it again. Then, finally, I'll be ready to sort through the stack of stuff I've been accumulating, with fresh eyes.

In Ottawa for the Canadian Library Association, doing meetings, sessions and networking -- all the things one does at a conference -- on the one hand, and finishing work for ALA Annual on the other... It makes for a full life.

CLA president Barbara Clubb (Ottawa Public Library) reminded us that we come together in conference to "gather courage and energy." A good way to think about it. Ian Wilson, Library and Archives Canada, talked about libraries as part of the "intellectual infrastructure of our communities," and a member of the Canadian Parliament focused on the importance of the "documentary evidence of who we are as a society" built and preserved by libraries.

After the opening session greetings,association and governmental,in English and in French, CLA opened with a really fine father-son presentation by Stephen and Avi Lewis. Stephen Lewis is currently the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for HIV in Africa. In 2005 he was on Time's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. His son, Avi Lewis, is a documentary filmmaker and broadcaster -- particularly in music journalism. Led by Avi, their opening session was an unscripted conversation about generational differences in activism and strategies for social change. My note-taking suffered somewhat from my absorption in the conversation.

They started off with Stephen's observation -- in response to Avi's question about why he stayed engaged with institutions -- that he had grown up with the tradition of "engaging with an institution to try to save it from itself" and that to really support an institution or organization you have to have a critical relationship with it. Avi noted his decision, on completing university, that it might be more "subversive" to work within the media than within politics.

From there they ranged widely over global politics and economics before settling into the question of why and how activism and the "impulse to try to save the world" come to be handed down from parent to child. Avi noted he grew up surrounded by a "Don Quixote ethic." They discussed the importance of reading aloud and both agreed that books and reading "reformatted our minds," and gave them a different sense of the "possibility of change." Stephen talked about William Steig's books as a "testament to appropriate human behavior." Avi noted that the books his father read him "dignified the act of empathy." This legacy of activism, these values had to be "fashioned into a narrative." "There's a shape to what we do," and we learn and transmit knowledge in stories.

Pushing to identify a "most important" issue, both father and son pointed to global weather change -- noting Jared Diamond's book (Collapse), AL Gore's new film and The Weather Makers. (Stephen Lewis had a "can't remember the author" moment on the latter -- I'm sympathetic. It may possibly be Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Cllimate and What It Means for Life on Earth.)

As the conversation drew to a close, Avi asked his father "why do you keep fighting when things are getting worse?" Stephen's response was that he saw no real choice, that "futility leads nowhere."

It was a fascinating and engaging conversation -- even well past dinnertime at the end of a long day. From the perspective of a conference planner, this was a high-risk format for an opening session -- and it was exactly right, with real heart and intellect. Congratulations, CLA.