Stewards'synchronous session notes

Participants:

Ashley Cooper
Dana  Lynne
Jennifer Atlee
Ria Baeck
Susan Cannon
Fernanda Ibarra
George Pór

Recording at: http://tinyurl.com/8sf3y
Password: evonexus

 The meeting purpose:

Listen into what can support the birth of a generative community on EvoNexus
Explore what membership in EvoNexus mean and how shall we welcome new members
Suggested ecosystem of servant leadership circles
What are our high leverage and urgent taks?

 Cheking in: (min 6 of the recording)

The session started with a checkin on the question of what attracted you to this conversation?

Ria
Structuring of the wiki pages and try to keep track of what is happening and develop of topics that needs to be addressed by a bigger community, a bigger circle, that’s  why I am here.

Fer
What attracted me to be in this conversation. Is not only to make this tool available for all of us. I really believe in the facilitation role as a key part of what we are doing (the online community). We need to connect  the different conversations around us and establish links between them in order to enable better groups and conversations every time.

George
What attracted me here was a joyful anticipation of what may happen The beauty is what I see that will come up from our community; meaning the small circle of stewards that can have the larger community to come into full blossoming.

Ashley Cooper
I am also attracted by the need and possibility of what may emerge, and my dream includes one where we can use technologies, that are available for us and to tap into the energy and experience that is available in the one to one face, direct experiences and I know that this can be possible and is really exiting that we can create a site and create open channels to communicate with one another, in order to enhance that flourishing and blossoming that George just spoke about, helping in that way to the evolution of the planet.

Susan Cannon
I am deeply called to what is emerging in these salons....I feel this space and conversation, facilitated with technology, is the nexus of the evonexus.

Jennifer Atlee

Why am I here...possibility...yearning. What Finn said, "supports seamless ways of making the richness of the conversations available to the larger community"... that there is a depth of connection and accumulated learning/wisdom and BEAUTY(!) that supports & enhances initiatives so that they are NOT separate but actively engaging as part of this larger community... I am really interested in the online-offline community, virtually enhancing to what Ashley said.

Sheri Madrone
From the last few years my life is been deeply embedded in the online world and how interflects with the work people are doing on the ground and I became inmersed in that world where I have no experience. Technology has been our connection for enhancing the beautiful web that we are weaving, the global dialogue that is happening and in different way I know that I belong, and this conversations is what my soul is longing. Its here where we are creating from different projects and conversations and facilitating with what will happen with all this imaginary self that is talking to each other and then the synapsis of our global brain, and I feel this offline-online weaving is so critical to the evolutionary nexus.

We talked about: What are the most important enablers.
What else will you like to talk about?
What are the most important enablers that this community needs to sustain itself and evolve into what it can become?

We did an exercise in the whiteboard and this were the results:

A commited core community
Look and feel
The forums, wiki and blogs are confusing to separate the functions. Location
Vision Flow
Clear, coherent metapurpose
Pictures, image and beauty
Yes… beauty, as much sensuality as possible.
Education and user support- Clear inviting newbie support (Yes, so we don’t feel like dinosauries)
Communal spaces/niches
How people get a sense of the whole. Visual Maps
Roles (clear and visible to people) Color

Ahhh, so there are organic ways to move around, using other kinds of intelligence
An opportunity to pay an ongoing subscription to support the community.

We began to talk about the image, visuals, look and feel, interface and difference in functions and what would it take to make it happen.  (min 27 to 35 of the recording)

Ashley
The visual flow of the site is very important to me to enable participation of what can unfold. In the experience I have in the virtual world, forums, wikis and blogs have a certain characteristic that let me know that I am using that tool. Here I find it confusing to separate the functions.  Ie. Forums should be separated in order to make it look conversational. The blog has a different look, it’s about  information and inviting. How can the flow of the site can guide people to engage with it.

George:
There is work being done by John Abbe in making the look and feel more clear and easy to use. Regarding that people know where they are.

Sheri
How people get a sense of the whole when they come to the site, so they don’t see pieces here and there. For instance, some kind of visual map of everything that is happening there. On the right hand side is good, so people can tap the threats of  ongoing dialogue that is emerging. It also has to do with how we facilitate the conditions on how people start to see connections from one place to another in the conversations that are in the whole site. Right now is focused in the evolutionary salon, but as it complexifies it is going to be a more important piece to  look into.

-what conversations are happening over there and how is that related over here?-. Perhaps a type of metatags, little tags posted in different places could facilitate it.  We should have a picture of it, a map, a quick summary or synopsis, so people don’t get lost  and find their way there.

Dana:  (min 44.10 of recording)

I think that one of the important features of what's evolving is the interpenetration of word and image. Not working----just that right and left brain, word and image, logic and intuition are trying to integrate.

Ria
I like this integrating of words and image, but has anyone  a clue of how can we start with it? How can we start? Because I know only blogs, forums and wikies. How do we go from our longing for that to implement it in one way or another?

George:
I was very much inspired by Dana’s art, the sense of beauty and actually integrating words and images. I would like to ask you Dana how would you do this? So the possibility to combine images and words are not far away. We can post images already, but it does need support from our tech team to make it available for everybody. I believe that is something that can be done.

I have a bigger question about the visual beauty of the site. I am also thinking more about the interface. How the whole environment looks. I don’t find it very inspiring. We need to involve talented people in developing it.

Fer:
Is not difficult to get designers and share it in this room, and develop it. A design meeting will be set to talk about the visual design only. We can talk about what we all envision.

Ashley
Design comes first at the point of interacting as my experience is to get really connected to people through technology and the interconnection that exist between facilitation, design and technology.

Discover who we are, what a member role is, what we are the members of?
(min 54 of the recording)

George
I want to summarize the relation between users, registered members, etc. We need to decide who are going to be the members. Do we have any criteria after a user signs on? People could get invited if they wanted. We can have an invitational community, where people can get invited if they want to.

Sheri
One thing that comes to me with this question of opening ourselves up is something I already wrote about 1 degree of separation. If there are people that are connected to us and we have friends around us, that are interested in the conversation. In that way is very easy to invite them and join. I am connected to several people that I have conversations, close threads with them, and in that way we are connected energetically to many people that can be eager to participate and engage in this conversation.

Notes on the whiteboard:

We need criteria? Open invitation? Small fee to sustatin community online? Some kind of demonstration of connection to the purpose?

I think there is a dynamic tension between open invitation and enabling a coherent field.

What energy is emerging in the larger field where we are part of?

Consider the principles and nature of healthy ecosystems vis a vis membership.

 
Mision and purpose of Evolutionary Network (min 1:02:00 in the recording)

We then listen to the voice of the Evonexus mision and the mision of two members of the initiation team; Finn Voldtofte and George Pór 
Take a look at:
http://www.evolutionarynexus.org/node/12

Servant circles

Finally we talked about the concept of leadership circles. Check out the framework for the self-organization of our community's social system.

http://www.evolutionarynexus.org/blog/3