NextNower Gets Serious About Play: SERIOUSLY!

About a year ago, Gwen Gordon and I were playing together, exploring cosmologist Brian Swimme’s Powers of the Universe: Seamlessness – the source of all powers, the ground of being, pure generativity; Centration – the power of concentration and exhilaration, how the Universe centers on itself; Allurement – the power of attraction, how things hold together; Emergence – the power of creativity, how the Universe transcends itself; Homeostasis – the power of maintaining achievement, what the Universe values; Cataclysm – the power of destruction, living in a Universe where things break down; Synergy – the power of working together, mutually enhancing relationships; Transmutation – the power to…

Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) Events in the Bay Area Start This Week

Bonnie DeVarco, NextNowNetwork co-founder, has been very involved with BFI and will be presenting at the Bioneers intensive: The Buckminster Fuller Institute is proud to take part in a series of upcoming events in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. This series of networking events will feature projects from the Buckminster Fuller Challenge and opportunities to meet BFI staff and team members. Full descriptions for each event are below, further details are forthcoming: BFI at Long Now Foundation September 15th, 2010 6 – 8 pm (time subject to change) Long Now Foundation – San Francisco, CA (map) Meet members from…

Beingness-In-Action: New NextNower Blog Post on IONS “Noetic Now”

NextNower and Institute of Noetic Sciences external research faculty member Claudia Welss wrote this post in the new Noetic Now blog. (It seems lately almost EVERYTHING has either NOW or NEXT in its name, but Claudia named our network NEXTNOW back in 2003.) Other bloggers include Marilyn Schlitz, Dean Radin, Larry Dossey, and Peter Russell. “Have you ever heard someone say, “Hey, if we blow ourselves up/melt ourselves down and become extinct, the planet will finally be able to heal itself, so no big loss.” I’ve heard people express that opinion—some out of compassion for an Earth being destroyed by…

Community Leaders Convene: Join us at theCoreConference Sept. 23-25 2010

NextNowCollaboratory is a Community Partner of theCoreConference The strong resonance between the goals of the two organizations is obvious in this description from their website:  ‘One of the themes of theCOREconference is “collective intent”.  How can we come together to create something bigger than ourselves that benefits everyone in greater proportion to what we can do for ourselves.  This is inherent in any successful collaboration, and we are manifesting it in every way possible in our creation and execution of the conference.” theCoreConference has created a discount code for NextNowers.  PLEASE CHECK THE NEXTNOWNetwork HUB NEWSLETTER FOR THE DISCOUNT CODE….

NextNow Previews SHAPE OF THOUGHT

“Words and language, whether written or spoken, do not seem to play any part in my thought processes. The psychological entities that serve as building blocks for my thought are certain signs or images, more or less clear, that I can reproduce at will.” Albert Einstein Shape of Thought Preview Two NextNow co-founders, Bonnie DeVarco and Eileen Clegg, have published a preview of their 5-year “Shape of Thought” exploration.  Visit http://tinyurl.com/38rm6go.  Please visit their blog; they’d love to see your comments.  Follow them on Twitter – http://twitter.com/shapeofthought The Intersection of Nature, Geometry, and Communication “Words Capture Ideas; Images Free Them”  Bonnie DeVarco In…

Bruce Damer’s Planetary Mood Ring: BBC Interview

Those who have been following our work with the Global Coherence Initiative will really appreciate this spontaneous imagination initiative by NextNower Bruce Damer to attempt to reflect the “feeling state” of the planet.  While GCI is a science-based initiative, Planetary Mood Ring‘s invitation of personal, subjective reports of moods, once they are able to be visually mapped, could start to provide us with an interesting reflection of our collective condition.  Below is Bruce’s announcement.  (By the way, I just added my own moodie, but didn’t realize that in the aggregate there’s a limit to the number of characters, so it…

Collaborative Visualization for Collective, Connective and Distributed Intelligence

Bonnie DeVarco, co-founder of NextNowNetwork and one of the NextNow Collaboratory’s info viz gurus is facilitating the first Stanford University’s Media X Vanguard Visualization Collaboratory, “Collaborative Visualization for Collective, Connective and Distributed Intelligence:  Structured Data, Synthetic Minds–Visualizing the Dynamics of Knowledge” at Stanford this week. Below is a description of the event.  We plan to post some key insights from the meeting after its conclusion. You can also visit Bonnie’s blog, Scale Independent Thought, for her deep reflections on the topic, and the Spaces and Places exhibit, created to inspire cross-disciplinary discussion on how best to track and communicate human…

NextNow Collaboratory and “Summer of Peace” Initiative: Attend “Cities of Peace” June 10

NextNow Collab is exploring collaboration with Summer of Peace, a 501(c)3 project of the Tides Foundation.  (I’m leading the collaboration with sponsor organization Global Coherence Initiative and part of the science team).  This is a comprehensive initiative that will start in San Francisco as the first city/first summer of peace in 2010, and Cities of Peace is the first event of several leading up to that summer.  It’s a free event with opportunity to make a voluntary contribution.  From the website: Imagine… gathering the most inspirational peacemakers and the most effective peace-building programs from around the world to light up…

Brower Center Community Event: The Economics of Happiness

In an earlier post we announced that NextNow Collab is part of the Sustainable Enterprise Cluster at the new David Brower Center in Berkeley. Part of the Brower Center’s mission is to foster community and collaboration including through the offering of informative and inspiring events on site.  On June 3 Helena Nordberg-Hodge will be presenting a free talk, screening and reception based on her new documentary film, “The Economics of Happiness.”  I know some of our NextNowers support the Dalai Lama Foundation’s Project Happiness (including Jim Schuyler, who is the their CTO–his latest blog post features the Study Guide for…

NextNow Collab Visualization Expert Bonnie DeVarco at Stanford Media X May 18, 2009

Bonnie DeVarco, co-founder of NextNowNetwork and the collaboratory’s visualization technology guru has worked with Dr. Katy Börner, Elisha F. Hardy and others to co-create an experience at Stanford that inspires cross-disciplinary discussion on how best to track and communicate human activity and scientific progress on a global scale. The exhibit tour and discussion will be at Stanford’s Media X on May 18; the exhibit remains until December 31, 2009. The Stanford Press Release and a description of Bonnie’s discussion follows.  Also see Bonnie’s blog, Scale Independent Thought, for her deep reflections on the topic. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 8, 2009…