Parks seldom start big - they grow

Happy New to all. May all your dreams fulfill during the course of the coming 365 days :-)

As I have moved into 2011 quite effortless, no big party, just listening to a superb concert
from Semperoper which was live-streamed, there was not more than letting things come.
Do we know what is calling us? Sometimes we have a feeling, more often we just don't
have a clue.

So totally empty in my head, I organized some bags with stuff from the "lost" venue CoOrpheum.

Surprise! JaneJacobs' "The Economy of Cities" got into my hands and off my thoughts were this past afternoon. Quoted from it, "Furthermore, the most meteoric rises (started at almost nothing) occur in new activities".

Would you have thought that the "Große Garten" in Dresden would look like that  two hundred years back?

As small as your first step towards your dream may look like just start and you will see what can emerge with some patience!

... a few thoughts for a finishing year

2010 is just having an open gap of a few minutes. ChrisBrogan has inspired me just a couple of minutes ago to do similar (not just copy & paste).
For me there are also three ways to reflect about the past 365 days.

Put down your thoughts
Tell the world your accomplishments
Do a PresencingStatus (as learned by OttoScharmer)

1. Thoughts about the past and how they connect to this very last day of the year

• This morning I learned from a mate in the Singularity Network on Facebook that he got Lyme-Disease (after 1.5 year undiscoverage). Reminded me of my own fight with that some eight years ago - and the power of experts who know only about their specific fields. Enabling the open flow of knowledge sharing will be the future.
• After the new director, Dr. UlrikeHessler, had taken over operation of the Semperoper. A personal visit to the Day of the Open Door at Semperoper, and got hooked on something my mother some twenty years back tried to teach me. The learner only learns when the learner is ready to learn!

These small unnoticed events are what I am passionate about, helping friends and clients. These kind of events fill me with grace when I see that felt problem emerges into a future chance due to minor interventions. So in the end it is a win-win-win situation!

2. This year's two accomplishments that have taken place are around my broader vision to "create a place where people truly can play to their strengths and skills" (as stated on 14th of January 2009 up at TeamAcademy in Jyväskylä during a leadership workshop, verified by a dear friend).

• In spring we managed to get a 800 sqm ballroom for three months (for free (!)) to prototype new forms of working, which is called CoWorking. All started with somebody asking one (!) day before Xmas in 2009 whether I would know some space to run a birthday party for 50 people. He asked me, because I am somewhat connected in the city of Dresden, whether I would know some place. I couldn't (rather let the problem stay on his side, as well as the solution) and told him a name that is active in the party life in Dresden. The story in short seen here. It turned out that this guy happened to come over to our office, LockOffice, back in January. I asked whether the other one had phoned him. And yes, he had done so and they had the party in the ballroom (that actually was not open to the public). This arouse my curiosity even further when I was sort of forced to leave the LockOffice end of April. So we moved into a beautiful ballroom in the first week of May, and called it CoOrpheum. The story ended now as a new tenant entered the game after the creatives had created the foundation and visibility as well as put some "stones" of the past out of the way (in conversations with city officials). 
• The second accomplishment I remember very well of the past year went jointly together with the visit of RayKurzweil at the 4th Dresden Future Forum, where I held a workshop together with RainerWasserfuhr about LongBetOne. We met RayKurzweil in person and he wished us all the best for the ambitious goal of implementing a European hot spot on the emerging technological advances, SingularAcademy. I deeply have to thank MarcellaGaeb and ThomasKoeplin for making this all possible!!!
• People whom I am thankful to have met

3. The final PresencingStatus of the year 2010:

• Good: staying with persistence on track to make my vision to become reality 
• Tricky: dealing with all the turmoil around the CoOrpheum, within the existence and the closing
• Learned: the right people who can help come up sometimes from areas where you least expect them
• Action: take the job I have been offered the week before Xmas, I have the gut feeling this is a fit for both sides

"Loose" in order to Win

A very warm Merry Xmas to all of you who are reading these lines!

The following is taken from a six-month old conversation on the PI Community where I asked other members about their experience with group dynamics, especially when they felt that the social field "crashed" (in a sense that it couldn't provide the higher purpose it had been initially meant to be).

