Brock { Abroad }

“Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird, has a great chapter called Shitty First Drafts that’s all about getting over those internal voices that tell writers that what we’re writing sucks. The essay is all about accepting those voices, realizing that they’re going to be there for as long as you’re doing something creative, and then doing the only thing you can do: press on.”                                                                                      -http://thewriterscoin.com

On that note, here is a “shitty first draft” from a recent trip I took to Rome. More to come on the venue the Short Theatre Festival was at. Called the New Economy, it was quite an inspiring location. Check out the photography from the location here. Until then, however, here are my initial impressions:

Like sardines packed in a tin can, our Easyjet landing provides me with a view of land on one side and sea on the other. Sun seeps through the window as some turbulence creates a stir in the cabin full of Romans returning home. This will also be my home- at least for the next 48 hours. The first set of boisterous laughs and raucous remarks from the cabin mark the beginning of an entirely different atmosphere. Leaving behind an already rainy and cool autumn in Amsterdam, shrub-like trees scattered along a dry landscape remind me of a Van Gogh print in my living room.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from living in northern Europe compared to southern Europe, it’s a certain “keep it short, simple, and close to your self” attitude. Pondering this, my first burning question of the trip has entered my brain. Thinking about the old adage,”when in Rome, do as the Romans do,”  I wonder: what is the difference between the Mediterranean lifestyle I am entering compared to the Dutch culture I have grown so fond of? My first quest? Find the Romans.

Upon leaving the hectic center of ancient Rome, I was able to explore not just what the Romans themselves actually do, but how they really do it. It was my hypothesis that they weren’t so different from their northern counterparts (minus the climate) after all. Following my intuition, I found myself wandering back to where my bed&breakfast was located in Trastavere. Upon finding said locals, I surveyed a variety asking them to describe their city in three words.

I drifted back to the previous afternoon, just minutes after disembarking the plane and getting picked up by a gregarious gentleman chatting on his cell phone holding a sign with our names on it. Smiling and waving to the distracted fellow, we passed him to avoid holding up the flow from behind us. Catching up with us, we were soon swept out of an air-conditioned airport into humid still-summer air.

Loading luggage and all piling in, our theatre troupe was heading into terrible traffic with a man I assumed was a Roman himself. Soon, after sharing scraps of conversation between the five of us and him, he quickly corrected my mistaken assumption when I asked him to be the first of many to describe his city to me.

Although a non-native, I got my answer in one sentence. It’s chaotic, fascinating and… he was interrupted by a tiny smart car almost sacrificing it’s life for our beast of a machine loaded with theatre production artillery. Shouting a loud swear word I hadn’t heard since my great-grandmother who hailed from Verona, I asked him about the third word. Shouting, he said, as we sped past the tiny bug of an automobile giving one last call in typical Roman style.

When I actually asked him if those would be the three words he would to use to describe this city, he gave a long drawn out speech, unable to keep it as simple as it was when the answer just came naturally.

Simplicity in expression, such as a short gesture that speaks sentences, isn’t the only thing the Romans come by naturally. Simplicity in their food is an act of heavy patriotism. However, not observing the siesta isn’t a complete act of treason as it used to be. Although a seemingly extravant eating culture is actually wound together by a simple web of fresh, local, and all natural ingredients that keep the Roman’s dishes not just close to their spices, but also close to their hearts. {edit}

That’s not to say all things in Rome are that simple. The word I heard most when asking the Romans to describe their city in three words was… chaotic. Although the girl who spent her whole cigarette with us after only asking for a light seemed calm, cool, and collected, she was quick to admit that she hailed from chaos.

The next morning leaving the laid-back residental neighborhood in the outskirts of Trastevere, the chaos suddenly became clear. The fountain di Trevi wasn’t as beautiful as I remembered it to be. As a matter of fact, it was downright claustrophobic.

Trastevere, however, brings the chaotic feel of Rome without the pantheon or Fountain di Trevi from clogging it’s clustred but elegant piazza. Patched along a neighborhood where the urban vibe of eclectic street art and graffiti meets gold-sheathed domes of ancient Roman churches, Trastevera is the real Rome. Eating a slice of pizza while washing it down with a cup of gelato, I listen to the soothing water of the fountain in the center of Piazza di Santa Maria. The bell of the tower strikes twelve as a flock of pigeons fly overhead.  Punk youth camped out with their dogs along the walls of the piazza frame passing tourists walking toward the attractive church, a gyspy woman awaiting them, rattling change in a cup. An Italian family next to me shares a box of pizza.

My friend’s guidebook mentioned this neighborhood as having received the biggest surge of expatriate residents in all of Rome during recent years. Perhaps this also adds to the diverse style found not only in it’s transient inhabitants, but also on it’s labyrinths lined with tattoo parlors, pizzerias, postcard shops, and even a punjabi sweet shop.

