As many of you know, I’ve been a fan of DimDim for quite some time, so it’s with heavy heart that I pass on the info that unless you’re a SalesForce user, whenever your current license with DimDim ends this year, you’re going to be moving on to another platform.

Here’s a page of FAQs they’ve posted to help you make plans…

Passing the box of tissues around. I really have enjoyed using DimDim. On the bright side: this acquisition signals the movement of virtual meetings into mainstream business processes, especially in the sales realm.

If you haven’t already incorporated virtual meetings into your business processes, THIS is the year to do so. If you’d like some help, I’d love to coach you and your people to make the easiest possible transitions…

Amplify’d from www.dimdim.com

Frequently Asked Questions

How long will my service be available? Will I be able to access my recordings after my account is no longer available? How can I keep them? I have uploaded documents to my Dimdim account. What will happen to them? My account is on an automatic renewal, what will happen to my credit card information? I am interested in upgrading my account or extending my subscription, can I do this? I just signed up for an annual plan. How long will my account be available? I would like a refund. We have integrated with the Dimdim API. Will you be preserving that functionality? What will happen to the Open Source version of Dimdim? Will I now need to call Salesforce.com for support until my subscription expires? I still have questions. Who can I speak with?

How long will my service be available? Monthly accounts will be available until March 15. Annual accounts are available until their current subscription ends. You can determine the expiration date of your subscription by logging into your account at my.dimdim.com. Will I be able to access my recordings after my account is no longer available? How can I keep them?? Your recordings will no longer be available after your account expires. You can download your recording files and chat transcripts before then. See the Knowledge Base for instructions on downloading recordings and transcripts. I have uploaded documents to my Dimdim account. What will happen to them? The documents will no longer be available after your account expires. We recommend you download any documents you need before then. See the Knowledge Base for instructions on downloading documents. My account is on an automatic renewal, what will happen to my credit card information? Dimdim does not store your credit card information. Your subscription information (including credit card number) is stored in a recurring subscription on PayPal. All recurring Dimdim subscriptions on PayPal will be deleted. No further renewals will be offered. I am interested in upgrading my account or extending my subscription, can I do this? Account upgrades and renewals are no longer available. I just signed up for an annual plan. How long will my account be available? Your annual account will be fully functional until your subscription expiration date. Your subscription expiration date is available in your account at my.dimdim.com. I would like a refund. All accounts will be maintained with full functionality until their expiration dates. We will not issue refunds. We have integrated with the Dimdim API. Will you be preserving that functionality? Current API functionality will be maintained for all active subscriptions. What will happen to the Open Source version of Dimdim? The open source code made available by Dimdim remains available on SourceForge.net. Dimdim will no longer be contributing to this project. Will I now need to call Salesforce.com for support until my subscription expires? No. Customers will be able to access support through existing Dimdim Support channels. I still have questions. Who can I speak with? If your question has not been answered in this FAQ, please email the question to Dimdim Community Manager, Kevin Micalizzi, at info@dimdim.com. Read more at www.dimdim.com

I’m reading a number of new blogs lately and one, in particular,  really got me thinking this week.

You can read the whole post I’ve been chewing on here on Jeff Lowe’s blog at http://bit.ly/fqEiy8 .

In that post, Jeff’s thoughts are focused on planning for meetings in 3D immersive environments. But the issues he’s raising about the need to design the interactive space for collaboration are hardly limited to meetings in 3D environments. And, in particular, the list of questions Jeff poses for meeting designers seem to me to be crucial to the design of every virtual meeting in which your goal for the meeting is high-energy collaboration.

Granted, not all virtual meetings are focused on collaborative work.

But when you’re aiming for collaboration between people who aren’t in the same room (much less the same time zone), then creating a sense of shared presence is everything.  When we’re not able to be face-to-face with collaborators, the room, the meeting flow, and the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic elements and interactions need to work together seamlessly for human beings to achieve a sense of shared presence, shared meaning, and shared purpose.

I’ve clipped all of Jeff’s questions and raised a couple of additional points here on my Amplify blog. Please take a look and, if they stimulate you, too,  join in the conversation at Amplify – or right here below.

I’m always curious about what you’re thinking as you’re designing your virtual meetings… These seem like crucial questions to me.