Just thinking about social fields, I ask myself, wether they just don't crash and rather evolve into something new.

It only can crash if you hold on something. Image a cup of tea. You normally hold on to it drinking your tea. Does it fall down, it crashes - meaning you can't drink your tea from it any longer.

Opening your mind and heart to the future that emerges from the fact that the cup is now not usable for holding fluids opens new paths.

What do you think? What if this metapher applies in other context as well?

Go Slow to See Far and Close - Merry Xmas and a Good Time

Over the past week some amazing things have happened in my life. What I never thought to become true, bringing the idea of TeamAcademy to Dresden has been called upon me from quite a different place in Germany ("Thanks a lot for the phone call on Friday last week!"). As many of you know I do quite an amazing lot of things ranging from becoming an opera enthusiast, harnessing my helping capabilities for individuals and organizations (which is not always easy admit), being active restlessly in different social networks ("When does he work when he jumping around everywhere and nowhere?" - that is one question I get again and again, friends, clients, even people I just know via the web), connecting people when I see the potential of them working/ talking together for the greater good, .... and countless more. It sometimes disturbes people what I do, as it seems just too much for others.

Should we therefor stop to being ourselves?

Everybody has his or her very special super powers. Mine have evolved actively over the course of many years. It has become networking across boundaries (bringing people together for good who would never know about each other), multitaskingly "swimming" in different ponds of knowledge (that on the surface from what you see, read, and experience in your life seemingly are un-connected).

It all boils down to create an environment where people can thrive to what they really are. ViktorFrankl, survivor of the Holocaust, who's name I read in OttoScharmer's book "Theory U - Leading from the Future as it Emerges." with a short inspiring speech.

How to get there? Can I do it, and how should I get to put my inner strengths joyfully at work?

Take the "Minimalist Workday" as my present for the coming future.

There are ways to master the art of time, and the best way to do that is to become a hunter. A hunter spots opportunities and greets them ... this, above all else is the winning strategy for working less.

Schlummernde Venus - ein stilles Geheimnis

Schlummernde Venus von Tizian und Giordione (1508-1510)

Sonntagnachmittag um Fünf - ein trüber Tag mit Matsch und Schnee neigt sich dem Tagesende zu. Ein Besuch im Hygienemuseum ist abgesagt. Was also tun mit  dem Tag?

[hier kommt noch ein Bild hinein] - welches wohl das passende ist? [Tip bitte in den Kommentar schreiben]

Ein Gang in die Gemäldegalerie vielleicht? Ein Katzensprung und doch Jahrhunderte entfernt. Was außerhalb der Stadt die Chipwerke rund um Infineon und Global Foundries darstellen (Hightech von heute, immer kleiner immer nanohafter) ist hier innerhalb des Gottfried Semper erschaffenen Raumes eher mit Monumentalität zu bezeichnen.

Welche Informationen sind in den Bildern verborgen, die wir beim Betrachten derselben aufnehmen oder auch unberücksichtigt lassen? Das Ergebnis ist zu sehen als Bild, jedoch ist uns auch klar, was der Künstler im Kopf dachte, als er vor der noch frischen und leeren Leinwand stand (oder saß, wir wissen es oft nicht)? Was hat er wahrgenommen, wer hat mit ihm gesprochen und was trieb ihn an?

Was mag es bei der "Schlummernden Venus" gewesen sein? Was wollen uns die Maler mit ihrem Werk "sagen"? Es scheint etwas Besonderes zu haben, denn -wie unschwer zu erkennen- ist das Parkett an dieser Stelle des Raums sichtlich abgenutzter. Sex sells, or better Sex pulls ;-)

Wie mit vielen Dingen, die uns täglich umgeben, sei es Kunst in Form eines Ballettstücks, einer Oper, eines Bildes oder auch nur eines Services, den wir im Geschäftsleben erfahren: das was wir sehen ist nicht das was dahinter steckt.

Der kreative Prozess bleibt uns weitgehend als Empfänger, Betrachter oder Genießer schlichtweg verborgen. Wir versuchen unsere eigenen Erfahrungen und Sichtweisen mit dem Erlebten in der Verbindung zu bringen. Doch was passiert, wenn wir jemanden anderen treffen und wir über das Gesehen sprechen?

