Today (Monday 17th November 2008) marked the inauguration of Chain Reaction 08, a two day conference in London which “will bring together social leaders, community activists, policy makers, business leaders, young people and people like you from around the globe to share learning and to generate new ideas for social change, locally, nationally and globally.”

Today also marches the launch of Global Entrepreneurship Week “the first worldwide celebration of enterprise, which aims to unleash young people’s enterprising ideas and address some of society’s biggest issues, from poverty reduction through to climate change.”

As the day ends in London, and all the delegates wind down, and finish up for the day, later, half way across the other side of the world, in San Francisco, there is another conversation about to begin, at The Global Summit where the question will be asked – “What will it take to build a sustainable future?”.  The Global Summit(TM) a world-wide partnership for a sustainable future, is laying the foundation for annual Summits across the globe. The Global Summit(TM) begins with a two-day symposium and culturally rich welcome reception. Outcomes include guiding principals for a sustainable world across six key social and economic sectors, a blue print for the world’s first global citizen voter platform and an online collaboration system that maximizes our collective impact. Learn more about this event by either reading this press release, or by visiting the website of the Empowerment works – the organisation responsible for putting on the event.

It seems like this week could truly mark the beginning of a significant changing tide in the world we live in today.. I’ll be personally attending Chain Reaction 08, where I’ll be socially reporting on the event, via twitter, and blogging, as best I can.  At the same time two dear friends, fellow facilitators of the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium, and former colleagues from The Pachamama Alliance where I volunteered for 9 months will be attending The Global Summit in San Francisco.  We’re planning to organise a conference call, after both events, to find out about each others experiences of what was shared, and to find out threads between the two events, that we might be able to start weaving together, between the two gatherings, half a world away from each other..

I don’t know about how much virtual engagement will occur at The Global Summit, but we’ll have plenty of resources to engage people online, coming out of the conference, so please do connect into the conversations in whatever way you feel would work best!!

Whilst clarifiying a few details for The Global Summit, I’ve discovered a few more relevant happenings this week..

This week the following related events are also happening, or did already happen:

Governor’s Global Climate Summit, Nov 18th and 19th, 2008, in Beverly Hills, California,
convened by Governor Schwarzenegger

The G-20 Global Economic Summit, on Nov 15th and 16th, 2008, in DC, organised by President Bush.
You can also read the Full G-20 Declaration.

The first pan-European Town Meeting on Climate Change, 15th Nov, 2008, simultaneously in Florence, (Italy), Cornellà de Llobregat (Barcelona, Spain) and Poitiers (France), in the context of the IDEAL-EU project, one of the ongoing Preparatory Actions on eParticipation funded by the European Commission.

So it’ll be interesting to see with all this flurry of activity, what long term sustainable social change could come out of these programs? and what actually ends up coming out of all these meetings…

If you’d like to engage with Chain Reaction 08 – we’re deliberately including an online social element to the community interactions, and so would like to extend the invitation to everyone to join in, participate, and collaborate.

You can start by tagging everything you generate with the official tag of chainreaction08 – so everytime you blog, tweet, post a photo on flickr, or just generally include anything that you would like to include in the conversation, be sure to include that tag (except if you’re replying to something that’s been said in twitter, in which case the fact you’re replying will mean that the earlier part of the conversation, as well as your response will appear in the results :)  This applies to all people who are at the event, and watching from their homes too :)

On twitter, to search for a keyword, you can use http://search.twitter.com and put in the keyword terms for Chain Reaction 08.

A comprehensive query, that includes all related variations can be found by visiting http://tinyurl.com/5pu375 – this will provide you with a complete list of all posts on twitter relating to the London Chain Reaction 08 event. (The RSS Feed for this query can be found here).

For photos, everyone’s been asked to post them on flickr, and to use the keyword tag of chainreaction08 to make sure that they are visible to everyone who is looking for images from the event.  If you’d like to see the latest photos that have been uploaded, just visit here.  If you happen to attend the Chain Reaction 08 event, and have pictures that you’d like to share with the other participants, then I’d like to invite you to create your very own free flickr account, and post the photos you’ve taken during the course of the two days onto flickr, making sure that you tag all your photos with “chainreaction08” (without the quotes, of course!)