Still recovering from Roman excess as I write this my first evening back, I am reminded where it all started to go wrong. After a heavy lunch, I pass a frenetic pizza and pasta take-away shop full of screaming locals at lunch hour. I can’t help but have a taste of food that seems to be leaving the pans faster than the four scrambling men behind the counter can weigh and collect on it. Although I get the awkward stare from a man next to me as I fumble over Spanish disguised in Italian accent, I fake my way through to order a fried ball of creamy risotto. Biting through the crunchy exterior into the core, I am treated to steamy chunks of spinach scattered around the al dente pasta.

Later that evening at Cafe del Moro, a bar blaring MTV music videos from the 80′s, I enjoy free aperitivos. Enjoying Italy’s answer to tapas, I admire the place. It has a sort of nostalgic feel with only two or three tables outside lining a particularly disordered four-way curve of pedestrian-only traffic. Grabbing one of the few spots any good people-watcher would envy made us feel exclusive and the huge glasses of house red they served alongside free mini-sandwiches, chicken nuggets, olives, and other international finger foods made Trestevere seem all the quirkier for the typical Roman holiday.

After a great run at the festival, we celebrated over a bottle of bio Belgian honey beer. It was there while chatting up the locals and attempting to break a bounty of language barriers that I heard the best answer for my Rome in three words question: Love, hate, live. Hell, we may have been a little drunk, but at that moment it couldn’t have been a more logical answer to such an illogical city.

I can’t believe I’m still awake right now. Knowing I have the second day of a workshop I’ve developed through Knowmads in collaboration with the Hub Amsterdam, I am still buzzing. It’s amazing the amount of things I am able to do with an education as amazing as Knowmads. Going out into the city doing collaborations like The Knowmadic Learning Lab make me realize that there a lot of other “pop-up, start-up learning spaces” happening all across the world.

When I mention this phrase, my mind immediately goes to Frauke Godet of the Hub Berlin. An absolutely gracious presence to have attend our workshop this past Wednesday, she has a rather interesting education topic that suggests the world’s next best “dream school” may not even need a roof. Here are some details on the concept, Future at School:

Facing the global transformation process from moving from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge age. Schools need to educate different skills and competencies:

INDUSTRIAL AGE…………………………….KNOWLEDGE AGE
Interpreted data……………………………. Interpreted information
Hierarchical………………………………….. Personally-constructed meanings
Soloed jobs and roles…………………….. Network org. and Knowmads
Chaos and ambiguity are avoided…….. Chaos and ambiguity are embraced

Inspired by John Moravec, a Knowmads ambassador and initiator of Education Futures:

Accelerating complexity caused by human activity is challenging society and individuals. We need to develop people who are capable to create alternatives in the unknown, to make sense of ambiguity, and to take leadership in chaotic environments.

Vision
To develop young people world-wide who take responsibility to design and create their future!

Mission:
To create a space for cross-generational learning and collaboration to support ideas for a radically better world.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m proud to bring back the second installment of my Summer Book Series! Relaxed, rested, and ready to rejuvenate this series after ten days of meditating, I’ve decided to profile two books similar to my recent mind-expanding experience. Our personal perceptions, how we think, make up the majority of who we really are. After over 100 hours of training the monkey in my mind, I’ll introduce the second part of this series with a book similarly titled.

A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink is centered around a thesis that claims we are entering a new age of commerce, living, and learning. Pink sees three forces driving the Western World in this direction: Abundance, Asia, and Automation. Also author of Drive: The Surprising Science of Motivation, states that there are six critical competencies required for this new era:

1. Design—not just a function but also DESIGN

2. Story—not just an argument but also a STORY

3. Symphony—not just focus but also SYMPHONY

4. Empathy—not just logic but also EMPATHY

5. Play—not just seriousness but also PLAY

6. Meaning—not just accumulation but also MEANING

An incredibly easy read, this book has great flow. As a great fan of Pink, I recommend the following YouTube video adapted as a taste of Pink’s brilliantly simple mind:

Written in the same style as Pink, in terms of format, Global Citizens by Mark Gerzon is my next recommendation. He states that there are three skills required for a 21st Century global citizen. Along the lines of Naomi’s previous post on openness, these qualities are:

• Witnessing- Seeing with open eyes-
• Learning- Opening our minds-
• Connecting- Creating relationships-
• Geo-Partnering- Working together

Gerzon concludes with a section on twenty ways to raise our Global Intelligence along with a great ‘action guide’ appendix of Global Citizen’s resources followed by extensive notes.

Stay tuned for an upcoming blog post profiling these resources! Until then, happy learning! Enjoy the last of these dog days of summer!

During the first morning of the Kennisland Social Innovation Safari, Kwela Sabine Hermanns, a personal role model of mine and also an ambassador for Knowmads, asked us all a very valuable question. She asked us:
What does social innovation mean for you?

