It has been over a month since doing any blog posts, having left off with a five month series on the Living Cities’ online Collective Impact course. Everything created in connection with that is at the New Community Paradigms wiki-page Collective Impact.
The time has not been spent idly though. A new form of what I like to think of as “external cognition” has been learned. This blog is one form. The new form is Kumu presentations. It goes back to what Ryan Mohr of Kumu had said regarding Using Systems Thinking to Explore Amplifying the Voices of Community Members:
Organizing information like this into a network map is great, but it can also be intimidating. We've found it best to use a separate presentation for the main linear threads through the network. When there's always a choice about where you could go next it's easy to get lost. A simple prev/next approach is much easier to follow.
Thanks for putting this project together! I'm excited to see how it evolves.
Back then I focused on the exploratory aspect but came to realize that I needed to also explore the presentation aspect because being purposely made with an intention to be open there remains a concern with complexity intimidation.
The information presented in the Kumu presentations, though still on the subject of Collective Impact, is able to provide a different perspective to the blog posts or the Kumu projects to which they are related.
There were two Kumu presentations created related to Collective Impact, or more specifically, the Kumu project Collective Impact - Living Cities’ online course. Both apply a Systems Thinking perspective to Collective Impact.
The first Kumu presentation is Documenting the NCP Collective Impact Exploration. The desire has been to move or insert Systems Thinking more into other fields such as Community Engagement or Collective Impact at both the exploratory or discovery phase and the implementation phase.
The second Kumu presentation focuses on a particular aspect of Collective Impact Organizations and the Systems Thinking Iceberg Model.
This will be to date, the shortest post written for this blog because the two Kumu presentations and related Kumu project should be able to speak for themselves.
The time was not only spent on Collective Impact Kumu presentations. The newly found means of transmitting understanding was applied to another opportunity that arose from the NCDD (National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation), NCDD Community News » Join the National Deliberation on Health Care Costs.
The NIFI (National Issues Forum Institute), in cooperation with the Kettering Foundation and Public Agenda sent out, You're Invited - Join a National Deliberation Project about Healthcare Costs - FREE materials available.
Again, a Kumu map project was created applying a Systems Thinking perspective to the material provided and a Kumu presentation was then created which will be put out for feedback sometime in the future.
Discovering tools for community empowerment in local governance and economic development efforts.
This blog is part of an online learning platform which includes the Pathways to New Community Paradigms Wiki and a number of other Internet based resources to explore what is termed here 'new community paradigms' which are a transformational change brought about by members of a community.
It is intended to offer resources and explore ideas with the potential of purposefully directing the momentum needed for communities to create their own new community paradigms.
It seeks to help those interested in becoming active participants in the governance of their local communities rather than merely passive consumers of government service output. This blog seeks to assist individuals wanting to redefine their role in producing a more direct democratic form of governance by participating both in defining the political body and establishing the policies that will have an impact their community so that new paradigms for their community can be chosen rather than imposed.