Endless Knots

The Persuasion 55

“The Persuasion,” p. 55

When Tonin returned from Europe, he and his father renovated the apartment which principally involved a plenteous supply of oak—counters, bookshelves, desktops, headboards, and sofa frames—but because they were contrarians who argued aesthetics as other men did sports, they integrated much birch, cherry, pine, maple, and pear too. Lumber, artists. It was a gallery.

I should have been excited to finally be moving in.

Even deliriously happy.

Besides, this was the day when people would finally recognize me as an adult. I’d been impersonating being a kid ever since I was involuntarily promoted to grown-up the day my mother died. Here I was, certifiable, an adult—a college graduate, 22 years old, formally moving in with a funny, kind, beautiful boy-man whom I had to admit that I loved in some measure, whose family loved me...

But…once again, when least expected: The Saboteur.

J.H. was like a cold sore. Without warning since I’d left Oxford, there would be a breakout. Typically, it began as a very small itch, receding without requiring so much as a scratch. The farther I got from the Oxford train station, the fewer the lip prickles. Only a few hideous eruptions, with pulsations, blood, and cracking edges, infestations that forced a question: was I being honest with myself (and with Tonin), then another, that the only reason I was in the fight was because J.H. had rejected me, or if the only reason I was with Tonin was because of J.H., or if what I longed for was J.H.’s mind, or if I was just a terrible person. Or only the first.

Note to my readers about The Persuasion

I learned today from a faithful reader that I need to explain the many posts titled "Margaret Fuller's Persuasion" again.

2010 is Margaret Fuller's bicentennial. I discovered this remarkable woman when I was in my mid-20s. Her depth/breadth/untimely death has/have kept me fascinated and reading and writing about her for a very long time: a feature story for a magazine, a film treatment, a sketch for a play, and finally a novel, "The Persuasion."

As per below, the premise of the novel:

In 1968, Margaret Fuller returns as a ghost. She wants Mariana, a young writer, to update Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Margaret's signature work. Mariana doesn't believe in the supernatural, has her own writing, doesn't, won't, can't... It takes giving birth to twins with the irresistible Tonin, producing a conference for a thousand, and a mystical moment in a starry meadow with Bucky Fuller (Margaret's brother's son) to persuade Mariana to write Woman in the 21st Century.

Since January 31, I've been serializing the novel at the rate of a page (approximately) a day (approximately). By the end of the bicentennial year, the whole novel will have appeared here.

Going forward, I'm retitling the posts "The Persuasion" to correct the misimpression that Margaret Fuller wrote it. She didn't. I wrote it.

Hope this clears up the confusion.

And now for the wrap-up of the network session - #ntwk

...which I can't keep up with because people are saying such interesting things. A la one person just said that the portion of the brain that processes grief causes greater bonding than the portion where we process joy. Have to think about this one...

So I'm just noticing some features of this day. After lunch, where we had the chance to talk in even more small groups, we moved into the hallway for recess, complete with big balls. We circled up and followed instructions from Marianne Hughes. First we threw balls to people we knew before today. Then to people we'd worked with. Finally to anyone.

As we sit here, there's a large screen projecting all the tweets from the day. Jen Willsea is taking detailed notes on the convo and projecting them on another screen.

At this point in the day, the room is a bit of a wreck, reflecting how formality has broken down as the group moved closer to relatedness, not quite family yet (i.e. I still don't know some people's names and have only a vague sense of what most do) but the warmth of the small-group process at which Interaction Institute for Social Change is so adept shrinks the distance even between strangers.

So many more good things being thrown out but we're taking another break to join in small groups to decide what are the handful of things that we'd like to learn in the next three sessions.

And now for the final, real, complete and total wrap-up, meaning a plus/delta for the day:

• Kinetics (throwing stuff around) good for starters but better if real work got done as result of that
• "I got work done on all our projects;" "We workshopped our work"
• Enjoyed the small group time; quality of people in room
• Seeing lots of old friends
• Support team, cameras, food
• Would be good to actually meet everyone in room
• "Grand rounds" to go deep into a few problems
• Would it help to have other expertise in the room, i.e. expertise around communication, as well as people who know about networks
• Strongly advise having much younger people in room (said by someone who calls herself an "old" millenial)
• Idea of taking a question and going deep

Gibran Rivera is now giving a very eloquent plea for seeing the nonprofit sector as having competitive advantage, particularly in difficult times. "My practical question is once people connect authentically and then go back to the practicalities of funding, how do we do it?" Poor transcription by me but that's the general idea - how do we sustain connections, meaningfully, over time, in the face of extreme challenges like funding.

Concluding, Marianne thanks everyone for showing up the way they did with all their energy.

Since last I posted - #ntwk

...We've had our open space conversation about governance and structure, which proved fascinating with several excellent cases, including one global nonprofit in which Noelle Thurlow, an Outward Bound staffer, became involved with the World Resource Project involving 40 different affiliated organizations (all of which had the same name) but which had completely independent structures.

Noelle soon was to realize that she had to become the network weaver when she discovered that the big, well-funded organizations tended to be more guarded in sharing while the young (and poor) organizations wanted to share. With the help of consultant Tom Glazier, she launched a wiki and got an around-the-world ticket to be the wiki evangelist and to hold week-long trainings in each location called Wikifest.

Together, they did an Outward Bound Ropes Course to kick off the wiki training. The holdout representative from the US -- she hadn't wanted to buy into the wiki or share information -- was transformed by the experience. She went from refusing to share information to understanding the value of the larger network and support it whole-heartedly. As a result of Noelle's efforts and the process she designed, the person who had been the most dug into holding out moved to feeling that it was her responsibility to share info.

