Ed Mitchell: Platform neutral

Network and community design and facilitation; event design and facilitation.

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Gurteen Knowledge Cafe: Ethics

January 16th, 2010 · Events, Facilitation

The next Gurteen Bristol Knowledge Cafe is going to be held in the exceptionally ethical Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol, on Thursday February 11th, from 18:30. The cafe proper will begin at 19:00 prompt as usual.

It will be introduced by Andy Wistreich from Essential Education, who has kindly offered to raise the topic of ‘Ethics’. This is an important, complex and often problematic issue for the individual and society.  By sharing our perspectives we can all learn something to help us in our ethical challenges.

Here’s the blurb:

It looks like ethics is about right and wrong, but it is never black and white.  For me the fundamental issue is motivation – why do or not do something?  I am also interested in the fact that laws and ethical codes seem to come from out there in society whereas our choices about how to behave seem to be made in here in our minds.  Again, this is not a simple division.  I’ll try to introduce these general points in the intro and then people can take it where they want with examples from their own work and practice.

Ethical consumerism is still consumerism

Ethical consumerism is still consumerism

As usual, please come along and enjoy while meeting and deepening your understanding of this topic, and book yourself in using the event booking page below.

If you want to stay up to date via the email distribution list, the link follows, and if you’re a facebook kind of person, Michael Corbett is the man behind the Bristol K-cafe group and is usually around for a good conversation…

Event booking and venue information link

Bristol Gurteen Knowledge Cafe mailing list link

Bristol Gurteen Knowledge Cafe Facebook group

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Next Brrism event: Time, Politics and Community

January 10th, 2010 · Events

The next Brrism event looks interesting – a range of conversations from politics, time management and community.

Go direct to the Brrism site for more information and booking, meanwhile, here’s the blurb:

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NEF’s bigger picture event: little write up

November 4th, 2009 · Events

The New Economics Foundation held a ‘Bigger Picture‘ Festival on Saturday 24th October. It was a good gig. Just like salesmen who like being sold to, as an event designer, I love going to a good gig.

The range of workshops, debates, discussions, talks was excellent; it was solid with attendees full of interesting ideas in a cool building. It was a bit noisy for me at some moments, and you couldn’t get any food without going outside and therefore re-joining the enormous queue, but there you go. I could only be there for the morning, but the highlights for me were:

Why magic bullets don’t work – with David Boyle (NEF fellow), Fred Pearce (New Scientist), Vikki Johnson (NEF).

Fred discussed the myth of population explosion. He says it’s not rising exponentially and that this is one of the great green bogey men, where we assume that it is the exploding populations around the world which need to be curbed in order to keep C02 emissions under control (I was at a different lecture by Ronald Oxburgh in Bristol since where he regularly referred to the population explosion around the world and offered technical solutions to handle it). For starters, Fred indicated that women are having less babies than ever before, of their own accord.

As well as this, the populations of Europe and the USA are generating far more emissions than anyone else per capita, so we and our addiction to consumption, are a vital part of the problem. This reminded me of a recent George Monbiot article ‘Stop blaming the poor, it’s the wally yachters who are burning the planet‘ and a more recent piece from Fred on the hogwash greenwash about corporate jets and their carbon footprints.

Balloon at NEF event

Balloon at NEF event

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Transition Network food project database beta launch

November 4th, 2009 · Facilitation, Technology

Food project case studies is the first web service to come out of the Transition Web Project. Transition Network Web Co-ordinator Ed Mitchell gives us an outline and invites you to participate.
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Gurteen Knowledge Cafe: language and leadership

October 30th, 2009 · Events

The next Gurteen Bristol Knowledge Cafe is going to be held in the leading edge Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol, on Thursday November 26th, from 18:30. The cafe proper will begin at 19:00 prompt as usual.

Introduced by Mike Zeidler, facilitator, coach and connector, driving force behind the Bristol Hub, Association of Sustainability Practitioners and more.

Our subject is ‘language and leadership’. Here’s the blurb:

Words send men to war, make stocks and shares plunge or rocket and can completely change the feel of almost any situation.  Many leaders feel safer with facts, figures and physical materials because feelings are soft and fluffy.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Mike will be talking about the immense power of language, and how skillful use can make leaders of us all.  If that sounds like a recipe for chaos to you, you should definitely come along..!

Do as we say, not as we do (Carnyville, Bristol)

Do as we say, not as we do (Carnyville, Bristol)

As usual, please come along and enjoy while meeting and deepening your understanding of this topic, and book yourself in using the event booking page below.

If you want to stay up to date via the email distribution list, the link follows, and if you’re a facebook kind of person, Michael Corbett is the man behind the Bristol K-cafe group and is usually around for a good conversation…

Event booking and venue information link

Bristol Gurteen Knowledge Cafe mailing list link

Bristol Gurteen Knowledge Cafe Facebook group

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Media Sandbox showcase and publication launch

October 5th, 2009 · Events, Technology

I am a big fan of the iShed’s ‘Media Sandbox‘ programme. I have been lucky enough to facilitate some of their big events, which have been excellent learning opportunities as well as good facilitation excercises.

