what a weekend!

It started on friday. I went to tuttle which enabled me to meet mark, vinay and dougald again. I was directed to speak to a chap called ollie, who speaks to ministers on a regular basis. The best part of the experience was speaking with lloyd who set up tuttle, the social artist. I failed in my conversation with ollie, something about my manner. I was tempted and indeed encouraged to talk about the wave notion with its thresholds, but it did not fall on receptive ears. My fault, since I could tell the energies involved, although lovely people, there is a certain brittleness that means a distinction between word and thought, between action and intention. I should have honoured this sense and been more playful and light in my presentation such that on another day, we could properly discuss it.

The engagement threw me for a while, and I berated myself a little. However, I left and went wandering. I found anna turley deputy director of nlgn, new local government network. I walked into their offices and asked the receptionist if I could talk to her. She happened to be free, and we talked for some 15 mins. The conversation went well, and I felt that I had redeemed my confidence in my ability to communicate. It was much nicer and lighter. Although she could not see a way for her to move forward on it, she wants to be in contact. If anything does happen, she will be an important player, and I would like her to be in any prospective meeting with a VIP change-maker.

Then off for a meeting with vinay. We ended up doing a recording in the lobby of a hotel in mayfair. It was meant to be a direct confrontation of our realities, but when we got together that evening, we followed dougald's interest of capturing a conversation on video. Don't think i wrote about dougald. Dougald is one of the founders of school of everything. Went to a talk of his at the temporary school of thought on wednesday; very impressive. Spectacular character, eloquent and genuine in his integration of his experience, and flowed really well when improvising. So, his desire to record something about the wave took precidence, and we ended up recording a dialogue between vinay and myself. The vid has not been put up on youtube yet. We then went to the school to hear vinay talk about an interesting, and I would say accurate and useful, understanding of magic. His manner of presentation was also very powerful.

On saturday, I went to progressive london. I met a chap called pierre and had lunch with him and joy johnson, who chaired on the first meeting I attended which was to do with barrack obama and what "we" can learn from his campaign. Very interesting discussion, since it revealed the completely different realities that either party are not aware of, even though they were in the same room and apparently talking about the same thing. Pierre is an intelligent young man, who is making his decisions as he goes along combined with an open-minded attitude, and is looking to study political relations. Joy has been a politico most of her life, worked with ken livingston, and has seen plenty of changes in the system and politics too and is not afraid of speaking her mind. I was privilege to share lunch with them, and I was a little foolish in suggesting to them that there was an opportunity for us to gather our respective perspectives and experience in such a way that it benefits us all.

The format of the progressive london was still far too archaic. People behind tables, on stages, with a minute or two's contribution from people on the floor. A bit of shouting, disjointed discussion. It is mostly used for information transference! Weird. Ken and the speakers in the last section of the day were very impressive, inspiring and genuine, and I decided to hang around at the end of the conference to speak to jon cruddas since mamading had recommended I speak to him. His attention to people seemed genuine too, and so I outlined the wave notion to him and how it embodied a lot of what the speakers had said, but it was all about practical action now, and not just talk about it. He gave me his email, and I hope he creates the opportunity for us to meet this week. Even if I think it might be too late to catch the wave, it might be a useful experience to hear the kind of ideas and practice and networks that I am an example of.

Sunday began with a discussion with mamading and his meeting with vinay and dougald the previous night. He seemed enthused with the notion of playing a stone, my term, of making a node of the Jisc Developers Happiness meet up in early february. Interesting possibilities. Sunday also meant a visit to the temporary school of thought where tony had booked a session called "What Can We Do By Tomorrow?". Only mamading, tony and I started it, and we gave ourselves half an hour to come to consensus. We tried a technique of only saying one sentence at a time, ensuring we were inviting others to continue. We didn't manage to conclude, and that was mostly because we invited a few kids in, one called omar, and another called james. We passed the time-window, and we ended up talking. James revealed that he has dreams of being at the Olympics 2012, and I believe his dream is the kind of vector that can align a community. If we put our self-organising sense and skills into practice, we might be able to field some superb atheletes for 2012. Champions who are living proof of the operationality of self-organisation. We exchanged emails, and I hope to remain in contact with him see if he is interested, with omar too. Dougald and vinay turned up too, and there was a little interview which I shall put a link to when I find out when it comes out.

Ended the night with a deep vibe. I read some of my XQ solution booklet to tav and sofia -- and it works! It actually makes some sense. I have some reservations about discussing it. Sofia and tav have different notions, perspective, systems and processes of ideas, and by sharing them it appears we end up falling into the illusion that we are discussing something, when of course the maths is reflective of our processes. The trick is noticing the similarities.

Went off to tango. Had some seriously nice dances with fiona, an interesting challenge when dancing with the teacher claire, two disasterous times where I could not find my partners which made me feel like I couldn't dance, but then had a delightful dance with... with... I can not remember her name. We didn't really talk after the dance, which means there were no words exchanged and hence any label like a name just gets lost in the ether. Got home, did some jaxing, which I shall post up a link to when I get them finished, and a video for the kids who I taught last year.

What a weekend!