For over 3 years we provided conversation threads for people from different countries to offer their cross-cultural testoimonies on why they felt passionately abput connecting KM for the good of all societies and all peoples
Here's some of what was said out of England:
1 reminscing: 21 years ago, on my first vist to India, an elderly citizen from Bombay hobbled across the street. I will never forget his greeting: are you from London? You poor thing- I hear you are ruled by an Iron Lady. In India, we have so much luckier.
As far as my being can, I have loved all of Asia's diverse people ever since.
Cut: A few months after Enron, I was sitting with one Brussel's main open minded budget holders. Chris he said it will take 4 disasters of the financial equivalent to Enron in the same year before the politicians wake up to loving the value of working people and innovation differently in a networked age.
Gillian Bush , 16th July 2005 Colin Morley - with all our loveMs Gillian BushOne of the communally deepest Brits to died in the 7/7 bombings at Edgware Road tube, London
He was a knowledgeboarder
a Be The Changer
a fellow of The Royal Society of Arts and go-between for the great speakers on Sustainability, and a deep linkin supporter of Tomorrows Global Company
a blogger
a waiki-editor
a simpoleana critic of globally careless marketing and abusive media who helped changed the superficilaity and image-making addictions of the communications profession
and so much more than any one person can ever begin to describe in a poor thread
one of the great reformers of shareholder value and incorporation; one of the most deeply caring communal people that Londoners have ever been blessed with as a facilitator
an open space alumni
a resonating hi-trust centre of anyone's open network
and dear person and family mam
we will never forget the value of good spirits and true learning and open relationships. we will never forget your generosity of time and how many of our brains vibrate with action learning you gifted us
Love from all your communities
This is the Obituary his networks asked the BBC to co-edit
Greetings,
Now the 6/7 Olympic jubilation that swept London turns to a shuddering horror, 7/7 should remind us of the true nature of Jubilee, restoring structures of justice that work for everyone and protect the earth.
We should all be eager to hear of, and to propagate, positive initiatives in this regard.
This neat letter ( I've put the quote in front!) in the G today is neat is apposite too :
“Terrorism is the war of the poor;
and war is the terrorism of the rich”
There can be no solution while we continue to proclaim that "our" violence against “them" is always a just war; while "their" violence against us" is terrorism. It is all evil and wrong and our common humanity must come to acknowledge this if we are to begin to live together in peace on this planet.
Rev. Brian Matthews Wrexham
reply from Peter:Further, I have just dug out these two pertinent references to our engagement with justice.
Peter
------------------------------------
From COMPENDIUM OF THE SOCIAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH
Liberia Editrice Vaticana – 2004 isbn 88-209-7716-8 [552 pages £19.99]
CHAPTER SEVEN ECONOMIC LIFE [ pp 185 – 212]
I. BIBLICAL ASPECTS a. Man, poverty and riches
323. In the Old Testament a twofold attitude towards economic goods and riches is found. On one hand, an attitude of appreciation sees the availability of material goods as necessary for life. Abundance - not wealth or luxury - is sometimes seen as a blessing from God. In Wisdom Literature poverty is described as a negative consequence of idleness and of a lack of industriousness (cf. Prov 10:4), but also as a natural fact (cf. Prov 22.2). On the other hand, economic goods and riches are not in themselves condemned so much as their misuse. The prophetic tradition condemns fraud, usury, exploitation and gross injustice, especially when directed at the poor (cf. Is 58:3-11; Jer 7:4-7; Hos 4:1-2; Am 2:6-7; Mic 2:1-2). This tradition, however, although looking upon the poverty of the oppressed, the weak and the indigent as an evil, also sees in the condition of' poverty a symbol of the human situation before God, from whom comes every good as a gift to be administered and shared.
and
341. Although the quest for equitable profit is acceptable in economic and financial activity, recourse to usury is to be morally condemned: "Those whose usurious and avaricious dealings lead to the hunger and death of their brethren in the human family indirectly commit homicide, which is imputable to them". 714 This condemnation extends also to international economic relations, especially with regard to the situation in less advanced countries, which must never be made to suffer "abusive if not usurious financial systems". 715 More recently, the Magisterium _used strong and clear words against this practice, which is still tragically wide-spread, describing usury as "a scourge that is also a reality in our time and that has a stranglehold on many peoples' lives".716
714 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2269
715 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2438.