On his e-learning focused blog, Christopher Pappas just provided a quick, meaty overview of several of the best free virtual meeting, web conferencing, and online meeting and online learning tools. I hope you’ll take a look at it today.

For several years, Christopher and I have been learning and from each other – across the globe. He’s in Greece and I’m in southern Oregon. And we’ve both been participating in online communities focused on e-learning. We haven’t met in person yet, but I look forward to getting a chance to shake Christopher’s physical hand one day soon and thank him for this post and all the rest of the pointers he’s shared with me and other colleagues focused on helping people work and learn from each other at a distance.

People have asked me several times to make a post like this and I’ve simply been too busy to take the time, so I’m grateful to able to point you to Christopher’s blog.

INTERMITTENT AND PERSISTENT COLLABORATION IS A WAY OF BEING
I particularly appreciate this vid he found from the folks at Yugma because it articulates a crucial distinction between intermittent and persistent collaboration.

I love the way this vid highlights the magic of using virtual meetings, web conferences, and online learning tools to enable different people to think about and work on the same thing in different ways – in real-time. Because that’s what’s important: the people working and learning together using whatever tools they find easiest to use when they’re not co-located.

I’ve found Yugma to be a practical tool for what the Yugma team calls “fluid collaboration.” So are all the other apps Christopher highlighted in his post. They all provide simple, practical, browser-based platforms for people to work together – both intermittently and persistently.  There are a couple of dozen other tools that work well, too.

But the issue isn’t really so much about finding the right TOOLS to use. The trick is understanding how to work with others fluidly and collaboratively. The real challenge isn’t so much how to technically access an online whiteboard or do a screen share. It’s learning to think about work and learning as continuous processes of creating and nourishing a sense of shared meaning – and purpose – with others.

MY PERSONAL PROCESS
Four years ago, I relocated from Austin, TX, a busy major metropolitan area, to a sweet town of 20,000 in rural southern Oregon.  Since I did this, I’ve been using all kinds of free virtual meeting tools on a daily basis to work with old and new clients across the country and continents.

After my move, clients and colleagues (many of whom have since become clients) started telling and showing me that they didn’t understand HOW I thought about work and learning as processes of persistent collaboration.

They didn’t understand how I chunked the work into manageable pieces we could accomplish in 30-90 minutes. They didn’t understand how I set up the tools to make it easy for us to interact in real-time. And they didn’t understand how I made decisions – on the fly – that made it easy for BOTH of us to contribute to the work product at the same time. (Especially useful when people have different ways of thinking and looking at what they need to do together.)

So, I started coaching my clients and friends and colleagues…and now, four years later, I’m “The Virtual Meeting Coach” as well as a health and wellness coach who uses virtual meetings to support my clients’ deliberately reorienting their lives around their natural strengths.

Over the last four years, I’ve field-tested all kinds of helping strategies, from one-on-one coaching to small group meetings. At this point, I’ve discovered that the one-on-one coaching is the fastest and easiest way for people to learn. But it’s also the most expensive. Some people need to speed things up and are ready to go for it, one-on-one. Others can’t focus all their energy on new skills because they’ve got a lot to attend to just to keep their revenue streams flowing. I can help in either situation.

To address the needs of people who can’t do one-on-one work right now, this year I developed what I call the Madhatters’ Tea Party Group Coaching Programs. They provide a 10-week fun, high-energy, and emotionally supportive practice environment where small groups of people can quickly learn “fluid collaboration” processes by doing them weekly – with me and their friends, fans and followers.

Participants report the outcomes are greater ease and a sense of excitement and facility at creating both intermittent meetings and persistent collaborative practices that nourish – and sustain – a sense of shared meaning and purpose with the people who are most important to them. Even when they’re not able to be physically co-located.

If you’re not sure which tools you’d like to get started with, I hope you’ll take a look at this post in Christopher’s blog.

When you’re ready for some one-on-one coaching, or to build your skills by practicing in a small group – using whichever FREE tools you like the most – I hope you’ll give me a call. I use all of the tools Christopher highlighted in his post and many others. I offer a FREE initial 30-minute consultation and I’d love to hear more about your situation.

As “The Virtual Meeting Coach,” I’m committed to helping smart people learn to use the free tools in ways – and at a price – that’s affordable and sustainable for everyone as well as our fragile Earth.