The launch event for Media Sandbox 2009 included an exercise we called ‘Golden rules‘ which is now providing me with invaluable salient wisdom and advice as I put the Transition Towns web platform together. Here’s one of them:

One of the golden rules for platform development which is now very significant to me

One of the golden rules for platform development which is now very significant to me

To round off this year’s work, they are holding a showcase, and they’ve published a lovely book about it all too, which is beautiful and inspiring. I’ll be going along for sure.

If you fancy going along, check the events page on the Media Sandbox website.

In the meantime, here’s the blurb:

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Knowledge Cafe Report: Reslience

September 22nd, 2009 · Events, Facilitation

This is a brief report on our Bristol Knowledge Cafe on ‘Reslience’, kindly introduced by Phillipa Bayley, keenly discussed by about 30 of us, space kindly lent by the ever effervescent Pervasive Media Studio.

Ciaran, Tim, Michael and Philippa kindly wrote up some of their reflections which I include along with my own.

Phillipa gave an excellent presentation on the subject, considering some different definitions, the context (from personal to eco-system), whether we can ‘build’ it, what the properties of a resilient system could be, and a few further thoughts.

You can see the presentation here:

Resilience K-cafe presentation Phillipa Bayley 170909

View more presentations from Ed Mitchell.

Write up from Phillipa:

Ciaran on the tension between building resilient systems that have redundancy, and “efficient” systems – e.g. for power generation.  The argument goes that although micro-generating, distributed systems might be more resilient, they cost twice as much.  But is the real question how you cost these things appropriately?  As with the banking crisis, the cost of fixing everything after the disaster is absolutely enormous.  There’s also the question of the real environmental costs of building massive power plants, as well as the toll on people’s lives who live near them etc.

K-cafe group

K-cafe group

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Gurteen Knowledge Cafe: Resilience: dealing with an uncertain future

August 20th, 2009 · Events, Facilitation

The next Gurteen Bristol Knowledge Cafe is going to be held in the uber-resilient Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol, on Thursday September  17th, from 18:30. The cafe proper will begin at 19:00 prompt as usual.

Our introductory speaker is Philipa Bayley, acting head of the Centre for Public Engagement, Bristol University (and full on neuro-science doctor geek but don’t tell her I told you that).

Our subject is ‘resilience’; we will be hearing a lot of this word soon, that’s a guarantee.

Here’s the blurb:

None of us knows what the future holds (not even Mystic Meg) but chances are there are some not-too-nice things up ahead.

Whether we’re thinking about the challenges that individuals, communities or nations face, resilience is about how we deal with those challenges and not only bounce back, but ‘bounce up’.

Come and discuss what makes people and organisations resilient, and how we might build that capacity in from the start.

As usual, please come along and enjoy while meeting and deepening your understanding of this topic, and book yourself in using the event booking page below.

If you want to stay up to date via the email distribution list, the link follows, and if you’re a facebook kind of person, Michael Corbett is the man behind the Bristol K-cafe group and is usually around for a good conversation…

Event booking and venue information link

Bristol Gurteen Knowledge Cafe mailing list link

Bristol Gurteen Knowledge Cafe Facebook group

Some other handy links:

Definition of resilience on wikipedia

Interesting piece from Dave Pollard on resilience

jellyfish on flickr

jellyfish on flickr

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Running local Transition events: some suggestions and questions

July 17th, 2009 · Events, Facilitation

We’re getting our local Transition initiative, Transition Montpelier, off the ground (have a look at the Transition Towns website or Rob Hopkins blog for an idea about the movement).

We have had two open meetings to date, several small projects under our belts, a range of new ideas and related groups emerging; it’s all good. We have learnt a lot from these events and wanted to share some suggestions; these aren’t neccesarily Transition specific, mind; nor are they meant to be comprehensive so if you have other ideas, let me know.


(A bit of ’speed networking’ usually goes down very well)

Things we would suggest to bear in mind for holding meetings:

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Bristol Bioblitz blog: the secret was in the content

July 9th, 2009 · Events, Technology

I recently helped out Berry Goddard and Savita Custead of the Bristol Natural History Consortium team by setting up and explaining how to use a Wordpress blog, flickr id, and youtube channel for their Bristol Bioblitz event.

Bioblitz is a new model; think: nature watch meets science engagement meets family fun and geeky naturalist kind of affair:

The BioBlitz is a 30-hour race again the clock event where scientists, naturalists, students, members of public, schools and community groups work together to find and identify as much wildlife as possible in the Ashton Court Estate. (About page)

The technologies were deployed in order to extend the reach of the engagement exercise across the web, explore how to use different media for this new model, offer visitors more opportunities for interaction, and a quick updating mechanism.

The blog was a great success while the flickr group attracted some great photos.


(screengrab of free Wordpress Bristo Bioblitz Blog)

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