716 JOHN PAUL II, Catechesis at General Audience (4 February: L'Osservatore Romano, English Edition, 11 Feb 2004, p.11
Here is news of the 12th cafe I have invited Londoners to join in since we started to connect together ways of making London the equal of any knowledge collaboration city, and the launch of a new tour guide
aSIN -association of Sustainability Investment NetworksAs you may know, many of London's people networks have joined simpol -who first sponsored the
simpol collaboration cafe - in relaying the invitation to join these mini open spaces
1 2. Tonight's is cn-sponsored by the BBC, Starbucks and the Royal Society of Arts. To match a local theme with a global one I choose the debate of
People for Pensions - will there be any for
Londoners of the Future, and what happens if at a time that making poverty history most needs Londoners to be self-confident about the future of finances they become introverted and fearing only for their own needs. As some may know, statistically the pensions crisis would have hit before any others in Europe becasue we were the first to baby boom after recobvering from putting family grwoing on ice during world war 2. It didnt have to be agravated by that most malicious accounting firm in histopry -Andersen - advising labour of how to cream 5 billion a year stealth tax out of funnds for pensions. It didnt have to set an example in which many financial service firms offering pensions took more and more out of the long-term wealt they were supposed to be compounding for people. We didnt have to let corporations continue to be able to legally raid pension funds after seeing that fine example Robert Maxwell had seet at the start of 1990s. It shows how the people's future of London has been shredewd and sharded by those whom they gave a monopoly licence to rule over organsiation with truth and fairness, as as a mathemtician I side with the recent private eye cover - even more teriifying than what a Bin Laden can do is what badwilled mathematicians sysemise to lace their own pockets. So this is quite a hot cafe tonight but I put the invitation out across London's people betworks in these cooler terms:
Café Debate Tonight - Can Londoners’ Pensions Crisis Change Organisations for the Better?
Mr Chris Macrae
Last year in London Al Gore founded a Sustainable Investment firm http://www.generationim.com which has this to say about investment:
We believe:
• Investment results for long only equity strategies are maximized by taking a long-term investment horizon.
• Sustainability research must be fully integrated with rigorous fundamental equity analysis to achieve optimal long-term investment results.
• A concentrated approach allows maximum leverage of an intense research effort as investments will be entered into only when very high levels of conviction exist.
Add in two facts:
More and more Londoners are finding themselves in a future pensions crisis
Most people distrust the world’s largest organisations as no longer wholly designed to compound better futures for people
There are some pretty interesting conversations and materials building up to this London conference next Thursday http://www.getfeedback.net/plseminar/
Let's be quite frank, the evidence from trust surveys is overwhelming - the integrity of leadership has been devalued, and if people at the top are not going to rediscover priciples of transparency fast, democratic countries will take them down
What's more interesting is why have leaders got so lost.
Do mail us with other nominations. Meanwhile, here's why I nominate
Drucker as a benchmark.
I often get into deep water by asserting that people who have never read any Drucker fail to know much about what
organisation is capable of - which incidentally can be humanly great or wretched. The same goes for leaders, another subject that I see Drucker as pre-eminent (along with Meg Wheatley, and who please email us to insert here... ) in informing us on
One of the reasons why this water boils is that Drucker typically pioneers a higher path than academics or practitioners
What he doesnt do that academics often do is:Develop silos- he's interdisciplinaryJargonise - he preaches that organisation is about common language- at least ethical, purposeful and transparent organisations
Academics may also be jealous of Drucker. Because he writes in books and magazines; I am unsure if he has ever had to write for a journal; he certainly doesn't rate his productivity by numbers of papers written for journals
On the other hand, in terms of practice, I am unclear whether Drucker has ever been the main developed of a methodology. That's certainly not what I remember his works for. What he has done is develop whole new emerging economies- eg what knowledge workers can systemise that virtually all workers in the prior era of machine-driven industry could not
example 1
One of the stories Drucker tells (and I read this in a book written when he was about 80) is how every 3 years through life he has been concerned to learn a whole new subject or topic area. We could ask why a text on organisation suddenly presents this case in several deep pages of emotionally warming detail. Only recently one clue has come back to me. How many leaders of big organisations truly approach learning -in this somewhat humbling and certainly curious way - compared with how many who seek to extract knowledge and always appear to be perfect. Why is there a mindset that professional now involves always appearing to know? Even as it’s impossible to know how to apply anything worldwide in all the diversity that statement actually merits! I would rather we
taught in our schools that lifelong learning of new subjects is not just a human right, but something we require leaders of large organisations to demonstrated they do, or retire from the top. How about you?
Open Community 1 of ENGLAND @ knowledgeboard.com -neighbour cross-cultural threads of KM
Fin Rus Bra USA Swe Den Ind NZ Aus Can Jap Ger Fra Net Eng Ukr Wal Gre Spa Por Fra Slo Mal Leb Chi Mex Lat Cze My favourite foreign countrySome UK Inputs :
UK Cabinet Office pdf on Social Capital20 year's ago one of the country's leading economists believed that the value mulitplying epicentre of knowledge begins with
intrapreneurial teams and went on to explain how the
networking age's great social economies would only multiply if big organisations stopped trying to command and control every digit. We don't take back a word of it; there is no knowledge economy and KM is bunk unless you liberate human productivity and people's networks within a trustworthy and transparent system of leadership and governance.Nordica went on to implement inspiring views multiplying human, social and intellectual capital, whereas Britain and America became addicted to accountants numbers and cutting people down. Could we please now
unlearn these depressing mistakes of living by numbers alone?
