Full Circle Associates

You get by with a little help from your Twitter Friends, tweeting extensively from the Online Community Report gathering in Santa Fe. ocbf2008 - twemes.com. Thanks tweeters! There a lot of interesting stuff there. I haven’t looked, but I wonder if anyone talked about Slow Community?

A couple of weeks ago, Peter Block said the qualities of successful community initiatives were, in his experience, being slow, small and underfunded. We all laughed, but looking around the room, his bravery in saying it seemed to resonate with many of us.

Have we been “communitied” to death? Has the abundance of choice, the speed with which commercial ventures have yet again jumped on to the “community” bandwagon anesthetized us to what “being together” as a community really is in our lives?

I was on a Skype call with a friend and colleague from Germany this morning and he was reflecting on how much he was enjoying working on an unfunded project. Used to the structure of organizations and businesses, he found the passion a wonderful, refreshing experience. I paused, then laughed and told him about hearing Peter Block. Something resonated. Bing!

Then, for fun, I said “what about a ’slow community’ movement — like the ’slow food’ movement?” We laughed, but again, that bell went off.

I thought I was joking, but now something is blossoming from that moment of humor. A few minutes later I read an email from Jay Cross recommending the article, Freedom to Learn :: Unitierra in Oaxaca by Gustavo Esteva. The article talks about the work of communities in Oaxaca who are eschewing schools and centrally designed learning experiences to take learning back into the hands of the community - on it’s own time, terms and tempo.

In the rush to colonize the possibility of community on the internet, with its characteristic speed and fleetness of metaphorical foot, we may have lost sight of the fact that some many of our most precious communities are slow, small and underfunded.

What kind of magic is this? What should we be paying attention to?

Is it time for a “slow community” movement? What would that look like to you? More importantly, how would it make your world a better place?

(Edit: Vanessa DeMauro had this thought in March. A good sign! )

I’m thrilled to see my niece, Ayala Kalisher, a fire dancer, building community. Plus I’m just a damn proud Auntie. You go, Girl!
Playing With Fire - City on a Hill Press

“I saw it at a festival, and everyone out there just looked so cool, and I wanted to be able to do that,” Kalisher said. “They all looked like they should’ve been superheroes out of a comic book manipulating that fire.”

Along with the fact that fire performance is much appreciated by both sexes, Kalisher’s desire to spin fire “like a rock star” is a common motivation for fire dancing.

With a number of fire troupes based out of Santa Cruz, the area claims a mixture of professionals and hobbyists who freely collaborate and share ideas to progress their work.

One recently formed fire-dancing group, Fire University Santa Cruz, was created by Kalisher to try and get local fire spinners of all skill levels to gather weekly.

“I was inspired by the Fire University in Davis to try and build a fire community here,” she said. “When I moved back to Santa Cruz recently, a lot of local performers that spin fire in Santa Cruz told me that the public gatherings had disappeared and no one had any motivation to recreate them, so I brought Fire University here.”

If you read the article, you will see that Ayala is also her community’s technology steward, helping coordinate joint orders of material and making their own fire dancing tools. See, it isn’t just about online, eh? There is technology stewardship of many kinds in diverse communities of practice!

Photograph By Phil Carter

Bah on pessimism!