This is the future we’ve been waiting for, friends. The tools are FREE and they’re available NOW. If you’ve still got a lot more to share with others – and you can’t afford either the time or the money it takes to fly and drive all over the place all the time to share it – I’d love to help you get started collaborating fluidly with the people who are most important to you – in the areas that you’ve got crucial gifts to contribute. We need your gifts. Now.

Regular readers of this blog have heard that I went “over the hill” this summer: I turned 60. It’s been quite a ride!

Along with taking time to reflect on the journey this far, I’ve started culling through my extensive library, passing on books I don’t need to carry with me for the next decade, and reclaiming those I can’t live without. One I can’t live without is Homer’s Odyssey. Curiously, re-reading this ancient story over the last couple of weeks has given me some new insights about our modern lives –  including things like remote work and virtual meetings. One seems particularly useful. You tell me…

Time changes many things, but one thing that’s never changed is that human beings need to interact socially and work together in order to accomplish all but the most rudimentary tasks.

We need to build meaningful relationships, bond with co-workers and clients, align people around key messages and directions, nourish collaboration and innovation, share information and knowledge with one another, and encourage each others’ contributions and accomplishments. Right?

Over the last 40 years, the human journey from the Industrial Age to the Information Age has spawned national economies that are at once more complex and more interdependent. And these economies require more people – across the globe – to work together. At the same time, individuals, families, local economies, and the Earth itself, are struggling mightily to adapt to this increasing complexity and interdependence.

Since the end of World War II, people across the Western world have simply assumed that we can and will travel healthy distances almost every day to work together face-to-face. But both local and global travel are expensive, both in time and dollars spent. And travel fills the air with carbon byproducts. After fifty-plus years of explosive growth in human travel, the specter of climate change grows darker and heavier every day, across the globe.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

So, we’re “between a rock and a hard place,” as the saying goes. Human beings need each other’s help more than ever to accomplish complex tasks we cannot do on our own. At the same time, neither our individual pocketbooks, nor our organizations, nor our fragile planet can afford for the whole human race to travel around all the time so we can work together in the same place.

It’s a difficult passage, this transition to the 21st century.

The difficulty of the passage is quite similar, actually, to the difficulty of a passage the classical hero, Odysseus, had to make as he journeyed home to Troy a few thousand years ago. In fact, it was the difficulty of Odysseus’ passage between the Scylla and Charybdis that be the progenitor of our modern phrase, “between a rock and a hard place.”

In case you don’t remember, on his way home to Troy, Odysseus faced – and overcame – many perils. During one of the toughest, he had to pass through a strait flanked by twin terrors. On one side was a whirlpool, called Charybdis, which would sink the ship. On the other side of the strait was a monster called Scylla, the six-headed daughter of Crataeis, who would seize and eat six men. Neither side was going to yield an easy passage for Odysseus.

And, as we journey together into the 21st century, we’re navigating between two equally tough choices, as well. We’re passing between Scylla and Charybdis every time we have to choose between meeting with people face-to-face (incurring the associated costs – both in time and money) and meeting with people virtually (foregoing opportunities to read body language and facial expressions and bond with others – physically and emotionally – in familiar and time-honored ways).

Just as Odysseus had to make one bad choice or another, as we sail deeper into the complex waters of 21st century work, we have to make a sacrifice, too. Odysseus chose to pass closer to the Scylla, allowing her to take six of his men, instead of chancing losing the whole ship in the whirlpool of the Charybdis.

Every time we have to chose between conserving capital and expanding the reach of our services, we have to decide to drop irreplaceable cash and time into the whirlpool or sacrifice a fully-embodied experience with others. And, frankly, there just aren’t any good choices. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or fantasizing.

Face-to-face meetings are absolutely crucial for some social transactions. Online meetings are actually better for some transactions than face-to-face meetings. But, when you’re passing through the choppy, muddy waters between those two extremes, we all simply have to make some tough choices, just like Odysseus.

5 Questions to Sharpen Up Your Virtual Meeting Chops

So, what’s my best advice for those times in the middle? While I’m certainly no Tiresias, I am training my clients to use five fundamental questions to help them make tough choices about how they’re going to use web conferences as effectively as they would once have used face-to-face meetings – so they can pocket time and money for other things.

