I’ve been thinking about how community and organization are intertwined, especially when they are interdependent like they are in churches, synagogues, or mission-driven organizations like Amnesty International.  The formation of a process team that’s focused on governance in Shambhala prompts me to write some of my thoughts down. Community and organization are different social entities […]

A key story in Charlotte Linde‘s Working the Past; Narrative and Institutional Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)  is about an insurance company that was having trouble getting its agents to sell certain policies.  The company’s management wanted to know whether the problem was a learning problem (e.g., so you’d “solve it” by having […]

I’ve been on the “leadership team” of the Portland ODN more or less continuously for the last 10 years. I’ve found ODN to be a nice face-to-face home professionally, even though my work is very different from what most OD professionals do. But I thought that being on the leadership team would be fun and […]

Ward Cunningham just recently set up his own channel on YouTube and has edited a conversation we had last Fall.  His philosophy for conducting interviews is simple and effective: make guests feel comfortable and ask them questions that make them look good. He did a great job making me feel comfortable. We start by talking […]

Tags: technology_stewardship

Woke up thinking about all that could be done — and that had to be done today. Before walking the dog, at 6:15 am, I went through the previous night’s email on Outlook, looked at my schedule and made some plans: A workshop payment mix-up (money going to a personal Paypal account rather than the […]

Tags: chat

Joitske tagged me. It looks like a pyramid scam in the sense that I’m supposed to pass it on, but I’ll play. Decided to write about 5 jobs I had while growing up in Puerto Rico. In chronological order: I was a stock room clerk for a summer at Ryder Memorial Hospital central stores, at […]

At 4:37 AM Sydney time, Shawn sends me a message on Skype chat: Shawn: Hi John Shawn: When I call the Skype conf call number there are people talking in another language. Is this a timeshare arrangement? John: yikes! Somehow, I imagine the worst! We have vandals taking over our telephone bridge! Is the new […]