Eine ausführlichere Erklärung ist hier zu finden. Wann machen wir uns im realen Leben den Aufwand, nach den Hinter- und Beweggründen von Ereignissen zu fragen?

Viel hat sich seit dem 16. Jahrhundert nicht verändert - damals fehlte das Buch, heute der Mut neue Medien für das Erfragen von Hintergründen zu nutzen. An der Zeit wäre es, denn sowohl Buch als auch Web sind als Wissensplattform reichlich vorhanden - nur fehlt uns heute oft die Zeit (so hat man zumindest das Gefühl).

... und nun heißt es, GEHEN (denn der Gong wird geschlagen hier in den Räumen der Gemäldegalerie).

Danke, dass ich einige Gedanken in dieser anderen Umgebung zu Papier bringen durfte :-)

Dido and Aeneas - First Premiere for Myself;-)

Some thirty (30!) years back my mother tried to introduce me to opera (actually there was no opera house in Mainz where I come from) - it never quite connected. It took the arrival of the new intendant and some turbulences in the web (on the new website of Semperoper) to reconnect my latent interest.

The newly set up Semperoper Junge Szene had today its second premiere at 12 o'clock (High Noon;-)) with "Dido and Aeneas". On Friday I checked for tickets - bad luck. So I thought, "Why not try on Sunday - if not getting tickets, there is always the Albertinum or Residenzschloss to enjoy culture" (on a year-round pass (!)) - off into the icy and still melting snow (more grey watery mud) at half past eleven.

(Un-)surprisingly quite a crowd awaiting and no ticket again - but as one calls it in Ultimate Frisbee "No disc is lost until it really touches the ground!"- so I waited in line in the hope of some returning tickets together with a few others. And got a TICKET:-)

Due to standing in line and my mind focused on getting a ticket I just remembered that I needed to catch a booklet (to pre-inform myself about the performance). I gained a bit of insight into what would be seen on stage I had learned via the Facebook group of Semperoper Junge Szene.

Written in the 17th century it took no big deal to transfer the story into the present situational context of a girls boarding school. Even the feeling of the giggling girls came over quite well. What started with a stare on the unquestionable iPhone (probably reading about the message of her boyfriend breaking with her) emerged into a plot where three time-layers (IMHO) intermingled: antique, medieval, and present.

The girls coming from a winning tennis match, are about to party with the landscape of thoughts quite open ("white canvas") they see their companion in grief and try to engage her in their party feelings (which does not really work in the beginning). Not long and they put the story of "Dido and Aeneas" to life.

What are the takeaways from this morning? I'd like to share what my PresencingStatus:

• Good: dared to get a ticket, another opportunity to learn about opera (step by step), feeling the power of the crowd, a beautifully created booklet setting up emotions (racing us back to the days of our own school days, remembering the pillow fights;-))

• Tricky: honestly not having read deeper into the story beforehand, not used to understanding opera voices (I guess for me in German it is even worse;-)) 

• Learned: sitting in the middle of the watching crowd let me experience the voices of critics (writing for a newspaper), and enthusiastic fans, never go to an opera without having prepared and learned about the plot (!), staying seated till the very end opens up new paths of seeing the world 

• Action: book wish for Xmas, Reclam Opera Guide and Ballet Guide, revisit "Dido and Aeneas" a second time

Still in the learning phase of understanding deeper the inner play of opera, and thankful for any comments if you have seen the piece as well.

PS.: In English in honour to the protagonists of the play who have sung in English.

Mornings - time of stillness, to think

This morning, with rising sun and snow on roofs, stumbled across a rather old piece of writing of
myself. A  bit more than a year ago I reflected on some questions Otto Scharmer had asked earlier.

One would say, not much has happened since.

Quite a lot has actually happened, sometimes subtle and emerging over time. In September last year the CoOrpheum (the first coworking space in Dresden was not yet an issue. The study on the culture and creative industries in Dresden had not been started yet. Meeting Markus Stegfellner from the Realexperiment Sinnvoll Wirtschaften in September this year, doing a WalkToTalk through the Großer Garten in Dresden. Working on bringing the "dots together" of the past has emerged into the WikiWall. Getting to know more about the Semperoper (due to a "storm in the net").