I urge you, too, to use these questions to clarify your virtual meeting plans and strategies:

These are tough questions. And the answers can’t be finessed. If you’re going to accomplish your goals using virtual meetings, you need to know – and use – the answers to these questions to structure your meetings as well as your between-meeting-communication. Any lack of clarity about any of this will compromise your chances of skirting the dangers.

Don’t kid yourself! People who are not actively developing their skills at using virtual meeting rooms as real-time multi-media communication “devices,” are in real peril as we journey deeper into the 21st Century. The good news is, with good help, developing online meeting skills is not that difficult.

My little e-book, “The Coach’s Short List,” is available if you want a solid set of simple structures to help you get started.

So, what insights does this simple metaphor stimulate for you?

Hello Ashland, Talent, Phoenix, Medford, Grants Pass, and Jacksonville, Oregon! I’m looking for one more Rogue Valley author, coach or consultant who’s ready to add virtual meetings to your communication toolbox this year!

At the end of this month, I’m starting up a 6-week small-group coaching program where you will meet in person with others like you and learn-by-doing in a fun face-to-face setting.

Ready to skill yourself up for 2011? We’re going to have some big fun! Read more here. If you’re interested, give me a call right away.

It’s 100% true. You can use your computer and free virtual meeting tools to grow your income and enrich important relationships. Take a look:

I love these Verishow clips because they show real-world situations with real people that are easy to relate to.

(Yeah, yeah, yeah…they might be actors. But they’re behaving just like real people. I have meetings like this every day with my clients, using a desktop computer or my laptop – from my home office, a coffee shop, or a hotel room. No kidding!)

If you took a couple of minutes to watch, you saw that virtual meetings really can be like child’s play!  Fast and easy for the host – and clients love them. They save everyone time, money, and hassle – whether you’re across town or across the globe from each other.

So…. The question is, if virtual meetings are really this easy, what’s keeping you from using them for 40-60% of your work?

That’s a real question.

Your answer might be something like:

1) I can’t believe it’s actually that easy – there must be a catch.
2) I don’t want to be chained to a desk on a computer.
3) I hate the way I look on a webcam.
4) I don’t want my privacy invaded all the time.
5) To use virtual meetings with my clients, I’d have to change so many things about the way I do business … and I don’t have time to do that right now.

Or something similar. I’ve heard a hundred reasons since I opened my practice as “The Virtual Meeting Coach” and launched Virtual Meeting Startup.

Every reason people have for not already using virtual meetings with their clients holds the seed of a legitimate concern. But not one of them is a serious obstacle. Not one. Certainly there are concerns to address, and ways you’ll need to tailor your approach to make it fit your clients. But every day, I’m helping small- and mid-sized business owners – just like you – quickly work through the challenges.

So, go ahead! Take the plunge! Just sign up now so you can use Verishow, ShowDocument, DimDim or vYew – or something similar – and start doing this week what you see happening in these clips! All four of those tools have robust free versions- and there lots of others like them.

HERE’S A LEG UP, NO STRINGS ATTACHED

On the other hand, if you can’t bring yourself to take the plunge on your own… but you want to be able to meet with your clients this way in 2011 – I want to offer you a leg up right now. To get it, you can use THE CONTACT BUTTON at Virtual Meeting Startup and ask for a FREE 30-minute private consultation with me.

I’ll listen to you, ask a few questions, and make some free recommendations based on your unique situation and the needs of your clients and customers.

ONLY TWO SEATS LEFT IN THE FALL GROUP COACHING PROGRAM

The Fall session of my 10-Week Online Group Coaching Program begins the week of September 19th. I’ve got 2 seats left in this group. And, if your situation is one that could really benefit from you being part of a learning group, I don’t want you to miss the chance to sign up for the next cycle.

Cynthia Winton-Henry, co-founder of Interplay, was a participant in the Spring session of the program. Here’s something she said about her experience:

The Madhatter’s Program was great for my learning curve. In spite of personal and job time constraints, it’s proof that when the heart and mind are in the right place, things work. Meri was the perfect coach for me at this time! Her spirit of fun, play, and that its OK to fail help the change become incremental, instead of overwhelming.

I love Meri’s accessibility and the amount of practice she’s had. It’s also fun learning who the other Madhatters are and sharing with one another.

