Monthly Archives: August 2014

A New Anthology, “From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond”

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I'm happy to announce that a new collection of essays that I've co-edited with John Clippinger, executive director of ID3, has been published. It's called From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond.  The fifteen essays in the book explore a new generation of digital technologies that are re-imagining the foundations of digital identity, governance, trust and social organization.

ID3 is a Boston-based nonprofit affiliated with the M.I.T. Media Lab, and was co-founded by Clippinger and social computing and data expert, Professor Pentland, who directs M.I.T.’s Human Dynamics Laboratory. 

The book is focused on the huge, untapped potential for self-organized, distributed governance on open platforms. There are many aspects to this challenge, but some of the more interesting prospects include evolvable digital contracts that could supplant conventional legal agreements; smartphone currencies that could help Africans meet their economic needs more effective; the growth of the commodity-backed Ven currency; and new types of “solar currencies” that borrow techniques from Bitcoin to enable more efficient, cost-effective solar generation and sharing by homeowners. 

A chapter on the 28-year history of Burning Man, the week-long encampment in the Nevada desert, traces the arc of experimentation and innovation in large communities devising new forms of self-governance.

I co-authored an essay in the book, "The Next Great Internet Disruption:  Authority and Governance," which appeared in an earlier form here.

The book is published by ID3 in association with Off the Common Books, and is available in print and ebook formats from Amazon.com and Off the Common Books. A free, downloadable pdf of the book is available at the ID3 website.  (The book is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.)

Among the contributors to From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond are Alex “Sandy” Pentland of the M.I.T. Human Dynamics Laboratory; former FCC Chairman Reed E. Hundt; long-time IBM strategist Irving Wladawksy-Berger; Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Hirshberg; monetary system expert Bernard Lietaer; journalist and author Jonathan Ledgard; and H-Farm cofounder Maurizio Rossi. 

 In addition to explorations of self-governance, From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond introduces the path-breaking software platform that ID3 has developed called “Open Mustard Seed,” or OMS.  The just-released open source program enables the rise of new types of trusted, self-healing digital institutions on open networks, which in turn will make possible new sorts of privacy-friendly social ecosystems.

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Introducing Grande Lum and his work at the US Dept of Justice’s Community Relations Service

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I want to draw your attention to the important work being done by the Community Relations Service of the Department of Justice in communities like Ferguson that are in crisis. The director of the Community Relations Service, Grande Lum, is one of our featured speakers at the 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation coming up in October, and we’re honored to be following his work and to be able to hear from him at the conference.

Grande-LumThe Community Relations Service (CRS) is often called “America’s Peacemaker.” Over the years, CRS has worked with thousands of communities, many of whom came together in crisis and emerged stronger and more unified. CRS delivers four services: mediation of disputes, facilitation of dialogue, training, and consulting.

Their must-see resource page provides tips and best practices for police, schools, community leaders, and others who find themselves at the center of crises revolving around division and inequity.

In an August 18th press release from the Department of Justice on the federal civil rights investigation into the death of Michael Brown, Attorney General Eric Holder highlighted the work of the Community Relations Service in Ferguson, Missouri:

In order to truly begin the process of healing, we must also see an end to the acts of violence in the streets of Ferguson. Those who have been peacefully demonstrating should join with law enforcement in condemning the actions of looters and others seeking to enflame tensions.

To assist on this front, the Department will be dispatching additional representatives from the Community Relations Service, including Director Grande Lum, to Ferguson. These officials will continue to convene stakeholders whose cooperation is critical to keeping the peace.

And an August 20th post on BuzzFeed covers how the mayor of Sanford, Florida (the town where Trayvon Martin was shot not long ago) has urged Feruson to welcome the help of the Justice Department and especially its Community Relations Service, saying it “saved the day” in Sanford.

trayvonprotestTriplett, who is white, was the man in charge a year-and-a-half ago when the killing of Trayvon Martin spiked racial tensions in the area and far beyond. A situation that many expected to explode into violence, didn’t. Peaceful protestors were met with respectful police and public officials.

Triplett credits the the Department of Justice for the calm and in an interview Tuesday he urged Ferguson leaders to embrace the help the feds have to offer. In his town, Triplett said federal officials arrived with experience on how to handle large crowds and engage with protest movements.

They had tips on police tactics, too. “The best thing that you can do is use your mind and your mouth versus an nightstick and a gun. You know, ‘violence breeds violence’ type thing. These guys [Justice Department advisers] have been there, done it, they’re very astute,” Triplett said.

“We on the city side, we fix roads. We make sure your lights turn off and on. We make sure your toilets flush. We cut ribbons for new businesses. So you’ve got to rely on those that know.” Justice Department officials are engaged in Ferguson in full force, with six agencies on the ground in the Missouri town coordinating a federal investigation into the death, monitoring police behavior and trying to build a bridge between authorities and protesters through a previously little-known department branch called the Community Relations Service.

The agency, which has ten regional offices across the country, is specifically designed to diffuse tension after discrimination-charged events and was established as part of the 1964 Civil Rights act. On Wednesday, the head of CRS, Grande Lum, will be in the Justice Department party accompanying Attorney General Eric Holder on his trip to Ferguson.

