RELATIONSHIPS CONNECT US, NOT TECHNOLOGY

Have you ever been at a meeting with someone who leaves their IPhone on? And every time they get an email or a phone call or a Tweet, a little bell on their phone goes "Ding" and then that person's eyes are down on that IPhone trying to see who contacted them and what the message is. Holy smokes, is that annoying. Plus, ya know, communication is something like 90% nonverbal so that person whose eyes are glued to their IPhones is totally missing all the nonverbal cues they need to be registering and responding to and, well, the quality of the meeting goes to pot 'cuz they can't focus on the PEOPLE around them.

Me to people who leave their IPhones on at meetings: STOP IT!! Be with the PEOPLE who are at your meeting!

Margaret Wheatley, one of the great thinkers on the topic of leadership and community has this to say about technology:

Knowledge management is not about technology. [...] [W]e modern managers are dazzled by technical solutions. If people aren't communicating, we just created another Web site or online conference. [...] But these technical solutions don't solve a thing if other aspects of the culture - the human dimension - are ignored.

[...] [I]n the absence of face-to-face meetings, people have a hard time sharing knowledge. It's important to remember that technology does not connect us. Our relationships connect us. We share knowledge because we are in relationship, not because we have broader bandwidth available.

-- From Margaret Wheatley's Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time

SOME RESOURCES FOR COMMUNITY BUILDING

BOOKS BY MARGARET WHEATLEY, INCLUDING:

Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time

Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future

A Simpler Way

Margaret is a woman who has been teaching, writing, speak about, and practicing the art of community-building with an emphasis on “radically new practices and ideas for organizing in chaotic times.”

BOOKS ON AMAZON.COM ABOUT BUILDING COMMUNITY

MEETUP.COM is an online social networking portal that facilitates offline group meetings in various localities around the world. Meetup allows members to find and join groups unified by a common interest, such as politics, books, games, movies, health, pets, careers or hobbies.

PROJECT FOR PUBLIC SPACES, which offers these trainings:

How to Turn a Place Around is an introduction to the Placemaking principles and process. The two-day workshop is held twice a year in New York City, and is geared toward a broad spectrum of professionals and community activists

An introduction to developing and maintaining successful public markets, How to Create Successful Markets, is also offered twice a year, in New York City or a host city. Tours of public markets and interviews with market managers are essential elements of the course. The course builds upon the work PPS does around the world in creating public markets as a catalyst for social and economic change

Streets as Places is a two-day training seminar held in New York City three to four times a year. The course introduces participants to new ways of thinking about streets as public spaces and shows how Placemaking can build great streets and great communities. Streets as Places features a walking tour of recent street improvement projects in NYC, an on-site Placemaking street audit, and open discussions about current transportation issues and challenges.