It was an incredibly valid question. Every day in my very sheltered environment, although a school for the world, words like social innovation, sustainability, co-creation, presencing, and many others fly out of our mouths that would make most people outside the program, or at least outside social change circles, say… “what in the world…?”
Christina Jordan, another personal hero, is collaborating with many others to solve that very question. What (in the world) does social innovation mean? Co-organizer of the Cosi10, Christina is working to connect socially innovative initiatives around the world over a three month time span. In a “simple face-to-face unconference event,” they hope to create a networking and learning process that allows people to collaborate and share impact strategies, skill development resources, and even develop revenue models to build thrivable social innovations.

Still, the question remains. What constitutes a social innovation? From my extensive research on the subject, I like this answer best. Taken from the guys over at Social Velocity, they state that social innovation is…
“…a whole group of big, ambitious, new ideas and models for solving social problems. Social innovation is about changing institutions, organizations, approaches, systems in fundamental ways so that we can fix the many problems facing us. It includes things like:

• Creating new financial vehicles where nonprofit and for profit organizations that are working to solve social problems can have ready access to all kinds of funding (seed funding, growth capital, debt, etc.)
• Removing the hurdles placed in front of organizations working to solve social problems (accounting standards, IRS regulations, etc.)
• Restructuring philanthropy to be more effective at supporting real change
• Revamping government so that it can support, rather than thwart, change leaders
• Reforming nonprofit organizations to break out of the starvation cycle and become more effective at creating social impact

And that’s just the beginning.
Social innovation is big. It’s bold. It is a movement of people and organizations from all three sectors (public, private, nonprofit) who are taking a completely different approach, who are turning the status quo on its head, who are building new systems, who are asking hard questions, who are creating a new way forward.”

Finally, attempting to answer the question I first addressed, in one word, social innovation means for me connecting. It means a better connection to self and in turn a better connection to the world around you. It entails understanding that everything is connected to everything else and searching for the required passion to connect work to play.

The Knowmadic Learning Lab, in collaboration with the Hub Summer School initiative on the Knowmads platform, is my attempt to strengthen the power of connection, to be part of the social innovation movement, and to connect to you, wherever you are. We hope to see you on at the end of this month for a great day of playing with our passions at the Knowmadic Learning Lab!

There is a website I really like called Marc and Angel Hack Life: Practical Tips for Productive Living. In an article entitled How to Achieve Your Goals, one tip they recommend is having a support group of like-minded people who share similar goals as you that you meet with once a week to help each other self-reflect, gauge progress, and create an overall positive energy. This is what I see Knowmads as. Although I’m not incredibly clear on a definitive list of shared goals, it’s great to be in a group that shares similar values, principles, and a drive to live the life we love by “combining passion, business, and playful learning.”

As I’ve been preparing for a workshop in conjunction with the Hub Amsterdam for their Summer Learning Festival, I’ve spent my past few weeks developing some tools that may be utilized in our workshop. Together with my mastermind partners in crime Naomi, Oscar, Fran, and Manu, we’ve used each other to create more self-awareness in each other. Whether we were making lists of what we want to have, be, or do, interviewing each other, creating questions without worrying so much about the answers, or writing a love letter to ourselves, I have cherished this recent Sunday ritual. So, I’d like to dedicate this post to these people, who pick me up after long weeks. I love you all.

As we enter a break from Knowmads and I tackle the Social Innovation Safari, travel to Sweden for a Vipassana Medition Retreat, and visit a special someone in Oslo, I sit writing this on a Sunday. It’s my first Sunday in a month without my “mastermind group.” As I was thinking about them and surfing one of my favorite life-hacking sites, I found a new Sunday ritual to keep me going: 20 Questions You Should Ask Yourself Every Sunday.

Finally, if you are in the Amsterdam area between the 25-28 of August and would like to more about our Knowmadic Learning Lab, check out the previous link, and stay tuned for a new blog dedicated to living, learning, and loving. As for now, check out my fellow Knowmadic friend Naomi’s blog called just that. I love the learnings she shares.

Keep Calm and Carry On, everybody.

Doing is what I came to Knowmads to learn.

Energy is what I’m constantly exploring in myself and the world around me.

After a not so recent walk along the beach in Tel Aviv with a friend and spiritual mentor, Tsi-la, I learned a very beautiful metaphor for approaching each day. It is about energy renewal and the recent feeling of leaving a certain honeymoon period with my new company and school that I’ve spent the last two months getting started up.

to today, everyone!

I had a great picnic in the park with my friend and fellow Knowmad, Marianne Slegers, last week. It was the day before we left on a Knowmadic team-building retreat . It was the end of a rather scattered month, to say the least. As a matter of fact, the reason Marianne and I got together in the first place was for a meeting that wasn’t scheduled for a week later. Nonetheless, we had a great Monday off talking in the park about motivations, fears, and life in general. She shared with me her love for Stephen King’s horror books that she had been reading from a very young age. Later that day, I got this email from her about his theory on the different types of terror:

• The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm.

• The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm.

• And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. “It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…”

What are your biggest fears? I actually made a list and realized:

What have I got to lose?

What’s the worst that could happen?