...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.