Today at 1st advent it is time to reflect what has happened over the span of the past year. A lot, sometimes I have the feeling it may be too much and clear to be seen by others, especially the value it has brought into the conversation.

Holding the tension is rather tiring even though this has been my philosophy in life to create the containers or -better said- social fields where others can act in following their own personal strengths, goals, and visions.

A sunny advent to all

Ralf

PS.: Thanks a lot for all your support and serendipity connections.
I got to know people like BetseyMerkel, ValdaWilson, MarkusStegfellner,
RayKurzweil, OttoScharmer, HalaMakarem, PhilippeGreier,
ConstanceWolter, MichaelSmolens, DavidHawthorne, AndreasBeyer,
CharlesVanDerHaegen, VilleKeraenen,  DavidOrban, BobRichards, ...

S... in the City? Or is it U..?

Following OttoScharmer a professor of MIT Sloan School of Management for some two years now. The initial spark to get interested was buying the book Presence during the System Dynamics Conference 2007 in Boston. Form the first page it hit me like a striking bold - it resembled my own life. A year earlier I attended a workshop, sponsored by BMW, to grow my personality (quite a still thinker not as outgoing and furiously fighting for my points - so my boss back then thought), and had come back from the year earlier SD Conference. This caused me to tell my life story (which was done by every participant of the workshop) in causal loops - which I must admit looked messy, or at least not linear!

Isn't it that new things often emerge out of chaos? Where nothing is the same as yesterday and surprises interchange?

2002 the sheer chaos overcame Dresden when the waters of the River Elbe spread across it. New connections, friendships, ways of seeing the things emerged. The physical help back then was the main driver for change, the use of Web 2.0 was not yet really up, only rough databases run over a web interface enabled the helpers and help seekers to communicate.

Eight years have passed now. It was 2008 when I sensed that something profound was boiling under the surface of this area of Germany. Some events, like the closing of the Henkel plant in Genthin, some German car manufactures got in trouble (and with them their suppliers), in a way were the first signs of something bigger emerging.

Again it became quite obvious that everything is coupled with everything and the people, US, are just entrenched in the middle. Because of the pressure and urge to earn a living we often don't have a chance to see the larger picture. The result was that the old and formerly successful strategies for the organizations to get out of trouble re-surfaced in 2009. Cutting personal, close their channels to the public and customers to a minimum, only to work on what their leaders on the C-levels perceived perhaps as the one and only cure.

However in eight years quite a lot has happened and the social net, also embedded in the Web 2.0, plays a more relevant role than ever in the growing interconnectivity. Today it is no problem to chat with somebody from South Africa, and in the meantime get Facebook messages from friends in Italy or Australia.

Whilst the business organizations are still struggling to keep their problem solving knowledge to themselves initiatives like CoWorking, DesignThinking, PresencingInstitute, TeamAcademy, or LockSchuppen, CoOrpheum, NeonWorx (the three latter ones from Dresden), and more are springing up all across the globe. Their aim is to make the ground fertile to enable the large-scale shift of how we will live and work tomorrow.

Something however is different here in the city, which has a rich heritage of culture and industry alike. Bombed and burned to the bone in the last days of the war 1945, they city's collective memory is still focusing on the days that most of us haven't seen and experienced personally. Could it be that this is has a major impact on keeping just in a more or less "closed circle" and seeing inwards?

I guess not, even though the change is small and during my study time of economics you would call this "weak signs".

Looking deeper there happen things that no one would have seen a year ago. The director of the University of Leipzig for example will be for the first time a woman and here in Dresden the first intendant of the Saxonian Opera Semperoper is for the first time, after several hundred years of male dominance on the top, also a woman, Dr. UlrikeHessler.

Not only the outfit on the website has changed for Semperoper but their various ensembles are moving into a space where lots of other organizations don't dare to step in. On Facebook the SemperBallett and the JungeSzene are moving into the sphere that is not common for artists. It is great to see the flourishing conversations, and upcoming dialogue on their fanpages.

