Revision of Moving The Edge seen as a prototype - by Finn Voldtofte from April 8, 2006 - 07:45

If the gathering Moving The Edge became a prototype, what was it then a prototype for?

I suggest: For gathering people around both a theme and an intention, with the intention being to participate for the sake of the whole (engaging a field of collective intelligence amongst the participants) and in service of the theme.

The theme for Moving The Edge was ”The role of collective intelligence in moving the edge of evolution”, so in this case the theme and the intention melted together. In the prototype the theme can vary but not the intention.


I suggest that theese points could be generic parts of the prototype:

Before

1. A call for conveners – can the initial vision be substantiated and backed up by more than one standing forward and commit to convene and host?

2. Establish clarity on purpose – and keep on refering back to it. Part of clarity is to be able to express the purpose in a simple and clear way.

During MTE this statement was present at the walls in all four directions:

Moving The Edge

An adventurous inquiry
into the role
of collective intelligence
in moving the edge of evolution

In hindsight this central part of the invitation kept us coming back to the purpose during the event, and also informed how we worked as a convening team.

3. Invite – and let those who feel called take responsibility for acting on the invitation. ”Feelling called” as the key identifier of ”who”.

4. Costs on ”A Company of Friends” basis. This also helps participants set expectations to the ”service-level” – expect things to be organized as it is amongst friends, including you taking your part of whatever needs to be done. Don’t expect a lot of people be there to take care of you and your needs. Pay for costs as you register – so that no other has to take any financial risk on your behalf.

From MTE we don’t know how an additional fee for the professional service of convening and hosting would have influenced the gathering.

5. It takes a field to convene a field.

”The invited field responds to what we do, not what we say, in the convening field. Any incoherence, lack of trust, lack of commitment, lack of clarity in our convening team will be sensed and responded to 'out there'. And we will sense and react upon any inertia 'out there' to having this gathering happen” (From the chronicles of convening team phonemeetings).


* Our intention is to gather for the sake of the emergence of a
coherent field of collective intelligence. As part of this
intention, we plan to set aside or hold our personal agendas in ways
that actively welcome the emergence of larger discoveries and
possibilities none of us saw before.

* As a convening team we are wrestling with "walking the talk" in
acting as a field of CI calling a field of CI.

* As a convening team we know, that we have initiated something we
don't know what is - and yet we move on with a deep felt sense that
this is something timely and ripe for evolution.

(from a clarification in response to a question on ”the distinct signature of the gathering)

6. In order to support us in ”acting from the middle” we established a routine of weekly phonemeetings, which lasted approx 90 min. We understood it as engaging the very same field as the gathering was intended to engage, so that the gathering would be a continuation of what we kept alive amongst us via the weekly calls and other kinds of communication.

7. Chronicle what you do and make it available. Transparency in communications and in decisions.

8. Act without attachment to outcomes. MTE almost didn’t make it due to attachment to an idea of number of participants. (Look  here for a detailed chronicle about that).  ”Outcomes” could also be ...finances, publicity, name-and-fame....


During

9. Be attentive to the transition from the field being the convening team to being the entire gathering. Before MTE two of us hosted first one, then another, then a third in our house and finally joined with a fourth to be a group of 6 driving to the venue.

At the venue the convening team assumed the role of hosting team, and had attention to each participant's transistion from travel to arrival to settling in.


10. The flow of the gathering has four stages:

Opening – welcome, clarifying initial focussing questions and intentions, going through the stages of becoming a group of people in autonomy and communion.

Deepening – entering into the state of inquiry, that in surprising and not predictive ways adresses whatever is in the way for clarity and direct cognition on the intial intentions. Whatever it is that is in the way, principally will be what closes body, mind, heart and/or soul. What is in the way can be individual and/or group issues. Any individual holding back holds back the whole field. Any imbalances not adressed will need to be held consciously or unconsciously by someone. Any attempt to exclude will create an imbalance. The energetical experience of deepening is more and more intensity, more and more like being in a container under pressure.

Noticing – emerging patterns, indivdual and group cognition on the themes held in the initial intentions and questions, even though the themes barely have been touched upon yet.

Completing for next openening. What shall be said and what shall be done now to complete this gathering in a way that opens for what is next?


11. In each of the stages the overall pattern of opening-deepening-noticing-completing for next opening repeats. So for instance the experience of a period of confusion and even chaos that often is part of the opening, may be experienced again in each of the later stages, but expectedly less intense and shorter. This can be mistaken as if swinging back and forth between the stages, but I think it is really more the experience of substages within the overall stage.


12. The opening stage lasts until a situation is established where the group can enter into deepening inquiry together. This situation can be described as  the coexistence of a direct experience of (ideally) complete autonomy and communion at the same time. This is some times described as the state of real community (as opposed to pseudo community).

There are three phases in coming to this situation:

Establishing relations, noticing what unites
Calling in diversities, noticing what seems to separate
Naming what needs to be set free.

The ”success” of the first phase can be assessed on a safety-unsafety scale. Likewise an ”opening of possibilities vs. chaos” scale can asses the work in the second phase, and ”expansion vs. emptiness”  for the third phase.


After

No points for a prototype comes to my mind now. It was of importance to the afterproces that we had a lot of laptops, wireless internet connection, access to printer, and a web-site like evolutionarynexus.org to start using while gathered.