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.
