Brock { Abroad }

Jun 07

Two More reasons “Art School” is the next “dream” school:

In a recent blog post, Three Reasons I think “Art School” is the next “Dream School,” I wrote about why I think creativity, essentially, is the biggest factor that determines the (personal) leadership styles required in 21st Century Education. Recently, I read a tweet that states that creativity is the most needed leadership quality required in 2010. I didn’t open it, but I don’t think creativity is not just a fad of the current times.

Creativity is required for the present and future as we catapult into an emerging era of excess and abundance of resources of multi-dimensional degrees.

Two questions emerged from these thoughts as I put together that blog post:

Who is the artist?

What is the role of art and the artist in the 21st Century?

After exploring who I perceived as an artist, I determined three qualities essential to the thriving century nouveau Picasso:

“feeling,” or rather, giving meaning to
“creating” an authentic and balanced life in order to navigate through the required
“transformation,” or ability to flow, along the basic priciples of Liquid Modernity.

To further explore the story of these qualities, I pose two more traits:

Read the rest of this entry »

May 26

World Cafe; harvest

{abroad}knowmad No Comments »

So, I’ve decided it’s about time to put up another blog post. The first draft of this has been sitting in my drafts folder on my blog for weeks, since I last blogged. For many reasons, I just haven’t made updating a priority in the past few weeks. It’s ok to take a break, of course, but what I’ve come to realize is that not everything can be perfect. I admit this isn’t the perfect harvesting example, but I’ve decided to just let it go and stick to my blogging rule #1: It’s ok to be shitty.

Not everything I do can be perfect and I think that’s what makes an entrepreneur an entrepreneur. The ability to try, or prototype, something and know that it will be better next time. Maybe it won’t, but either way, if I did everything perfectly I’d never get a blog post done. Not to say that this harvest is horrible, but….

I am currently reporting from Paris, where I was sent for 24 hours to experience the KLM flying experience for our current project with them on the extended office. It’s been a period of extreme acceptance, growth, and challenge. I’m beginning to regain my strength. I will elaborate more on this as well as the KLM assignment in the next days. For now, however, I continue with a blog post that I started weeks ago. Like many things that have happened to me over the past few weeks, I feel a great weight lifted after pressing the publish button.

In a not so recent World Cafe , a social technology similar to Open Space and the Art of Hosting, Knowmads was honored to have as a special guest/host/learning sojourner Pieter Ploeg a.k.a. pietradelmundo.

As a collective intelligence tool, World Cafe was created to to create and harvest conversations that matter.

The first blog post introduced the creation of the space, this blog post focuses on what’s left of the beautiful conversation that was created. Here is a visual of what we harvested:

Based on the question: Given the state of the world, what and how do you want to learn for a better future? Read the rest of this entry »

May 10

Notes on a Pilgrimage: “everything is “alleged” here.”

*travels{abroad}, Israel, palestine, {abroad}journey 1 Comment »

If I could give one theme to my life, Pilgrimage would be it. I see it as a broad way to view life as one long learning journey. I see it as a slow accretion of details; of knowledge and experience. I believe that by going slow, being present in each moment, lies the key to going “fast,” if you will. By taking the time to reflect and discover more of who you are and what you want to get out of this lifetime, dreams can be realized.

My dream is to live that sort of “life on pilgrimage” approach; to view each moment as bringing with it a new possibility.

Easter Sunday in Jerusalem brought with a new possibility, but not the possibility I has hoped for, exactly. It was a disappointing experience, to say the least. Perhaps I didn’t prepare enough for what I expected would be one of the most moving days to visit such a sacred site. Did I attempt to give it enough meaning for myself? To be honest, I really couldn’t find a way to make it “special”. Besides, I think to myself, what is “special” supposed to mean, anyways?

Perhaps, there were just too many shiny objects in the way for me to see what was really there. I was completely blown away by the amount of commercialism I found. Entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcre, people fought past each other mercilessly in an attempt to rub personal amulets against a rock where Jesus was “allegedly” crucified on.

