Wizard Academy application
I just recently found out that the Wizard Academy in Buda, TX, has a course for World Changers. Very intriguing. I just completed my application (submitted it last night, I hope within the deadline: is Midnight, June 10 assumed to be the beginning of the day or the end of the day? Technically, the former I suppose, but I always think of it as the latter).
Anyway, I thought this exercise resulted in an interesting perspective on my persective. It's a bit long:
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My Story
My particular perspective is due, at least in part, to my two different colored eyes (an uncommon condition called heterochromia iridium). Although I have no basis to think that the effect on my vision is physiological (could I tell?), this fate has nonetheless shaped my path in provocative ways. It starts with my mother, and her (perhaps overzealous) attempts to preemptively assuage insecurity arising from unavoidable juvenile teasing. With this gift of a trust-worthy rationalization at my side, I was able to brush off even the most pointed criticism for most of my life, believing it not to apply to me in any substantial way. In fact, what this gift was most effective at is converting insecurity into arrogance. It took a couple of decades and a few brushes with divinity to eventually get over myself. “Oh, the humility! I’m not special after all!” After recovering from the initial bruise, I popped back up, looked around and realized that everyone thinks they are special. Not only that, but this opinion isn’t unwarranted or problematic! The grand lesson that I took away from this is to balance humility and arrogance on my continual quest to be as helpful as possible.
While on this trajectory, at age eight, I had one of many powerful epiphanies (that makes 34 years of pursuit from this earliest knowing until the present). I felt that my purpose on this planet had to do with global transformation. Unfortunately, I realized this at the same time that I recognized that the sixties were history. There were other glimpses of the transformation that I knew to be my destiny (the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the success of the Space Shuttle program), but I knew that I had no primary role in these glittery events.
And then along came a revolution that was worthy of the notice it generated: The Internet. Although, even here, there we’re lessons to learn as my ego took more of the brunt of the consequences of my hard-headedness. Remember that internet boom and bust thingy? Yeah, well, that was another lesson in humility for me. Yes, many people say the same thing, but I really took the lesson to heart. I worked for enterprise content management company Vignette from 1997 to 2002, spanning the wildest ups and downs of the ride. I thought I was going to get to keep those vested millions. It got old waking in a cold sweat from nightmares in which I couldn’t remember which account held the (vapor) balance of my life’s savings. When I was able to acknowledge the gift of having my laurels yanked out from under me, I was finally ready for a refreshing plunge into the depths of uncertainty.
I combined my passion for emergent community and my interests in future studies, innovation, technology and transformational dynamics of organizations and individuals and set out in search of cohorts and collaborators. I joined the American Creativity Association and helped with organize the 2005 conference. I organized and moderated a panel on folksonomies (Beyond Folksonomies, to be exact, regarding the direction and evolution of social media space) for the 2006 SXSW Interactive, and I’m a panelist for this summers WorldFutures2006 conference in Toronto. Very recently, I’ve taken a leadership role in Bootstrap Austin. I’ve also been through the two workshops at Integral Institute (Ken Wilber’s organization in Boulder), plus Level 1 and 2 certification in Spiral Dynamics with Dr. Don Beck.
Through all of this training, with my unique perspective through these different colored eyes, what I perceive is that the hardest part of the transformation for us as a species will be analogous to the imperiling of my favorite characters. The road into the future is not the certain path with predictable outcomes. What is in peril isn’t our physical selves (at least not usually for individuals, and even less frequently for the species as a collective), but rather our cherished notion of who we are as individuals acting alone.
The internet is allowing us to reflect our meaning making back to ourselves like a huge existential mirror. This change, on an unprecedented scale, is what I sense is at the root of much of the social unrest around the globe, between companies, and within families, between nations, and within the minds of the public.
I continue to read deeply influential books, and just recently finished Out of Control, by Kevin Kelly (if you haven’t read it, I rate it as my highest recommendation). Many of the issues that I’m discussing here are outlined in that book. My vision can most easily be understood by reading that book.
To be clear, my vision, my mission, my dream, is to create a software application (open source and peer-to-peer) that will allow individuals to voluntarily create an attention trail (analogous to an ant’s pheromone trail), which serves as a record of their travels on the web, in a secure and potentially anonymous way, such that we, as a collective, can better learn what it is we are doing as a whole, and what each of us can do better as individuals. On first hearing this, people immediately raise concerns about privacy and about the possibility to misuse or game this kind of system. Some of the recent technologies, such as SXIP (so-called identity 2.0), Gesture Bank, attention trust, and a general move toward decentralized, distributed services, addresses many of these considerations. The objections are well worth considering, but do not sense that they are insurmountable. Some other influential books I’ve read are: Cluetrain Manifesto, The Wisdom of Crowds, and On Intelligence.
Since leaving Vignette four years ago, I have devoted the remaining money that I had in savings to pursuing this free-lance education (an education that I could not have received at any university). I am currently incurring debt (though I have equity in my house to as backup). I have been in contact with innumerable organizations and have made contacts with incredible people. I have not yet located a source for funding to support continued dedication to the work I am currently doing (collaborative meaning-making on a global scale, using the foremost social and internet technology available, and proposing development for new technologies which can pragmatically bring true collective problem solving into widespread usage).
I am co-authoring a book on a process dubbed “Situation Mapping,” which is a methodology for mutually shared explorations of very complex topics in a way that allows all participants to iteratively clarify points of contention, resulting in true consensus. I have contracted DeGaro Solutions to teach a course called The Myth of Collaboration to show people that what most often passes for collaboration rarely much more than compromise, in which appearances of agreement are more important than actual progress, and how it is possible, and a simple matter really, to transcend this form of collaboration and delve into a deeper communication rooted in the agreement that we are truly one organism on this planet, and that there is only “us” and no “them,” so that all that is left is win-win. This course could be the means to supporting me as I continue this work, but I need to learn better how to market it effectively, and to get the word out to the right people, the right organizations.
I write about much of this on my blog (http://opposablemind.typepad.com), but I feel that much of it is so broad and diverse that it is difficult to communicate to a non-specific audience. I am working with Derek Woodgate and Jon Lebkowsky on the Austin Future Salon attempting to educate organizations about the importance of Web 2.0 technologies beyond the next money making power house (which I truly believe it is, but not for the reasons being paraded out by the mainstream press or the bloggers at present).
This explanation is already longer than I anticipated when I started writing it, and yet I feel I’m only getting started. I will wrap this up and hope that my passion is communicated, and a sufficient sense of my mission is conveyed. Even if I am not selected to receive a scholarship for the World Changers workshop, I would deeply appreciate any leads that you can give me, and assistance that you can provide that will help me in my quest.
Thank you deeply for the work that you do, and for this
opportunity that you provide for visionaries of all stripes.
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