The film Authority & Expectations continues to make the rounds (Joanne's report). Veterans for Peace was prominent in Christopher's report.
I'll mention about the "celebrating Mossadegh" event when it gets to be my turn. John Munson, a guest here tonight, was also at that event at the Peace House. He's involved in planning a fundraising event on September 14 at said Peace House.
This was just a short excerpt from our meeting. The other meetings I'm thinking about include the Oversight Committee meetings and staff meetings. Staff is spread around so we tend to use cyber-stuff and meet in Cyberia.
The role of email in supporting meetings is interesting, also discussion lists. The ability to advance things in parallel is a focus of GST (general systems theory):
With my students I use theater as a good metaphor. You have actors or agents and scripts. You also have many stages, not just one, and characters that go between the stages. This is management theory or it's channeling electrons, depending on how tightly you want to tie it to actual microprocessor controlling.
David's main examples are macroscopic such as "making waffles". You need the waffle maker to be hot and empty before you pour batter in, and you need feedback that people still want more. Several waffle makers might run in parallel, just as many people eat simultaneously and so on.The main line of the thread I'm copying from above is over on Math Forum, where math teachers and others are discussing a recent article in the New York Times. However the branch I'm citing went to Synergeo. That quoted passage is a reference to Dr. DiNucci's report a couple weeks ago.
Mom's report sounds like Linus Pauling's reminding us that humans have irrevocably changed the environment for all future life on Earth thanks to carelessness with radio-toxins.
That's is hardly news in 2013, but is a theme of this year's ceremonies (Disarmament Day, August 6), which are shaping up. Mom was just at a planning meeting at PSR.
I'm not a huge fan of the If I Had a Trillion Dollars campaign, which is hardly a problem as it has lots of trackers and backers already. It encourages the kind of contrary-to-fact thinking associated with Washington, DC.
However, I did enjoy Gavin's project to do "A Periodic Table of the Presidents" which he kick started on KickStart.
Apparently AFSC has already budgeted money for the QVS intern, application due in February. Quaker Voluntary Service is only this summer opening a house in Portland, I don't know where yet.
I've modeled the Blue House as somewhat similar in design: a platform for engagement in both planning and carrying out vital operations. Several of us reported on The Door Project. I left the check from Multnomah Meeting / Junior Friends program for our door.
I forgot to mention in my report about Lindsey continuing to run a Food Not Bombs serving, in support of the vigil at City Hall, and making use of the kitchen at Right to Dream Too.
Having some loose criteria about casting is a good idea, but a strong director often has a deeper knowledge of her or his actors / agents / objects than merely broad brush stroke ideas. The devil is in the details, but in this context that "devil" is an angel (in terms of providing leverage).
Organizations with lots of actors but few directors or casting advisers (the job of HR) experience different kinds of failure.
Effective activists learn how to work in parallel and asynchronously. The action does not necessarily stop or bottle-neck just because one's focus has shifted elsewhere. This focus on concurrency is important, and hypertext is one of the ways to acclimatize to concurrent organizing.
