Thoughts On Thrivability
Smart Cities, Living Cities
I spoke last week at Webcom, a Montreal-based conference about "smart cities" - meaning, those that are connected, informed and creative thanks to digital technology. The message I shared was that cities are "smartest" when they operate in alignment with Nature's...
Organizational Hospicing
It’s funny how life works – or I should say: it’s funny how death works. I had a conversation about organizational hospicing with a friend last week Thursday and then the next day I was presented with an opportunity to practice hospicing in my own life. My sense in...
Lessons from the Jam
5 hosts. 6 teams. 35 other cities participating. 48 hours to “rock the public sector.” Those were the key stats of GovJam Montreal, a global event in which local teams applied the tools of “service design” to conceive and develop viable projects that transform some...
It’s Alive!
I had a wonderfully stimulating lunch conversation with new acquaintance Lise Palmer of Spark Consulting recently. She had the delightful ability to challenge everything I’m passionate about in a light, playful way so that we could both happily learn through the...
You Can’t Plant a Forest
“You can’t plant a forest,” a friend said to me recently. He was speaking in general terms, saying: it's a physical impossibility. After mentally wrestling with the concept for a moment, the phrase struck me with its deep, practical wisdom – and its vital...
The Power of Place
Thrivability Montreal. Thursday, February 21, 2013. There are fifty of us gathered to explore what we’ve called The Power of Place. More wanted to come, but the room couldn’t accommodate it. We should’ve known it would be like this. So many of us quietly hunger for...
The Practice of Thrivability
Thrivability is a worldview, a global movement, and an active practice. Guided by what we know about living systems, it is a continual and purposeful drive to create the fertile conditions for life to thrive at the levels of the individual, the organization, the...
AoH Montreal: Post-Ecstatic Stress Disorder
This Art of Hosting stuff – it isn’t all rainbows and unicorns, you know. There are bumps and bruises along the way. Some they tell you about up-front. But some they don’t. The AoH community will tell you about the “groan zone,” for example – the middle point in a...
AOH Montreal: The Lost Practice of Apprenticeship
January 15. Months ago, we were thrilled when Toke Møller agreed to come to Montreal to lead our Art of Hosting event. But then he announced his three conditions – each of which would challenge our mental comfort and our egos. He alone would choose the other two...