One more time, here’s a link to the contact form to request a free 30-minute private consultation with me.

C U soon~!

As my friend and colleague, Carolyn Shaffer, knows well, a lot of us tend to worry these days about a lot of things.

Will we have enough income flow to see us through the years ahead?

How can we nourish crucial relationships with family and friends – when everyone’s scattered across the continent, or the globe?

What can we actually do to decrease the demand for fossil fuels – so we don’t have more disasters like we’ve already suffered in the Gulf this year?

A few years ago, Carolyn claimed her heritage in a long line of women who had all been “born worriers,” and decided  to take on the serious job of dispensing lighthearted wisdom for the heavy times in which we live.

Carolyn Shaffer
A long-time educator and, for more than 20 years, a clinical hypnotherapist and life coach (www.livingwellway.com), Carolyn has helped hundreds of clients move from fear and paralysis to joy and effective action. And, in response to the unprecedented global crises we face, Carolyn started whyworryguide.com to help thousands more learn how to make this shift quickly and affordably.

This week I will be Carolyn’s guest on her monthly Buddy Call. We’ll be talking about how all of us can move from worry to joy to effective action using virtual meeting tools (that are free or highly affordable) to reach more people and increase our income flow.

Strengthen Your Relationships With Family and Friends

Even if you aren’t in business for yourself, you can use the information and resources I’ll be sharing on Wednesday, August 11th, to take action on another front: strengthening your relationships with family and friends, especially those who live far away. In times of great change these relationships can turn out to be even more important than those multiple, flowing income streams.

Carolyn was a Madhatter in the Spring Session of the Madhatters Tea Party Group Coaching Program, so she’s been hard at work this summer applying what she learned to create new programs that will extend her coaching practice – using virtual meetings. She told me this week that she found the program demanding, especially for a computer-technology-challenged person like her, but also a lot of fun. Yes, F-U-N.

On this call, I’ll be sharing tips and resources for how you, too, can enter the world of virtual meetings and have a good time while you’re there.

Using our computers to communicate with each other – using text, still pictures, moving pictures and live drawing, along with our voices -  really does create conversations that are more engaging, more spontaneous, and more creative than just talking on the phone.  It’s true!

So, please join us on Wednesday, August 11th, at 6pm PDT for an hour of fun conversation. The call is FREE. So, bring your questions. Bring your sense of humor. Hell, you can even bring your worries! Between the two of us, Carolyn and I will do our best to help you with those, too.

There’s no cost to participate, but you do need to register at Carolyn’s site. Use the link below to sign up and Carolyn will send you the call number, conference code, and give you access to the call recording – in case you’d like to listen, but can’t participate Wednesday at 6pm PDT:

The Why Worry Guide Registration Page: http://www.whyworryguide.com/monthly-buddy-building-calls/

See you there! I mean hear you there…or hear you then…  It’ll be fun!

(c) 2010 Sara Harford, “How Far Down Is the Bottom?”

For me, one of the most enjoyable parts of this session of the Madhatters Tea Party Group Coaching Programs has been the participation of two different Interplay leaders as Madhatters, along with a crew of at least eight Interplay-trained Virtual Tea Partiers.

The Madhatters Virtual Tea Parties began with Gretchen Wegner leading and then, this week, we wound up the 6-week-program with the founder of Interplay, Cynthia Winton-Henry, leading the closing party.

Cynthia’s Virtual Tea Party explored the subject of “meeting” in virtual meetings, providing participants with a variety of opportunities to experience and reflect on what Cynthia calls “body wisdom.” She used slides, whiteboard participation, text chat, video cam, and music broadcast through the teleconferencing system to elicit and contain participants’ responses to images, sound, words, and both recorded and live video. It was an ambitious and thoroughly enjoyable first effort from a master of face-to-face whole body interaction.

In this rowdy debriefing conversation following the final session of the Spring Virtual Meeting Camp, Cynthia and Tom Carroll (of EvolutionaryLearning.com) and I explore some of the issues that come up when human beings try to squeeze ourselves into virtual meeting rooms. It’s hard for all of us – especially in the beginning of our transition into virtual meetings – not to allow the tools to worsen the mind/body/spirit split that western education systems trained into us.