It was a huge church; constructed around a rock. Enamored with expensive gold objects and artifacts telling the story of a simple man who loved the world so much, he made the ultimate sacrifice of letting go. Observing the masses of mourning pilgrims, a feeling comes over me. A tingle that slides down my spine bone. It’s the same sort of tingly goose-bumpy feeling that I got upon entering the grounds of the Vatican City. As my mother describes it:

“it’s the sort of feeling you get when you know you’ve come “home”, to a place that has been touched.”

Touched by what, though? What’s wrong with just having a rock in the middle of a room? What’s wrong with letting that be “enough?” What does “home” actually look like, anyways? Would Jesus have created this sacred space in the same way humanity has attempted to? Someone, or many people, have said:

“there is just enough religion in this world to create hate, but not quite enough to create love.”

Perhaps that’s true. The whole experience has left me feeling off balance, jaded, and questioning everything I ever thought travel, life, and belief was supposed to mean. In Jerusalem, international territory, finding co-existing means police barricades, weapons around every corner, and vendors hawking goods and services in your face; I can’t help but feel that there has to be more.

Within the narrow confines of the old city, women in hajibs wander between bare-shouldered babes from the Western world as old orthodox men ogle past to wail their wishes to the wall. Colorful scarves, tapestries, and t-shirts billow in the wind, from the light entering the labyrinth of the old city. Something seems eerily ersatz with the scene. Read the rest of this entry »

May 08

Notes on a pilgrimage: Palestine

*travels{abroad}, Israel, palestine, {abroad}journey 3 Comments »

After a long night in Tel Aviv, the White City, I found myself in the back of an Israeli police car. Within two hours of my departure from the airport. With two other Americans and a Portuguese South African girl, who was wearing a miniskirt shorter than my bandana. We ran out of gas. Jet-lagged, I am still amused as we push the car across three lanes of speeding traffic at two in the morning. The girl in the short skirt and heels longer than my forearm? Not as much. After spending two hours at the airport checkpoint trying to pick me up, the three of them were definitely not when the the flashing lights appeared. This only heralded more glorified authority figures. This was something they had become very accustomed to.

Driving a car owned by a Palestinian Israeli with expired plates and no insurance didn’t make the matter any better. For my friends, working as teachers for the “other side” means developing an elaborate lie at every checkpoint. When they are in Israel, their complete lives are a lie. Luckily, the short skirt is a long enough veil to cover our story as we get towed off the freeway and are brought gas- free of charge. We are happy the police helped us “Western” tourists out. We breathe easy and decide that, by four a.m., going out is no longer worth it. Speeding off, we pass without problem past a checkpoint entering Ramallah. I now feel part of a secret. I can feel the big elephant in the room, but it’s dark and I am speechless. Seeing parts of it only make it harder to give words to it’s enormous presence.

It’s an eerie experience that I can finally say I’ve come to “know.” Whatever that actually means. After the brief stay is said and done, I ask, where can I find my truth in it all? I feel baffled and brainwashed by this situation. After leaving Jerusalem on Friday to go back to where my friend Curtis is in the West Bank, I find myself breathing better and experiencing a hospitality that I will not easily forget. The people are kind, the police don’t intimidate, and I feel like I’ve left the situation knowing a lot less than I did before. After writing all of this, I feel I’ve processed something. I’m content with the confusion, the complexity of the situation. I know nothing, actually.

Having dinner with Curtis, his friend Kaitlin from Reno, and her Palestinian-American boyfriend, I feel like I could live here for another forty years and still not completely understand everything that is happening here. This is just a taste and I’ve savored as much as I can for now, but this is a seven-course French dining experience, and I’ve only tried the appetizer. Hearing the verbal portraits of persecution and experiences from the Palestinian, I am numb. Recalling bits and pieces from his memory of the uprising, running from bullets, and throwing stones at strangers entering his sacred land finds me frozen. Sleeping until late in the morning, I sweat out a fever and awake from a horrible nightmare. Little did I know, that I would soon be entering a new dream, a glimpse into another world.

