MTE Chronicle of Feb 19, 2006

The morning before our Feb 19 group phone meeting, two of us (women) got to know each other better on a Skype call, noting that we and a couple of others in the group are involved in performance arts, Arnold Mindell's worldwork, bodywork, art, dancing, singing, movement, and other physical, emotional, or aesthetic modes of engagement that are often missing from events like MTE.  Some Evolutionary Salon attendees had wanted more such activities at the January salon.  Is this a message from the field?

Five of us then attended our phone meeting, scheduled so that our European members could attend at night and our US members could attend in the morning, simultaneously.  We decided to continue these reports and post them on the web.  Any of us who participate in important side conversations (like the one in the previous paragraph) or who have observations about our process or dynamics will send them in to be included in the running chronicle.  Perhaps after the MTE gathering we will look back over it and study it for patterns about how we developed our collective intelligence or not.

We had a conversation about "the special flavor" of the event.  Our leading convenor said he would write a piece for the site about what this event was for him.  The two of us who had connected in the morning voiced a desire to have movement, art, performance, etc., become a named part of it -- but the other convenor wanted to not announce anything ahead of time but to have us first engage a CI field at the event and then see what wanted to come out of that field.  

At first there seemed to be a bit of confrontational energy emerging around this.  Then we realized that some of us were picking up messages from the field outside the MTE event -- including from our own lives and other events (like Evolutionary Salons) we'd been part of -- while others were concerned with the field inside the MTE event.  So it was a matter of which field(s) we should be attending to.  We then realized that the way to handle this was not to announce what was going to happen at the event (because we didn't know), but to make our shared inquiry and conversation about this issue visible to the world and especially to MTE participants who could carry it into the event with us.  Any convenor who had a vision of what the event could be could write it up and post it on the site's forum, and those visions could be commented on, without any effort to resolve different visions but just to ripen them for the event field.

One other factor we considered on this subject was that cultural influences and biases embedded in the participants' consciousness and habits might restrict the ability of certain things to emerge from the field at the event.  We need to be mindful of that as we hold the space truly open for the event.  As we get closer to the event, we'll know more about who is coming, and be able to sense into this better.

We decided we would write something on the site about why we chose our ancient, "ensouled" venue for the event.  

One of us had already gathered a lot of logistical information -- directions, time of trips, taxis, busses, etc. -- and had arranged to be informed each time someone registered, so this information could be sent to them in a welcome letter.  They volunteered to write the welcome letter, check it with the rest of us, and then post it on the site so that anyone would have access to that information.  New registrants and prospects would be added to a wiki page on the site, where all convenors could track registration progress.  The convenor stewarding our website will be informed so they can supply new registrants with user IDs and passwords.

Finally, we explored how we could connect both MTE participants and non-attendees, before, during and after the MTE event.  We heard about a video Skype connection done by the earlier CI-convening group between Seattle and Brussels, where the people in each place talked amongst themselves while the others slept, and then connected by voice and video via computer for an hour or two during the overlap times.  MTE could have an "evening flow of the gathering" reflection meeting, open to anyone at the gathering and anyone outside, using such an audio and/or video link.  A vision of technically-supported participation opportunities was read to us, and it will be posted on the site as another vision for the event.  Local convenors will seek out tech people to help us set up whatever tech basics we can arrange to support this.  We can encourage participants to do test postings on the blog so they can discover how easy it is to do it, and then blog a lot during MTE.

We ended the call with a sense that MTE is emerging as a body or path before us, as we speak, or that we are spinning the yarn we will be using to weave the fabric of MTE -- or that will hold its field -- during the event.  We were digesting our concerns and differences into visions, solutions, actions and possibilities, and moving the edge of evolution as we did so.  Interconnectedness is happening, and there is some hope that people will join us.

After the call, one of us wrote about the need to explore the relationship between collective intelligence and women's liberation -- ultimately moving beyond genders, but now needing to engage CI in a field where only women are attending.  She also noted that she and other convenors may not have responded to convenor messages out of a sense that we individually don't know what to do next to convene a gathering like MTE.  However, realizing that we are learning as we go -- from each other and the field -- can help us trust the field and give voice to concerns or insights that may at first seem personal but, when said, may prove to be important voices of the field.