Holder has been very critical of the police response to protests in Ferguson, and Justice Department officials have pointed to the early involvement of CRS as proof the feds have a better handle on how to deal with the Ferguson protests than local authorities do.

Read the full BuzzFeed article at http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/doj-in-ferguson#1gu9nsk for LOTS more interesting content.

CRS-officesCRS has 10 Regional Directors who supervise conflict resolution specialists (also called conciliation specialists) in regional offices and 4 smaller field offices. These offices are strategically located throughout the country to meet the unique needs of the states and communities they serve.

The Regional Directors are highly trained professional mediators, facilitators, trainers, and consultants who are experienced in bringing together communities in conflict to help them enhance their ability to independently prevent and resolve existing and future concerns.

Regional Directors oversee the regional conflict resolution teams in the development of customized and proactive local solutions. The 10 regional offices are located in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Denver, Los Angeles, and Seattle. The field offices are located in Miami, Detroit, Houston, and San Francisco. The regional and field offices increase the availability of CRS services to rural communities and aid in rapid deployment during crises.

Grande Lum will be speaking during the closing plenary at the 2014 NCDD conference. Learn more about Grande here, and register today to join us at the conference!

Grande is also a Supporting Member of NCDD, and you can learn more about him on his member page. Also see NCDD’s previous blog post about Top #NCDD Resources for Addressing Racial Conflict & Inequality.

Arthur White, Longtime Friend to Public Agenda, Has Passed Away

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We were saddened to learn that a long-time friend of Public Agenda, Arthur White, died over the weekend after a long and deeply fruitful life. Arthur was a co-founder of Yankelovich Partners with Dan Yankelovich, Public Agenda’s co-founder.


A life-long advocate for equal opportunity, Arthur also founded Jobs for the Future and Reading Is Fundamental. He worked closely with us on a series of studies of young adults’ views on higher education and college completion. And he was a warm and wise presence at Public Agenda events, a valued adviser to the organization, and a wonderful “connector,” always ready to introduce people to one another when mutual benefit and public good could result.

We will miss his insights, his enthusiasm, and his dedication to making our country better.

Happiness Alliance and the Gross National Happiness Index

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hi_logoThe Happiness Alliance, home of The Happiness Initiative and Gross National Happiness (GNH) Index, is a deeply grassroots organization.  Their mission is to improve the well-being of society by reducing emphasis on economic growth and focusing on the domains that lead to life satisfaction, resilience and sustainability. Their purpose is to provide tools, resources and knowledge to foster grassroots activism for a new economic paradigm. The Happiness Alliance is a volunteer driven organization.

The Happiness Initiative

Gain the knowledge and resources to conduct a happiness initiative in your city, community, business or other organization and use the GNH Index.  Receive a Happiness Initiative Leadership Training certification for full attendance of the course.

Happiness Initiative Leadership Training

Learn and share in an interactive and compassionate setting. This training will give you the tools, knowledge and resources to conduct a happiness initiative in your city, community, business or other organization. We will cover all the steps to conduct a happiness initiative. Topics range from the logistics of conducting a happiness initiative, to trouble shooting and taking a project to the next level. Areas covered include: team building, conducting the survey, media and communications, objective metrics, data gathering, report writing, town meeting planning and facilitation, project management, individual happiness projects, community happy projects, public relations and marketing and fundraising. You receive a Happiness Initiative Leadership Training certification for full attendance of the course.

Gross National Happiness Index

How to Use the Gross National Happiness Index is a simple and short guide to using a subjective well-being indicator at any scale for the grass roots activist at any level. It was first published in 2011, and has been used by over 110 cities, communities, campuses and companies in the US and internationally. Musikanski, L., Goldenberg, E, and Flynn, T., 2011, The Happiness Alliance.

Resource Link: www.happycounts.org

This resource was submitted by Laura Musikanski, Executive Director of the Happiness Alliance via the Add-a-Resource form.

Top #NCDD Resources for Addressing Racial Conflict & Inequality

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The NCDD community has a long history and strong track record of helping people address racism, racial tensions and inequity in their communities. Many of our long-time members were drawn to dialogue work during national crises we’re all reminded of as the situation in Ferguson, Missouri plays out, like the 1991 Rodney King trial, and subsequent Los Angeles riots back in 1992.

These days, with social media and 24 hour news at our fingertips, it seems like local crises can become national crises in a heartbeat. The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri is the latest in a long string of incidents that spark outrage in cities where racial tension and inequity is already high, and raise public concern about police treatment of minorities, fairness in the U.S. justice system, media bias, wealth and opportunity gaps, and more.

FacingRacism-coverIn times like these, dialogue is key to helping people come together across divides (power divides, income divides, race divides, political divides) to talk through what’s happening and see if we can agree on steps to take going forward.

I want to point you to some helpful resources on race dialogue developed by NCDD members.

