Author Archive

New bright green technologies are bursting forth to help us leap towards a bright green future. What are also emerging are new mental and social ‘technologies‘ and tools, like new paradigms and frameworks (e.g. The Natural Step, Resilience), new cultural norms (e.g. slow travel, short showers), and new ways of conversing and collaborating. The process of how the recent Hallbarhet2009 events were created and unfolded, demonstrate the value of some of these new technologies, and suggest the greatest technology of all may be community.

Hallbarhet2009 was a co-creation, with no single person leading, nor any one who knew everything that was being done in the lead-up. Everything from planning the schedule, site visits and menu, to facilitating workshops and hosting presentations were done in a ‘create and learn as we go along guided by a common vision‘ way. This process can be seen as a microcosm of the type of process we are embarking on as a whole, with societal sustainability as the project. So, communication technologies like Skype, Basecamp, wikis, Google docs, Maratech, shared calendars (using the iCal standard) and email groups are also likely to be globally relevant tools for ‘us’ to learn and act together across cultures, languages and time-zones.

Collaboration can be great fun, but can also be frustrating and unproductive if done without a common frame of reference or shared vision of success. Fortunately the group on the Hallbarhet journey were all pursuing the same goal of ‘scaling up our impact by ten times‘, and trusted and understood the same language and concepts from our education (e.g. sustainability principles, backcasting, strategic questions, systems thinking). We are all also familiar with some of the social and collaborative technologies that enable groups to think and act together, such as Dialogue, asking Powerful Questions, Open Space Technology, World Cafe, peer coaching, presencing and Theory U.

Though the guests we met during the Halllbarhet2009 event in Australia were diverse, they all expressed a common interest in new ways for us to think and act through and for the ‘whole’. It seemed to me that more important than the engineering and scientific technologies we saw such as biodiesel plants, intelligent buildings run on solar thermal power, biodynamic agriculture, and permaculture community centres were these social and mental technologies that enable collective thinking and action. Consider the following examples, from the ancient to the modern:

• Aboriginal people inviting visitors to their traditional lands to participate in welcoming ceremonies, a kind of spiritual technology: circling a sacred fire and breathing in the smoke generates a visceral sense of respect and connection with each other, other species and creation.

• Scientists are organising through forums like the Wentworth Group, IPCC, and IGBP to provide timely, consensus recommendations that are driving national and international policy.

• Universities (e.g. BTH, UTS and RMIT) are encouraging transdisciplinary research - a new mental technology - to enable innovation across departmental, sectoral and epistemological boundaries.

• Community, business and government are working together through institutions like the Murray Darling Basin Authority, and using new market mechanisms for trading water rights to protect the long-term health of the world’s third-largest river system.

• Activists and NGOs are using new political tools, pushing elected representatives to respond appropriately to the climate emergency.

There are so many flavours and forms of collaboration that make so much sense to Web 2.0-savvy readers, so you might wonder why it is not happening more. That was actually the question considered at a ‘network of networks’ Global Sustainability Dialogue at RMIT at the end of the Hallbarhet2009 journey. Some of the barriers we identified included;

• The desire to ‘get more done urgently, now‘ rather than taking the time to really connect, listen and build the trust that underlies collaboration.

• While democracy and consensus are always the best way to decide and collaboration always the best basis for action, total democracy and collaboration can be problematic. Knowing when and how to lead as an individual within a group is a challenge.

• While teamwork was important, critics can emerge if you appear to surrender your values and commitments in favour of group consensus e.g. take activist turned Labor politician Peter Garrett as a case study.

• Being too identified with your own profession/network/clique, and its language, symbols, models, paradigms and habits can seriously inhibit inter-network collaboration, even within the sustainability movement.

These barriers to sustainability are real, and at least as important to the barriers to adoption of new engineering or technical solutions. So, is the greatest tool or technology we have for sustainability actually ‘community’ itself? Sharing, co-creating, supporting is now, as it has been throughout most of human history, not just a warm fuzzy concept but actually critical to our survival. We are now a global tribe whether we like it or not, with no enemy except ourselves. So while individuals need to act strategically, authentically and boldly, doing it alone is not enough to reach our own potential (as Gladwell argues in ‘Outliers’), let alone our collective potential.

A shift in focus from individual heroes to mass collaborative leadership and action is required, but challenges how attached we are to most our primary identity as independent, autonomous individuals. Perhaps it’s important to remember that sustainability is not the characteristic of one organisation, rather that of the whole system, and so with leadership: it’s relevant as a role of individuals at certain times and certain ways, but ultimately the sustainability challenge is about what we can and must do together.

So, if we really want to change the world, let’s celebrate and use all the ancient and new technologies that create community. Like collaborative blogging?

The agenda is taking shape and is divided into:

1. Visits - meeting people along the journey for interactive sessions & presentations (input still welcome). These will attempt to balance content across a number of core themes to ensure there is something for everyone, including for instance energy and climate change, community, policy, environment, business responses and of course, fun & general interest!
2. Workshops - working amongst our group based around the theme of ’scaling up the impact of strategic sustainable development’
3. Reflection - time to chill, think, discuss and generally hang out with people or otherwise contemplate alone. A key part of an intensive experience that is as important as any other!
4. Travel Time - in our biodiesel bus, moving between places! This offers opportunity for fun and presentations from the group. Importantly, there will never be a single day with more than four hours of total travel time (generally not more than 2).
5. Global Connections - using web platforms we will connect with thought leaders and others in our network who are convening regional events in American and European timezones. 

View a Map

continue

Respond to the e-vite sent out to all almni. If you did not receive one, please contact us. This is our main way of tracking confirmed interest.

Respond to the FAQs with your own thoughts, or ask questions directly of the organisers.

Join the Google groups email list: http://groups.google.com/group/Hallbarhet/ Participation in this list does not require a google email address, but does if you want to access the group directly online.
Note: This link does not appear to be working at the moment. Try the Yahoo! group below instead.

Join the Yahoo! groups email list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Hallbarhet2009/

Take a role in the project, based on the details here.