Congratulations to the whole team and a courageous leader on top who was willing to step into new areas of doing - Dr. UlrikeHessler !!!

May it be the starting point for something bigger that is piling up in the beautiful city of Dresden? I am quite positive especially as I get some surprising events concerning my own vision about the place where I now live again :-)

So long and just think next time when you get a tweet or Facebook invite from somebody you may have not even seen or talked to, take the present of surprise for granted and be happy :-)

Cheers, and so thankful for my "Australian Sparks" (Marigo, whom I know already through meeting twice by syncronicity in Boston, and Valda whose tweet on the OpenDay at Semperoper after enjoying the ballet team in the training room for quite some while has initiated my own action)

Ralf

PS.: It all started with a furious discussion about the new website design of the Semperoper - and as always this kind of action and energy driven into it made me curious to understand the underlying currents and mental models.

Ziehen von der Zukunft her - Reset!

Einige provokant klingende Werke hat RichardFlorida in die Welt gebracht, wie "The Creative Class", "Who's is Your City". Der umtriebige Wissenschaftler, der sich seit Jahrzehnten mit dem Phänomen nachhaltiger Stadtentwicklung für die zukünftigen Herausforderungen, beschäftigt war tief getroffen von Pittsburgh. Dort lehrte er an der renommierten Carnegie-Mellon-University und inzwischen an der Rotman School of Management der University of Toronto.

Nun ist sein neuestes Werk auch in Deutsch zu haben und ich habe es in einem (fast ;-)) Zug verschlungen - und wer JaneJacobs bereits kennt (seine langjährige Mentorin), der wird unwillkürlich sagen, "Das ist alles nichts Neues!"

Was für Dresden daraus mitgenommen werden kann, am Montag heißt es wieder Workshop im Rahmen der Prognos Studie zur Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft in der Stadt Dresden. Ein paar Hintergründe sind auf dem KonzeptSpeicher von SebastianSchwerk zu finden.

Meine "provokanten" Fragen:

Wie sieht der Ablauf einer solchen Studie in Crowdsourcing aus?

Wie schnell ist die Studie erstellt, wenn alles über TitanPad abgewickelt wird?

Wieviel mehr Wirkung auf die Stadtplanung und Entrprepreneurship-Landschaft Dresden ergibt sich?

Wie lassen sich die zahlreichen CrowdFunding-Initiativen wie Seedmatch und StartNext aus Dresden integrieren?

Welche Relevanz und monetäre Auswirkung (in positiver Weise) zeitigt die frühzeitige Verknüpfung über Facebook und Twitter mit Initiativen wie z.B. CoWoDDev, NeonWorx, DresdenExists und  in anderen Städten, wie z.B. Graz wo bei der I-Know auch Communardo GmbH aus Dresden zugegen waren?

Wie relevant ist der Besuch von Gästen (CharlesVanDerHaegen und VilleKeraenen) von TeamAcademy am kommenden Dienstag, 09.11.2010, im CoOrpheum für die Gestaltung der Zukunft von Entrepreneurship in Dresden?

Lassen wir uns alle von den Ereignissen der nächsten Tage überraschen - Keep your Mind Open and Grab the Opportunity as it Approaches  :-)

Inner Voice Cutting from the Edge

Over the past two days, really amazing things happened in Dresden. One of which was the ballet performance "The Inner Voice". Jiří Bubeníček (back at the time Principal Dancer at the Sermperoper Ballett) decided to build the story around a sculpture of AugusteRodin, and to use the open space interior of the Albertinum to allow the flow of action, thought, and reflection. That opened up fully new and unexpected views - for the audience and dancers, musicians alike

Impressions of the days. The video of the performance can be found here (timeless).

Besides the focus on the art itself, ballet is always a form of showing great leadership. Especially in the context, where the audience is almost sitting on your lap and standing somewhat in the way, there emerges free a floating of action just drawn by "The Inner Voice". Adaption to moving surrounding (the audience), with just a few fix points. Amazing in which brilliant way all the participants of the performance played up to their highest possibilities.

Wondering in thought through the three performances over the weekend I followed the following short speech of ViktorFrankl has come up in my mind. I wonder what role our "inner voice" plays in finding our very personal "search of meaning" in life.