Brock { Abroad }

Perhaps the best way to describe this city is like Amsterdam’s bitchier sister who is just as hot, but more in the ‘I can kick your ass’ kind of way. Rotterdam has chewed me up and spit me out, yet I still keep coming back for more. With gusts of salty wind, huge skyscrapers, and an impossible grind of cars, trams, and bicycles, she doesn’t give you the time to think. People aren’t strolling canals in circles, but crossing bridges with a direct destination in mind. Here, you work hard and you play hard. Any questions? If so, catch the nearest train back to Amsterdam; maybe someone up there will give you the time of day.

“The Glimpse Correspondents Program is for talented writers and photographers with a passion for storytelling and a knack for finding truly unique stories. The program is open to anyone between the ages of 18 and 36 who will be working, volunteering, or studying outside of their home country for at least 10 weeks.”

Here is a artistic statement written from the prompt:
“Why you are interested in being a Glimpse Correspondent? We also want to know what issues you hope to explore and/or what kinds of cultural adventures you hope to embark on.”

On Pilgrimage:

The ability to craft stories that create a meaningful connection between author, reader, and the snapshot moments spent with people on the path makes up my life. When it comes to using my talents in a passionate way and making a positive impact on the world, storytelling is more than my medium. Storytelling is my passion. There is a Zen belief affirming that upon leaping, a net will appear. This seems a fitting statement for the story. My extremely brief life has been a journey of leaps that led me to Amsterdam. After a long and bitter cold winter squatting with circus performers in Montreal, I became a Knowmad. As a nomadic knowledge worker at The New Business School for the World, my other passion for travel is used on a daily basis.

Joining an international team of young social entrepreneurs working and learning from each other has challenged me to “combine, passion, business, and playful learning,” as our motto states. Studying process design, social innovation and sustainability, new business design, personal leadership, and international project design, Knowmads aims to “educate change-makers.”

I continue exploring my learning journey that has brought me on pilgrimage with purpose. From Santiago to Varanasi, Palestine to Paris, I view life as pilgrimage. I’ve realized now on this journey that the destination never seems to arrive. Taking this approach to heart, I find myself constantly exploring this theme in my writing while listening to the life philosophies and stories of people from all over the world.

When it comes to travel, it’s often the people that make the place. As we continue flowing into an increasingly chaotic world, there’s a certain silence in the stories of people, all over the world. I believe this creates a story in the telling that no other medium can quite replicate. In story, a voice is given to the voiceless. In telling, a much louder sound emerges. This is a sound that holds more power than any army could possibly provide. As a storyteller, I am seeking autonomy from a society that has mastered the art of fear in the unknown through mass-management and hysteria in media and politics.

As I explore myself further through my craft, I also want to explore the broader implications travel has on socio-cultural interactions and innovations. Through bringing people together, there lies a necessity for an authentic cultural understanding. Through story, I attempt to break down the barriers and stigma modern culture and society has been spoon-fed by mainstream media. Through their telling, I hope to close the border between places and their people. I believe this responsibility is the natural step that can break down not just borders within myself, but also the borders within this world.

Who is the artist?

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

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 »

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?

The ninety two year old and wildly alive owner of Shakespeare & Company, George Whitman, requires a one page autobiography be written by everyone who stays in his library. Below is the one I wrote. George lives in a small apartment above the store. The place is a clutter of books, newspapers and autobiographies written by the 70,000 plus others who came before me.

Hunting is a rite of passage for young men in my town. I was raised on ice fishing and skiing on the border of Canada and a large lake. It was a small town called International Falls with the unofficial expression: “if you don’t know what you’re doing, at least somebody else does.” It was there that I discovered that, although I didn’t pass deer-season weekends at a hunting shack, I was still a hunter. Fortunately, my territory was much closer to home and full of much easier prey.

I served up coffee on the weekends at the only cafe our little town claimed smack dab in the middle of our historic “downtown.” Those long winter days were spent hunting for things I consider superior even to deer. What I hunted for were stories. About people. Who they were and what they were about, and what made them that way. I was fascinated by the history that the quaintly decrepite building held not just in its own stories echoing into the tin ceiling, but also in the stories of the people who had seen it so differently.

My coming of age wasn’t when I killed my first large buck, but rather when I heard a story of the most recent local student who had studied abroad, a completely new concept for me. It had been almost ten years since International Falls had sent a student away. Upon inquiry, I happened to meet the man in charge of the local foreign exchange program who, like the majority of locals, I actually already knew from childhood. However, I never envisioned him as a man who could get me a ticket out of there!

Soon, I was on a plane to Torrevieja, Spain, to experience the Spanish culture that I could only imagine through reading. I felt more a citizen of the world after leaving and was lucky enough to be accepted to a boarding school for the arts to pursue a passion in theatre. It was a relief knowing that I would be returning to a metropolitan environment instead of a town with a ratio of 7,000 hockey sticks to zero theatre. It was there that I discovered storytelling and creating with its elements. I fell in love that year with Shakespeare, Chekhov, and a girl. It was where I discovered sex and we rehearsed it together whenever we could.

Closing that chapter on my life, I determined that there is more to my life than just experiencing the steps that many walk in without any clear direction. I decided to postpone my planned studies in New York. Two weeks from now, I will be on a plane headed to Mumbai, India to help those less fortunate than myself. Above all, I am a hunter. I am a listener, I am a teller. I know there are too many unheard voices in India and the rest of the world. These are voices that must be heard. I want to give a voice to the voiceless.

Whatever this future holds for me, I want to leave it knowing that I made it just a little better than the way I found it. Thank you, George, for doing the same. Thank you for making this world just a little bit better. Thank you for giving me a place to rest my head. Last, but definitely not least, thank you for the opportunity to tell my story.

Keep on hunting.

I came across this software while surfing ‘Springwise’ where I was once again avoiding my task of writing. Declaring: “your mind, a monkey,” Ommwriter creates a zen sensory experience allowing you to customize your moment of meditation in the sacred and sensual act of putting pen to paper. Whether you think you can really concentrate better and this brings the writer back to it’s true zen experience, you be the judge.

If you’re just tuning in to this site, check out the post below this titled a.pilgrim{process}
What Do You Want to Do?

Read the rest of this entry »