Rapid Fire Learning - 5 for October

Rapid Fire Learning is here again this month of October.  I was tempted to look back over the year that this group has been joyfully and jubilantly learning together but I would not have been able to limit myself to just 5 things. So here goes:

1 - Learning and Play go together. I am and have been intrigued by the relationships between learning and play. I found a new quote when reading Scott Berkun's book The Myths of Innovation

"Like the child in the park, creativity is intertwined with the ability to see ideas as fluid, free things. Ideas come, they go, and that's OK; to an open mind, ideas are everywhere (something I'll prove momentarily). It's the willingness to explore, experiment, and play, to invest energy, hit a dead end, and then chase a new direction that allows minds to find good ideas. All of our notions of play, and its freedoms from formal judgement, are inexplicably linked to finding good ideas."

Reminds me that I need to allocate time to play. Do you make time for play?

2 - "Make a Difference" is really a year round event. The Center for Public Education has a nice flyer for use in local elections, particularly for school board candidates. The "All in Favor" flyer can be adjusted from a school committee focus to a town council focus to almost any position. It has some key tips to frame the discussion on what you would be looking for in a candidate.

3 - Collaboration is a wonderful thing. The results of Blog Action Day are wonderfully inspiring. The JJL happy birthday wishes are creative! There is so much good happening here and this is only a part time thing for each of us. Imagine the power of the group if this were to be a full time thing. This is wishful thinking, but by way of making the point that much good comes from the collaboration of the talented folks here.

4 - Priority is a must. There are many ways to set a list. It can change from time to time but there should be a list and it should be in good order. We are all as young as we are ever going to be. Our parents will require more help. There is so much to learn in caring for our parents. I need to make time for this. I need to take advantage of the time available to continue to capture Jerry's Story.

5 - PodCamp Boston 2 is this weekend. I know I will learn more there. What exactly? That remains to be seen. There is so much to learn in the creation of new media. I did come to realize that re-writing lyrics can be more fun if the song is actually in the public domain (as opposed to still covered by copy right). Since I have been stuck on music for some time, I crafted a new PodCamp Anthem. One version with options to plug in some specifics for each of the local places PodCamps are held. My PodCamp Boston version is here. The generic PodCamp version is here. If there is a PodCamp in your area, I urge you to consider participating. If there is not one, nor signs of one, then get some folks together and create your own.

Participating in PodCamp can bring together all the five learnings for you at once. You can learn and play. You'll need to set some priority to chose amongst the sessions. Collaboration opportunities are there for taking advantage of. You can make a difference!

PodCamp grew out of the Open Space rules:

1. Whenever it starts is the right time
2. Whoever comes are the right people
3. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened
4. When it is over it is over

Thus we come to the end of my Rapid Fire Learning for this month. Actually, we are just at the beginning. Be sure to share what you have learned either here or on your blog and trackback to this so we can all be aware.

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Steve Sherlock writes his 2 cent views on life from Franklin, MA. He explores the "good experience", "life long learning" and life in general, after handling the "before you blog" list his wonderful wife Dolores  provides him. Together they are enjoying the empty nest while their daughters are away at college. He has also resumed running and he podcasts tips and coaching advice at Passionate Runner.

Comments

[Rosa Say]

My goodness Steve, I don’t know quite where to begin for this month’s Rapid Fire Learning! For a month I normally dedicate to something I’ve nicknamed “Sweet Closure,” October had way more than it’s share of both starts AND finishes ~ and to be sure, waaay more than just 5 learnings!

So in the spirit of the stream-of-consciousness way we started RFL here, this is top of mind for me:

1. First our JJL Birthday: I knew, but learned all over again, what an extraordinary community of friends and collaborators in learning I have here.

2. Blog Action Day was such a grand twofer for me. I learned about the greater possibilities beyond what I had previously imagined, in regard to what the collective voices of bloggers can effect. We who are “citizen publishers” can do so much; what will be next? Astounding and inspiring. Then secondly,

3. The subject of Blog Action Day itself: The learning about our precious environment kept on coming! I had planned to write my one post on 10/15, and then found I wrote four, with much more journaling done as connects to my mana‘o on Sense of Place, a core concept in Managing with Aloha.

4. Something I have not yet written on publicly, is a learning that has been extremely self-reaffirming for me: In the first week of October I participated in the first Gallup University course of study brought to Hawai‘i, their Great Manager Program. I can’t say enough about it. For now, WOW.

5. For my fifth learning, I would have to say it has been about how crucial concepts of TEAMING are becoming for me in the workplace MWA models I am now working on with my SLC clients. I am strongly convinced that reinvented team dynamics are the key to some of the workplace shifts we are all experiencing, largely due to generational demographic factors, but also because of how the concepts we speak of here – learning, education and the sharing of knowledge – are in their own global AND localized evolution.