We need more Noelles in the world, who don't give up, who have natural affinity for networking, and have the energy to do this kind of world-changing. And, oh, by the way, who did Noelle take with her on that six-month globe circling? Her two very young children.

And now we're signing up for open space - #ntwk

Our next activity (following lunch, I hope) is open space. BTW, they're running a stopwatch on the screen to make sure that each person speaking in this section ends in the allotted time (60 seconds).

First, the principles of open space from IISC:

1. Whoever comes are the right people
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened
3. Whenever it starts is the right time
4. When it's over, it's over

Next, the Law of Two Feet:

If you are not learning or contributing where you are, go some place else.

And now people are saying what they want to talk about:

• Governance and structure
• Difference between networks and collaborative structures
• Structural options available to organizations
• Network assessment, including internal conversation in network monitoring itself
• Competencies necessary for networks to be successful
• Language used to motivate networks -- many networks are anger-driven; how to construct language around love
• How do we convene networks that enable deep, meaningful relationships among people who already are flat out
• How communication technologies are used within and among networks

Now we're getting up to walk to the convener of each topic.

And now we learn that we have to do this exercise before lunch. Oh, no. Time for an apple. (I'm going to Governance and Structure for Networks).

Network participant survey results - #ntwk

We all (every single one, apparently) filled out a survey about networks that can inform our forward movement including the creation of a community of practice around networks. As one who's participated in a number of communities of practice around networks, I'm interested to hear the results. Highlights presented by Madeleine Taylor, some of which I will no doubt miss:

• 80% of people in room spend more than 50% of time on social change networks
• More than 50% of people in room have been working for 6 or more years; 16% for more than 10 years
• 3/4 of people in room provide advice on strategies for planning/implementation and network design; just slightly fewer focus on leadership and governance strategies
• Only one-third, blog readers, provide advice on 2.0 strategies
• Re: competency: nearly half feel their greatest strength is in network design
• 68% would like to be working on leadership and governance strategies going forward
• 65% want to learn more about network assessment
• And, again, bloggies, only 19% want to learn more about blogging
• Nearly 3/4 work with networks larger than 100 people
• About 7 in 10 work with local networks
• Re: kinds of networks people work in, all over the lot--from promoting peer learning to restructuring organizations toward network approach
• 90% support networks that focus on fostering joint action
• Networks that people work with comprise mainly (87%) non-profit organizations; 3/4 with networks of individuals

There's more more more but now we're breaking out again in new small groups to talk about what the survey results say to each of us personally.

Next up, most vexing questions around networks - #ntwk

We just finished a ten-minute or so segment where our small group--four in total--talked about the most pressing questions for networks. People are reporting out and I can't keep up. I hope IISC publishes the results. But meanwhile:

• Funding
• Motivating people
• Relationship between organizations and networks
• How to evaluate networks
• Field is so interdisciplinary so how do all streams come together
• How to shift to network mindset
• How to start with people's experience of being in networks not theory
• How to see relationship between hierarchy and networks
• How to encourage leadership in networks...and many more

Monitor Institute on networks - #ntwk

Great set of slides from Monitor Institute on networks here.

The beginning and ... Roberto Cremonini's hopes for the day - #ntwk

The room is packed and Marianne Hughes just reported that there was 100% response to the survey of those coming. Who's ever heard of that?

Marianne welcomes us, explains why we're here; Gibran Rivera lays out the agenda; Madeleine Taylor, who helped design the program, introduces Bruce Hoppe, who interprets a social network map that shows how connected people in the room are--some on periphery, some central. Bruce explains that the map raises the question, "Why are people on one edge not connected to people on the other?"

Here are Roberto Cremonini's opening remarks:

A favorite quote these days is from an Egyptian proverb: a basket that has two handles should be carried with two hands. Over past 7 years working at Barr, I have been carrying a lot of these baskets around – network theory, network analysis, network weavers. These have been very heavy baskets to carry around. I had the realization that there are a lot of these baskets and that it would be good to put them out for benefit of everyone. Another realization is that some baskets have more than two handles. We need to figure out ways to carry baskets many at a time. At minimum, my expectation for the day is that we connect; ideally, this is a springboard for more work together. My ultimate dream is to carry baskets together for real projects.

Networking the networkers - #ntwk

Spending the day in a network capacity building workshop that promises to be quite interesting. I'll be posting as the day progresses but thought you'd enjoy seeing a bit of the invitation. Having spent the better part of my career investigating and reporting on networks, it should be fun to see what comes of this. Most surprising so far was that of the list of invitees, I recognized precisely one name other than that of the people at Interaction Institute for Social Change (which I've mentioned before here), one of two organizational conveners of the day. Shows how far the field has grown since Jeff Stamps and I wrote Networking (Doubleday, 1982).

The Barr Foundation and the Interaction Institute for Social Change (IISC) are partnering to create a learning opportunity that will bring you together with other capacity builders to learn from one another about the approaches and tools that you have used and insights that you have gained in your network building practice. As consultants -- people whose job it is to stay ahead of a field, to help define it and to translate it for those heroic individuals who spend every day on the front lines making ours a better world -- we rarely have this kind of opportunity to pool our knowledge and improve our practice.

We hope this next convening will be the first step towards building a community of practice. The Barr Foundation is generously offering to support us in a process that will not only deepen our learning but will catalyze collaboration among us.  We are planning to achieve this by coming together four times over the next year.