However, as Cynthia’s party demonstrated, it’s not at all necessary for virtual meetings to make this split worse! In fact, as both Gretchen Wegner’s and Cynthia’s parties aptly demonstrated, when the meeting host/ess makes embodied presence one of the chief objectives of a virtual meeting, participatory strategies can actually create some unique bridging where bodies, minds and spirits experience joining in real-time at great physical distance from one another. And, the research shows more and more that when multi-level connections are made or refreshed – at a distance – people experience a renewed sense of commitment to and responsibility for projects and teams they’ve signed onto.

This is exciting stuff to me!  I look forward to hosting some guest posts very shortly from Cynthia, Gretchen, and others from the global Interplay community. They have much to share with all of us who aspire to effective use of online meetings, web conferencing, and even 3D meeting technologies!

PLEASE NOTE: Because Cynthia is such a wild-and-crazy woman, she moves around quite a bit as she speaks. So, be prepared: as you watch this vid, you will experience a less-than-fully-detailed representation of her face at various times during the recording. Personally, I love the way the video alternates between a recognizable image of Cynthia and a kind of nutty pixel-headed avatar image. Very Madhatter-ish!

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame where everything shines as it disappears.
- Rainer Marie Rilke

Okay, I’m breathing deliberately at my desk. I’m taking short walks and breathing deliberately. I’m meditating. I’m chanting. I’m practicing the Power of Now, the Law of Attraction and doing The Work. I’m crying. And I’m still not okay about watching, helplessly, as the Gulf of Mexico turns into a toxic waste site.

I grew up going to the Gulf on vacations to swim with my family from the time I was a tiny girl. Then, when I was a teenager, we moved to the west coast of Florida and my adolescence was spent swimming on Lido Beach and Longboat Key. I had a short stint up in Georgia while I went to college and started a family, but I always went home to the Gulf to find my bearings. And I took my kids there from the time they were little. Even when I moved to Austin, I made as many trips as possible to the east coast of Texas to immerse myself in my beautiful Gulf. My whole life, it’s been my holy water.

So, while I’m now living in southern Oregon, I might as well be right there on the coast of Louisiana because I FEEL what’s happening there – every second – deep in my heart. And I’m at my wit’s end. I feel angry, helpless, and so sad I can barely breathe.

And, the worst part is I’ve been telling myself I don’t know what I can do – from up here – to help. Friends, colleagues and clients tell me they’re feeling the same anger, helplessness and sadness. My friend and colleague, Sharon Drew Morgan, even wrote a totally wacky post in her biz blog this week about Aliens and their possible role in this tragedy.

In fact, it was Sharon Drew’s post that actually shook me out of the trance of helpless rage at BP for failing to take responsibility for what’s happening. The insanity of talking about aliens popped my attention over to my personal responsibility as a driver whose demand for gasoline to power my car continues to fuel BP’s race to produce oil to meet that demand – at any cost.

And here’s a fresh video about the cost. The real cost:

So, What Can We Do – From Right Where We Are – About the Disaster in the Gulf?
If you can watch that footage without wanting to vomit, you’re a better wo/man than I. I can barely stand to watch it. Because I loved those waters. I loved those fish. And I love every single shell that washed up on the pristine, white sands of those beaches  since I first set my little foot on them. I’ve been picking up shells from Gulf beaches since I was three years old – shells left by sea creatures who died a natural death in those waters.

I simply cannot physically go down to the Gulf right now to help with the clean up. I’ve had the same kind of financially challenging year that everyone else has and I don’t have the cash to take off work and drive or fly down there right now to help with the clean up in person.

But, I can do something from right here. I can stand up – in my full humanity – and lead sans  shame or embarrassment. Like this guy:

Who cares if I look like a fool to start with? This is our precious Gulf of Mexico!!

So, here’s my declaration:

I can – and I will – offer every day to help people who sell professional services learn to use virtual meetings to start delivering some of your services without having to get into your cars to drive somewhere just so you can sit down in a room to work with other people. Sometimes we have to, but we don’t always have to do this!!

I can – and I will – keep reminding people through this blog that until we all learn to use these tools in skillful ways, we are just blowing smoke when we open our mouths and speak about “greening” this economy or “saving the environment.”

It’s time now for us to walk our talk! Will you join me?

