Because so many of us will be at www.nexusforchange.com, we’ve moved our bi-weekly call as follows:

Next call:  FRIDAY, March 16, 2:00pm, pacific time.

Call in number:

605.990.0100, code 272059#

We’ll resume calling every other week, starting March 28, 4:00pm, pacific time.

Attending the March 7 call:

Stephen Silha, Tom Atlee, Peggy Holman, Heidi Nelson, Gabriel Shirley

Note:  Heidi has taken on that vital role of registrar, with our thanks.

What we covered:

*  Invitation status

*  Inviting process

*  Idea:  Story house parties

INVITATION STATUS

The multi-media invitation should be complete by the end of the week.  You can see a copy of Blake Bertuccelli’s work in progress at:  http://co-intelligence.org/ssc/.  (It is really fabulous with Gary’s music and Dana’s art!).  From the flash invitation, you can link to registration or to find out more on a wonderful site that Tom created.

We expect to send you a short e-mail invitation that points to the online invitation by the end of the week.  We’ll also send you a .doc and a .pdf that you can use if you wish.  Once you receive the invitation, please send it to your invitees.

An update on the current version of the invitation

*  We have been working with Margo Adair, to do outreach to people and communities of color involved in story work.  Based on her counsel, we made some revisions to the invitation.  This led to 3 conversations during our call:

1)  Confirming these changes work

You received these updates with the March 7 meeting confirmation.  The changes included “master narrative” to “cultural narrative” and adding a sense of bringing stories from the past as well as from the future.

2)  Affirming that Tom and Peggy can tweak the invitation on behalf of the group based on other feedback that may come in during these first few weeks of its use;

As we add some additional people of color to the inviters, we want to stay open to any shifts in the language that can serve the outreach.  Tom and Peggy will send you a message with any such changes that we make and, if needed, new copies of the invitation.

3)  If there are changes Tom and Peggy judge as substantive, we’ll bring them back to the group.  In this case, there was one such change: who signs the invitation.  Here’s the story and the response:

We decided that the fact that we have only one person who is visibly of color in the signatories at this time would not be helpful in reaching out to communities of color.  We are opting to list just Tom and Peggy, along with a link to www.attendr.com/storyfieldconference for now.  So please do add yourself to attendr if you haven’t yet done so.  When we have a more diverse mix of people involved with inviting, we will revisit adding names to the invitation.

Please do add your name on the version you send to your contacts.

BLOGS

Tom has set up two blogs associated with the web site. One is for conversation among registrants. The other is a place to invite people to post story field contributions as they register and where they can post such materials at any time thereafter.

Only registered users of these blogs can post items in them.  You received emails a few days ago inviting you to participate in them.  These emails contain special URLs that contain permissions allowing you to join them.

Please consider making your own contributions so the blogs will have something other than just Tom's and my contributions when invitees visit them.  To register to use the blogs, use the URLs in the invitations you received.  If you no longer have the e-mail with the blog registration information, please contact Tom at cii@igc.org.

INVITING

We have heard from most of you with a list of who you plan to contact.  We’ll follow up shortly with those who haven’t yet contacted us.

We are looking for a way to put the spreadsheet of names online so that the list has visibility.  In the meantime, it’s attached.

As soon as you have the invitation in hand, please contact the people you wish to reach.

FUND RAISING IDEA

We have a good base of seed money to support those who can’t afford to participate without assistance.  Still, we wish to hold a standard that each person contribute in some way to coming, even if they can’t afford to pay their whole way.  The idea of story field house parties came up in conversation with Margo.  The idea is particularly to support young people in learning ways to actively create the means for their participation.  By hosting a house party to develop or share a contribution to the story field, they can also use the party as a fund raiser.  This idea could be done not just by people in need, but those who are inspired to raise money for others.

During our call, we acknowledged this was not a “must do”, but an idea for those who are drawn to it.

CALL PHILOSOPHY

We are aware that everyone involved in this project is VERY busy.  We see the bi-weekly conference call as a “place holder” for those who can participate on behalf of the whole.  In the spirit of open space, whoever comes is charged with making decisions on behalf of the whole.  That enables us to continue to make decisions without needing every person in every call.

Thanks to everyone for their support.

Peggy and Tom