Whew! Long sentence, long learning! My quicker Hawaiian words: Lōkahi and Kākou, values which are more important than ever.

Thank you for leading this month’s reflection for us Steve. So much learning to be profoundly grateful for, and so many days to come of learning to be excited about!

[Karen Wallace]

Steve, as is always the case when I read your writing your month of learning is inspiring!

I too have learned so much from our collaborations here at JJL - it is an amazing team, and you're right - imagine what we could do if we were full time!!!

Thanks for the reminder about play - sometimes we get so serious in the task of living, we forget to relax and have fun. I think that will be my biggest learning for November.

I hope you are having (or is that have, in your time zone?) a great time at PodCamp this weekend.

[tim]

Looks like some good learning took place this month Steve. I especially like #3 and the benefits found in collaboration. I recently came across a quote that I love (and is now prominently displayed on a 3x5 card over my desk:

"The relationship of the parts is more important than the sum of the parts."

Not sure who said it, but I believe it.

Here's my five for October:
1. Today is the most important day in my life - I want to be as fully present in it as I can.

2. Doing something with little planning is far better than lots of planning and little doing. If all I do is plan, I am simply spinning my wheels.

3. If something happens to me that is unfair, I handle it a lot better then if something unfair happens to one of my kids.

4. I read too many blogs and don't write enough on my own blog.

5. One of the best ways to engage people (I don't know) in conversation is through the FORM method. I simply ask them about Family, Occupation, Recreation (what they do for fun), and Message (what matters ost to them). I can carry on a conversation for 45 minutes based on those four things.

[Joanna Young]

Steve, thanks for kicking this off. I enjoyed learning the Open Space rules - can see many places that I could apply these usefully!

I'm interested in the idea of play too - and wondering if we feel playful here precisely because it is part time and voluntary? Although I'm sure we could collaborate together in other ways, and that this collaboration would take us to some amazing heights - the joyful, exploratory, curious, fun-loving stuff maybe comes from the loose network that connects us together rather than something more formalised?

Things I've learned this month:

1. Talking to bloggers in person is fun! Two JJLers down... many more to go :-)

2. There's an auditory dimension to my love of words and writing that I hadn't appreciated up to now (people normally associate writing with visual preference) - this feels like a learning of some significance, but I don't quite know what the implications are (yet).. I might write about it here (when I find time) to see if I can get some help from all of you in exploring it

3. Blogging with other people and in other places is a great buzz for me - I want to do more of it - which probably means scaling back some of the blogging on my own site

4. I want to explore new online models that will accommodate the coaching dimension to what I do - which is why I'm so interested in the possibilities that "teaching sells" offers

5. Writing as part of a community/network is fantastic. Sometimes when your energy flags and your motivation dips you find someone saying or doing just the right thing, maybe even without knowing they are, it's just the right thing that you needed to hear

Thanks for getting me to stop and reflect - I'm sure there are other things that I haven't captured - but this month I was focusing on the 'rapid' part of the learning challenge!

Joanna

[Steve Sherlocks]

Rosa, thank you for sharing your 5. From my days coaching track, the coming together of a group to peak for a performance were always special. The business world is sometimes more challenging to get that same sense of togetherness (team) especially when the team is pulled together from various organizations. I think the key is what each brings to the table. If they want to be there, they will help to make it work. If they have to be there, they will not pull their own weight and it will show.

Having been much more active in the organization of this PodCamp Boston was a special thrill. We did come together virtually from many spaces, each wanting to do something, each leveraging their strengths and the conference was a success.

Karen, thanks for jumping in. I am glad you like to play. I think that was one key driver for most of the success behind PodCamp. I am still wired (it ended 5 hours ago, as I write this). It was not work, it was fun to do. There will be more stories to share. One of them may be a signature story.

Tim, thanks for the FORM tip. I like it. I mentioned it to a couple of folks at the conference and they agree (liking the simplicity of the mnemonic). I did not get to use it much at PodCamp, we had much to discuss around community, web 2.0 tools, and the conference overall that I did not need to "fall back" on this. It is now a new tool in the tool belt. Thanks!

Joanna, you have discovered the secret to Phil's phrase of "taking the blog off the blog". Bloggers are interesting to talk with. They LIKE to talk. They have interesting things to add to make it a real conversation. I met with a couple of real interesting guys from Scotland at PodCamp. Ewan Spence and Nicolas Butler. Both made quite an appearance in their kilts! I'll have more to share about each of them as I collect my notes.