The Times They Are A’Changin’
If you don’t know how to use virtual meetings to work with clients and colleagues at a distance, you have no other choice but to walk, ride your bike, ride the bus, or get into your car – or fly – to work with other people! But not having another choice is simply no excuse when the tools to work collaboratively – and at a distance – are FREE and I’m here to help you learn to use them!

The truth of the matter is this: Until each of us knows enough to be able to exercise choice with our colleagues and clients – ie., to work virtually sometimes, using live meeting tools and Web 2.0 collaborative applications, whenever doing so won’t damage crucial relationships – each of us must take personal responsible for creating the tragedy in the Gulf.

It is our driving habits that are the driving force in the demand for oil production.
Along with BP and lazy, selfish congressional regulators, it is YOU AND I who must take full responsibility for what our unquestioned – frequently senseless – work routines and habits are now doing to drive the demand for oil that is killing the Gulf and the other precious oceans!

So, how about singing along with me and Don Henley and song-writer extraordinaire Bob Dylan (celebrating his 69th birthday this week)? How about learning to use virtual meeting tools? And how about starting NOW?

Want to Do More Than Just Sing?
I’m starting up a new Madhatter’s Tea Party Group Coaching Program in July. It’s going to be fun…and it’s just not that damn hard!

If you want to participate, contact me this week right here for a FREE 20-minute consultation: http://virtualmeetingstartup.com/contact.html.

And if not now, when? While we keep fiddling around, the Gulf is burning.

Speaking of fiddling, a million thanks to Diana Fairbanks whose wide-ranging, quirky intelligence and warm friendship brought both the Rilke poem and the Leadership Guy vid to my attention early Thursday. You can enjoy her eclectic taste in music here on her new station at Blip.fm as you ponder next steps….

Everything Sir Ken says in this TED Talk, from February 2010, is just as true about adult learning as it is about our children’s education. And my commitment to this perspective about “informal” learning is central to the program design for the Madhatters Tea Party Group Coaching programs.

If we are to resurrect our local, national and global economies, we’re going to have to resurrect our spirits first. Starting with the spirits of adults! And the resurrection of spirits depends on organic processes, not pre-packaged “scalable solutions.”

Early in the talk, Sir Ken says, “Changing education is about challenging what we take for granted, challenging the tyranny of common sense…. And it’s very hard to know what you take for granted – because you take it for granted…”

Then, delightful, dry Britt that he is, Robinson quotes Lincoln:

‘The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with it. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we will save our country.’ – Abraham Lincoln

Robinson went on to say so many funny and profound things. I captured just a few in text as I listened:

” The idea we are enthralled to in education – the idea that life or learning is or should be linear – is simply false. Every TED speaker has, either implicitly or explicitly, told us this for the last five years!

“Life is organic. We create our lives organically in response to things that happen to us. This is what is true. Yet, we have built our educational systems on a fast-food model where everything is standardized. And that model – as Jamie Olivers’ Food Revolution has been telling us – is depleting our spirits as badly as it is impoverishing our bodies.

“We have to change metaphors – from a manufacturing model based on linearity, and conformity, and batching people – to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We simply have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it is an organic process.

“We cannot predict learning outcomes. All we can do – like a farmer does – is create the conditions under which human beings can begin to flourish.

“So when we look at transforming education, it’s a process of customizing and personalizing services for people you are actually teaching. Doing this is the key to the future.

“The reformation of education isn’t about ‘scaling a new solution.’ It’s about creating a new movement in education where people create their own solutions with external support based on a personalized curriculum.”

Amen, Sir Ken Robinson!! Amen!! Bravo, bravo, bravo!!

And bravo to the Spring, 2010, cohort of Madhatters and Virtual Tea Partiers! Your willingness to use virtual meeting rooms, video conferencing, Web 2.0 tools and innovative teleconferencing tools to learn together – online, organically, and grounded in your precious and personal passions and dreams – makes my life worth living. As a coach, as a trainer, as a consultant.

As a “teacher.”

I would like nothing better than to be able to use that word, “teacher,” again without thinking of a hapless supervisor on some horrid assembly line like the one Chaplain depicted so masterfully in “Modern Times” – now close to 80 years ago… Can’t we please wake up from the industrial /mechanical trance? The alarm’s ringing loud in the Gulf of Mexico!