Project management consulting and training for social change organisations.
Web of Change 2004 was fantastic — thanks and congratulations to the convenors for organizing and facilitating such an amazing and inspiring conference (I'm already looking forward to attending again next year). Thanks as well to the outstanding group of participants from Romania, Hungary, Amsterdam, the US and Canada. It was wonderful to meet you all and to learn about and be inspired by the work you're doing.
Highlights of the conference for me were the overview of social network theory provided by Gideon Rosenblatt of ONE/Northwest and Katrin Verclas of Aspiration, the (hilarious) presentation given by Andrew Boyd on the grass-roots street theatre group and media campaign Billionaires for Bush, Rex Weyler's presentation on Greenpeace, culture and the media, and the excellent sessions led by Jeff Balin on values-based leadership.
I felt very privileged, as well, to participate in the Group Council/Board of Directors sessions arranged for us at the end of the conference. In these, groups of six met to discuss our organizational challenges and to provide each other with advice and feedback. This was a really good way to end things off — I left feeling encouraged and energized. Again, thanks to the convenors for putting the conference together and to everyone involved for making it what it was.
I registered for the 2004 Web of Change conference today — a four day retreat at the Hollyhock learning centre on Cortes Island in B.C. (September 16th to the 20th). The theme this year is "Connecting Networks and Movements" — our focus will be to explore the impact technology has had/can have on social movement networks (where the health of the networks is a determining factor in the vitality and power of the movement itself — see this paper for more).
I also had lunch with Mark Surman of the Commons Group and Phillip Smith of Community Bandwidth today, two people involved in coordinating WoC, and I may get the chance to lead a WoC workshop on the need for "lightweight" project management frameworks/methodologies for use on progressive sector/social movement network projects (and if I do, I'll post my workshop materials here).
Are conventional project management tools and techniques too "heavyweight" to be useful to social movement networks, and if so, a) how so, and b) how should the projects these networks undertake be managed instead?
