This is a personal recollection of what the opening ceremonies were like. It is the memory of Lion Kimbro. It may be inaccurate, and miss important things.
We began the first gathering with a poem about how all things begin. It begins with the trickling accumulation of water molecules into tiny tiny droplets of water. The tiny droplets collect to form full dew. The dew accumulates, and other, trivial, insignificant bits of water from myriad sources, until you have a marsh.
Many thanks were given, appreciation for the people present. A lot was spoken about how great the people present were, and how good it was to be with them. (This seemed to have been a point of contention for some, who felt that we were giving too much self-congradulation.)
The keyword then became "story." It was used to describe who we are, what we are doing, the story that we are making real. A story, a dream, a computer program, a sequence within a simulation. The story is 14-whatever billion years old. The Great Story. We are ancient.
Michael Dowd mentions a book called, "Evolution's Arrow," that Michael Dowd draws inspiration from.
There is speak of replication, copying, how to distribute the evolutionary salon, how to grow The Great Story. There is an invitation, to other people who would like to assist in the replication.
We are all made from stardust- literally. The matter in our bodies has existed for countless ages. We are made of universe. Matter became conscious of itself, forming simulations of it's own place and circumstance. Intelligence. You get a ball of gas, and you wait, and a few yugas later, it's singing opera.
Michael points out that we weild incredibly vast power, as individuals, by virtue of the technology we possess. But we have not yet grown in the wisdom and intelligence to wield that power. Perhaps we will form groups, and with collective intelligence, form the relationships and commit the actions necessary to save ourselves, by making sure our use of power is responsible?
We are asked to think about what it is that we believe is dangerous, what is most dangerous to our lives, society, ecosystem, economy, whatever. We are invited to bring our concerns to the fore.
We listen to a story about a preacher. A preacher who, one day, after passing the hat for collections, sent the hat back out again. People were encouraged to put in their name and number, if they wanted to participate in this experiment. Then it was passed out AGAIN, and people were asked to take out a name and a number. The people were invited to, within a week, to call the person on the other end of the number, and to just talk about what concerned them. The preacher said, "This was like sitting on a gold mine, and having finally figured out how to mine it. The gold mine is the interest and feeling and concern and motive force within the people. The figuring out how to mine it, was getting the members to communicate with one another."
Longing and passion. We are invited to be present with our whole being, to not hold back, to participate in full, with heart, head, and soul.
Then we are asked to remember the most creative, vibrant, active people in our lives. We are asked to envision the lines of connection between ourselves, and between the creative network we just pictured, and the people THEY know, and so on. We ask ourselves: How many people are in our expanded network? 100? 1000? More than a 1000? How many?
What can we not do?
We speak "Welcome," spoken in all languages our members know. We have someone from every continent. I draw some laughs, near the end, saying: "printf hello world." I am not entirely in jest; I speak for the machines, that are still in the womb. But I worry about alienating people, who don't know programming, and may think I am making fun of them. Not many people know that that's C for a simple program.
We are invited to silence. This was an idea I had never heard of before, but now think is essential to a conference; It played out wonderfully, the next few days. It goes like this: In the conference, there will be periods of silence. These periods of silence are there so that we can think to ourselves, so that we can reflect without external expectation or interruption. I think this is a fantastic idea, and immediately begin to wonder how I can integrate it into the myriad institutions that I work with. Integrating silence and time to think in one's own mind, before speaking again- what a fantastic idea. A beautiful idea. And it so very clearly works. I mean, it just makes sense: When we're so busy talking, how can we possibly have the time to sort out some of what the other people said, in our heads? And I remember the feeling that was starting to articulate itself to me at MindCamp: With sessions back to back, I had very little time to "record" in my mind what happened, even to just record some notes to myself on paper, or in my computer! Wouldn't it be awesome, if at tracked events with multiple sessions, that there was a mandatory silence period between them, so that people could collect their thoughts? Well, I'm not so sure about **mandatory,** but nonetheless, I think it's a fantastic idea, and I will be thinking about it more fully over time.