Recently, we’ve shared these top-notch resource compilations from a long-time leader in race dialogue, Everyday Democracy:

In the NCDD Resource Center, where you’ll find nearly 3,000 carefully indexed resources to help you in this important work, it’s worth checking out the 67 resources in our Race Issues tag.

Maggie Potapchuk’s resource-rich website, Racial Equity Tools, is another important destination for those engaging people across racial divides.

And you should certainly utilize the discussion guides that NCDDers have developed around these issues…

  • Racial and Ethnic Tensions: What Should We Do? (NIF Issue Guide)
  • Crime & Punishment: Imagining a Safer Future for All (IF Discussion Guide)
  • Community Dialogue Guide (US DOJ’s Community Relations Service)
  • Fostering Dialogue Across Divides: A Nuts and Bolts Guide (Public Conversations Project)
  • Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation (Everyday Democracy)

In the Resource Center, I found these by utilizing the sidebar search tool that says “I’m Looking For…” and selecting “manuals & guides” for Resource Type (category) and “race issues” under On This Topic (tag).

What do YOU think are the best resources to help people run dialogues on race issues or the other issues being surfaced by the events in Ferguson? Please add them via the comments here.

Learning from the World Café Approach

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We are happy to share a helpful write up on the principles and benefits of the World Café approach to meetings and dialogue. It’s a great piece from the blog of one of our newest NCDD members, Beth Tener of the New Directions Collaborative, and we encourage you to read more about it below or find the original here.

I recently co-facilitated a “taster” to explore a variety of ways of designing meetings to more fully engage the collective intelligence of the group. One of the techniques we explored was the World Café. About half of this group had participated in it before and here were some of their key questions:

  • World Café became the “new thing” to do at conferences. Some experiences were mediocre as there was not a clear reason people were being put into conversation.
  • While many conversations happen; yet often all the ideas do not get fully captured to take action on.

Setting the context and framing effective questions are two of the World Café design principles. This blog, Setting the Table for a Great Meeting, offers a process for getting clear on a narrative and framing a compelling question to explore. This creates a container and shared purpose for the conversation. If this is too vague or not well-defined, it can diffuse the effectiveness of the technique.

It is also helpful to realize that there are a broader range of reasons for using World Café process, beyond seeing it as solely to brainstorm and capture ideas. It generates other valuable benefits (see below) that can be gained even if you do not fully capture all the ideas that get discussed. As explored previously in this blog on Taking the Time to Realize the Full Value of Networks, when working with a group to collaborate on a change, building relationships, trust, and a process for working together are integral steps to be able to generate results.

The following points explore contexts where the World Café process is valuable and the related benefits:

  • Connect across siloes – One of the biggest challenges is that organizations and larger systems are siloed: people work in the same organization/ community/system or on the same issue, yet they don’t talk to each other or understand how their work or issues relate. World Café enables people from these “fragmented” parts of a community/system to meet and get to know each other and deepen their understanding of other parts of the system/issue.
  • Build a foundation of trust for collaboration – Establishing relationships and building trust is the foundation of building the interest and willingness of people to collaborate from various departments, organizations, or parts of a community. Building relationship starts in conversation – in talking and listening. The small group format of World Café offers the space for deeper conversations and story telling. The mixing of rounds increases the number of people who connect, e.g., a conference participant at a World Café I hosted at a social responsible business conference enthusiastically shared with me “I got to meet and really talk with nine people. The connections were much deeper than a typical conference where you chat at the coffee break or lunch.”WCJune
  • A taste of collaboration’s benefits – Participants get to experience a small taste of emergence, one of the benefits of collaboration, where my idea can combine with your idea to create something new. In this video, about Where Good Ideas Come From, Stephen Johnson shares his insights from studying history that times of great innovation happened in places where there was a cross-pollinating of ideas and people in café-style spaces.
  • Planting seeds – You never know where the seeds from any one of the many conversations and new connections will take root. For example, last December I facilitated a World Café and Open Space at a leadership conference for non-profits and foundations in Greater New Bedford. The following June, I learned that three groups are still meeting, continuing conversations that got started that day.
  • A different way of learning – Often we think of education and learning in the model of a teacher or expert at the front of a room sharing information to an audience of students, e.g., Powerpoint slide shows. The World Café offers a way to practice collective learning, surfacing and synthesizing the collective experience of people in the room to gain new insight; while also providing a way for each individual to learn and make unique connections relevant to their work. Learning comes from having the space to reflect on one’s experience and hear about others. Examples of World Café questions for collective learning are:
    • When has collaboration happened in this organization that went well? What were the conditions that enabled this?
    • What have we learned from this experience?

It is common for a new idea or process to come in where people have a mixed or negative early experience, e.g., it is not offered skillfully or at the right time and place. It is natural to say “I don’t want to try that again” even though there is much promise and potential to the idea. At the end of this workshop, participants shared their insights and highlights, which included:

  • Great way to change typical meetings
  • Don’t be afraid to experiment with new forms of meetings
  • Appreciate the broader reasons to do a World Cafe
  • Trust the process
  • Need to forego “expected outcomes”

The original version of this blog post can be found at www.ndcollaborative.com/blog/item/wcbenefits.