Occupy-ers need to become skilled in AoH. Who wants to help?

[George Por]

The global Occupy movement, inspired by Occupy Wall Street, has the potential to bring more joy and dignity into the life of more people around the world than any past social movements, by righting what is wrong with the capitalist system.

Whether it will realize that potential is another question. Among other factors, it is also a question whether Occupy-ers can become skilled in the arts of hosting conversations that matter, rapidly. It is an urgent issue because the forces of repression threatens the all Occupy sites and the movement may even implode, by not being able to access and mobilize its full collective intelligence.

Where do we, AoH practitioners, stand? On the sideline watching history doing its work in front of our eyes, or with our sisters and brothers, who put their body on the line, day after day, fighting for all of us? If you feel called, go to your nearest Occupy site, participate in a General Assembly, feel into how you can help, then act on your feeling!

If you're in London and inspired, please join Linda, Liane and me in the conversation about how we can support Occupy London, in this forum. To start with, we could meet next Friday (Dec 9), 7 pm at the General Assembly at St.Paul's and have share our thoughts about it over a warm meal or tea afterwards. In preparation to that, to get better acquainted with what is going on I suggest that browse the Working Groups and other online conversations, here.

For more background information on the current use of collective intelligence methods by the movement, you may also want to review these two blogposts. 

Then, when we are ready, when we learned how we can introduce AoH in a way highly relevant to the movement's issues, let's offer a series of brief educational events either in the its Banks of Ideas (the re-possessed UBS building) or at the Tent City University.

We can also use this forum, here, to explore any of the broader issues about the relationship between AoH and Occupy. Let us know what all this means to you.

love and solidarity!

george

[Liane Fredericks]

Hi George - thanks for the beautiful insights from the Attention Training...practice practice practice :) I'm booked up Friday evening but keep me in the loop of other meet up times and i'll continue conversations here as well. X 

[George Por]

hi Liane, and thanx 4 being a fellow enthusiast of paying attention 2 the inner field, from which we pay attention 2! :-)

here's Otto Scharmer's map to the 4 fields of attention we talked abt last Friday:

to practice generative listening,  let's ask ourselves and each other:

what do we hear when we listen to the future of the Occupy movement?

when we really become skilled at generative dialoguing not only with people but social phenomena like the Movement, then we can create something truly valuable that, I bet, the folks at The Future of Occupy would love to publish!

btw, the next Attention Training for Social Change at Occupy London's Bank of Ideas  will be on January 6. Hope 2 see y'all even b4 that - g.

[Linda Joy Mitchell]

Hi both - so who ever comes are the right people eh !  Ive been to the Occupy Leeds site ( with Luke our bard and Annabel from Hazelwood) Here is a little photos.  Its a very small site and Im going again this week to talk to them, hang out a bit and see whats going on.  Im gonna look into the possibility of being in London this friday - if I can do that George lets meet up and go together - what might AoH offer into Occupy and what might we learn from each other?  

[Linda Joy Mitchell]

http://artofhosting.ning.com/forum/topics/working-with-power - this is a great little model from Chris C that speaks to some of what we are talking about here I think - weaving a field between activism and relational models of change.  

George might you link this convo direct to the AoH UK bit of the site as well - I would never have found it in the exciting new development space - I didn't even know it existed 

[Frauke Godat]

George, great to read this here! There is a small group of AoH practitioners in Berlin who had one meeting around connecting with AoH to Occupy and I am blogging about Street Hosting here: http://streethostingberlin.posterous.com/

[George Por]

Frauke, I much appreciate your work with Street Hosting, including your collection here: http://piratepad.net/ea9EAfsKyv . I wish more people knew about it. It feels to me as if there was some resonance between that and what we do here: http://thefutureofoccupy.org/about-curating/ .

If you'd want to explore some kind of collaboration between our projects, drop me a line.

g.

[Liane Fredericks]

Evening George. I've never been involved in calling an AoH from the start so i'm curious on many levels... What would it take to host one with Occupy London? meanwhile hope to see you on the 6th Jan.  

[Ria Baeck]

Under Resources -> Articles - Documents -> you will find a link to a page with 'Documents related with an AoH training'. There you can read more what it takes to call an AoH training.

[Liane Fredericks]

Thank you Ria...a reminder to listen to what's around me and in front of me :) 

[George Por]

Liane, I think the fist step is to find and establish rapport with a Caller for the training among the people in the Process working group of Occupy London. Why not read and respond to its "Facilitation training" conversationhere.

[Liane Fredericks]

thanks George - i've sent her a text message to see if she's got time to meet up :) 

[George Por]

I'm delighted that you reached out to her.

Keep me posted and let me know if and when you need a mate for the hosting team. 

You may also glance through the movement's own process documents to get a sense of how  AoH can enhance what we're already doing well.