This one, much more real, however. I get a call from the American girl I had dinner with the previous night. She invites me to paint Palestinian children’s faces at a nearby refugee camp she volunteers at. In the taxi on the way there, I ask her why she does this:

“It’s a way to make at least a little instant change. To make a place a little better than before. It’s a place where the children know they can’t leave, but can’t fathom why. They simply want to go to the beach, but the beach is impossible. The beach is in Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is a world away.”

Each week, she goes there to the delight of dozens of children whose biggest requests are a very patriotic flag of Palestine, but also rainbows, flowers, and kitten faces. We had a great afternoon together and I became an expert at painting a Palestinian flag and learning the colors in Arabic. The situation is complex at best. It’s complicated to most from the outside.

Passing through the barren border today, I lost my coins in the metal detector that lacked baskets, showing my ID to a windowed soldier. Catching the next bus to Jerusalem, without coins, I was paid for by the Palestinian gentleman in front of me who helped me through the degrading border crossing. After leaving the scene? I can only determine that healing the situation requires justice and dignity; rightfully served to each “side.” A “no one is right, no one is wrong” approach must be taken. As I leave Jerusalem, I say a silent prayer at sunset and board the bus towards Tel Aviv, the New York City of the Middle East. Nightfall curves along the mountain pass as the lights of the city signal my arrival.

May 06

21st Century Leadership; styles

{abroad}journey, {abroad}knowmad 1 Comment »

Building on a previous post, 21st Century Leadership, leadership styles in the past, present, and future are explained by Pieter Spinder at Knowmads.

When it comes down to traditional leadership, bureaucratic and autocratic leadership styles come to mind. Involving hierarchy, power retention within “manager-style” positions, all decision-making is given on a vertical style of bureaucratic leadership where only the highest positions are involved. Staff, within organizations and corporations, do not consult staff and are typically not given the opportunity to provide input. Without explanation, they are expected to obey orders. Usually, they do so without ever given a second thought. This is typically due to a structured set of rewards and punishments that are involved if they fail or succeed. In other words, if they obey or disobey.

Autocratic leaders are especially reliant on these threats and punishments to influence their staff, which they don’t trust or listen to for input, anyway. Bureaucratic style is a bit more managed “by the book,” so to speak. Everything is done according to procedure or policy. If not covered by the book, it’s passed on to the hands of a higher level without further regard. It’s this behavior that places a police officer as simply a rule-enforcer instead of a leader, for example.

What are some qualities of other present leadership styles that are valuable and what are the leadership styles of the future? Some valuable qualities that can help make a group of people collaborate more creatively involve just that type of attitude. These qualities get everyone more involved, they create a community dialogue and discussion. They are an easy entrance to expanding your network in order to open up to a wider audience, within a differently structured format, involving like-minded educators of a similar skill level. Here are the styles of the today and tomorrow we explored:

Transformational Leadership

Make change happen in self, others, groups, and organizations. Charisma is a special leadership style commonly associated with transformational leadership; extremely powerful, extremely hard to teach.

Transactional Leadership

Emphasizes on getting things done within the umbrella of the status quo, which is directly in opposition of transformational leadership. Using a “by the book” approach, this leader works within the rules and is commonly seen in large, bureaucratic organizations.

Creative Leadership

Ability to uniquely inspire people, generating shared innovative responses and solutions to complex and readily-changing situations.

street art, Tel-Aviv

Corrective Leadership

Empowers staff to facilitate collaborative behavior and creates a synergism by working with and through other people instead of bowing to authoritarianism.

Change Leadership

Endorses alteration, is beyond thinking about individuals and individual organizations, and single problems with single solutions. Rethinks systems to introduce change on parts of the whole and their relationship to one another.

Intelligence Leadership

Is able to navigate the future by embracing ambiguity and reframing problems as opportunities. Takes a proactive stance in taking their organizations into uncharted territory.

Multicultural Leadership

Fosters team and individual effectiveness, drives for innovation by leveraging multicultural differences. Teams are able to work more effectively in the atmosphere of understanding and mutual respect.

Pedagogical Leadership

A video from 21st Century Pedagogy attempts to answer the question: How do we involve new technologies to meet the changing needs of students in the 21st Century classroom?

The literature from the presentation reads:

Technology will never replace teachers. However, teachers who know how to use technology effectively to help their students connect and collaborate together online will replace those who do not.

There is a paradigm shift from leader/teacher centered “orientation” to an interactive, connective organizational system using more democratic learning with a more dynamic communicative approach. This is seen as an alternative to instructional leadership by enabling the learning and intellectual growth of those led. Read the rest of this entry »

May 03

boarding for Jerusalem

*travels{abroad}, Israel, palestine, {abroad}art 1 Comment »

Central Bus Station, Tel Aviv

12.4.2010

The stones are screaming blood, she said. I am haunted by the words of my Israeli friend Tsila as I sit here writing in my notebook and watching the bus stop swell. Our conversation this morning, as she drove me to the station, sits heavily at my heels. The bench- a relief for my dream-like state of mind. There was a red light leaving her street. I ask her: “how can I find meaning within it all?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Apr 27

World Cafe!

{abroad}knowmad 2 Comments »

This past Friday, Knowmads was so very artfully hosted by Pieter Ploeg a.k.a. pietradelmundo. Introducing one of the most valuable tools I’ve taken so far from my education at Knowmads, we held a World Cafe! Used amongst other social technologies such as open space and the art of hosting, World Cafe is a collective intelligence tool to create and harvest conversations that matter. Materializing from almost thin-air, deep discussions are brought to the table. A cafe table, that is.

Opening the session, Pieter set the space with potted plants at each table and welcomed us in from a tiresome review meeting to the beats of world music, instantly lightening the mood. As we sat in a circle, we introduced ourselves with an animal and flower that represents us. The answers were fascinating and I was already beginning to gain insight on a deeper level about the people I spend an already incredible amount of time with.

Asking the question: Given the state of the world, what and how do you want to learn for a better future?

Any thoughts?

Apr 25

face painting; Palestine

*travels{abroad}, palestine 2 Comments »

Apr 23

Self-Working Day @ Knowmads

{abroad}knowmad 2 Comments »

Today was a great self-working Wednesday where the tribe got together, cooked together, danced, and started shipping! (literally!) Eight of us found our way to work en route a ferry where we went to sunny bar and cafe Noorderlicht near the MTV headquarters on the industrial north island of the city. Constructed from a greenhouse and secured at the base with cement bags, eclectic furniture, and an organically delicious menu and equally enjoyable staff, it has a panoramic vista of Amsterdam harbor. With painted leather sofas littered amongst old ship hull tables and cranes dotting the waterfront, this creative cafe was a buzzing hub of people working, talking, eating, and laughing. I think the tribe managed to do all of the above and then some! We split up to work on two very exciting projects that are keeping us incredibly good busy at the moment. One, from Royal Haskoning SMC and the other from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

{A special thanks from the tribe to Roel and Ellen over at Access to Retailing for the great tip on one of Amsterdam’s hottest hangouts.}

Apr 21

Time as Ritual

{abroad}journey No Comments »

Around the new year and after my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, I decided to take my life in a different direction. I decided to be more aware of what was happening around me and what was hapening to myself. I felt changed, literally transformed from the experience and I knew that by beginning Knowmads, where their motto is “we educate change-makers,” I had to be prepared to flow with the necessary changes to better myself, and in turn better the world around me.

I wanted to make it fun for myself.

I called it the Pilgrim Project and I encouraged anyone who read to follow my adventure. Maybe someone out there was inspired by this personal quest, I don’t know. What was more important for me was doing something I needed to do for myself and by posting it for the world to see, knowing that I was being held accountable. I had three rules for this year of planting seeds and some inspirational and concentrational words I really wanted to focus on. Read the rest of this entry »