You can also find relevant blog posts, that will help weave a connection between the participants of Chain Reaction 08.  Again, if you want to have your blog appear to other people, make sure that when you post your blog, you include the tag chainreaction08, so that other people can find it, when they are looking for related content..

Fortunately, Google has integrated it’s video search into a single interface, that comes from multiple sources, so you can also find all videos from the event, that are shared on youtube and google video using the chainreaction08 tag.

There is also content being video’d and streamed directly online, throughout the event courtesy of David Wilcox, and Qik…

Then, most importantly, we also have an active online community at http://chain-reaction.crowdvine.com/ so if you don’t happen to have been able to join the event, live, or want to join in from a distance, the online community will undoubtedly be a rich resource, that connects people together long after chain reaction 08 is over, and perhaps by chain reaction 09, there’ll be an international dimension occurring simultaneously at the same time.

If I happen to have missed any resources, please add them into the comments section below, and I’ll be sure to update this page, to properly reflect all the resources, and references relating to ChainReaction08, so that everyone can benefit from knowing where to find everything related and relevant to a matter dear to our hearts.

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I’m at an amazing gathering of people, here in the US, near San Francisco, at an event called the Bioneers Conference (http//www.bioneers.org), where inspiring people committed to changing our world gather, and I have to say I’m hugely disappointed… This morning, we had a plenary session that started with

Rachel Naomi Remen M.D. She was an amazing lady, really inspiring constructive, and she talked about the gift of her grandfathers wisdom, as she experienced it growing up, as a child, and being blessed with it. It was a speaker who was really inspiring, really motivating, and didn’t focus on negative, or detrimental things, but focussed instead on blessings, and loving ways in which we can enrich our world.

After her, was Maria Elena Durazo, a lady who has an impressive “record” – but whose speech was very filled with the negative, dualistic language, that I’m deeply troubled by in every day life here in American society. I was so moved by the contrast, so acutely aware of how her negativity, and public condemnations were only serving to continue to fuel, and support some of the existing paradigms, that I just had to get out of that space, out of that session, and write about it, or somehow turn it’s experience into something healthy, and useful, and get it out of my system…

So here I am, blogging about it, and as I write, I really want for people to know about what’s become so visibly the huge American paradigm shift that we seem to already have in some part in the UK. I was so used to being surrounded by people in the UK, when I was living in London that already “got” the need to change our society, the need to do something about it, and the need to pro-actively start creating the new future instead of trying to hold onto, oppress, oppose, or destroy any “old” paradigm… That expression springs to mind, what you resist, persists… I pray that people here in the US might one day be able to fully appreciate the richness of this wisdom, and stop trying to change things in a way that isn’t healthy, supportive of life, and growth, and doesn’t contribute towards anything in a positive way. If I had to summarise the biggest “paradigm” shift that I’ve experienced since moving to the US, I guess it is that nothing in the US is necessarily as “advanced” or as ahead of the curve, as we imagine in the rest of the world.. The illusion of there being an “advanced” thinking group, or a place where every one really gets this conceptual change that’s needed to birth our world, seems very absent in mainstream American culture… It may just be the people I’m surrounded by, since clearly I consciously created this community of people to learn from, and grow from, for whatever reason – however, the joy of being in this place, where everything that I had cultivated, all the relationships that I had nurtured, and all the people that I had connected with, are “not” here – makes me wonder if perhaps it’s now time to “extend” the light, from the UK, from my small spiritual community of inspiring people, and friends that appeared to be really “in the wave”, to extend a filament of light out from that space, into another that might need it now…

It’s an idea, a concept, a spiritual perspective I guess – and another way at looking at it, might be to start seeing the potential for cultural transformation that’s needed in this world, in this space, in this community… Whilst being observant of what I see – the need to remember that this is but a journey through life, and not the end game might be crucial in preparing for some future point.

The conscious attention needed to be here, to be a part of all of this, and to be able to maintain my sense of state and place is really something which will stay with me, as I continue to live through the experience of being in San Francisco, travelling repeatedly back into the US, and knowing and trusting that everything is working perfectly, and as it needs to… The fun is in playing the game of life through the experience I guess!

Till the next cultural turn!

Let me return to the foray.. and get back into the Conference – if I dare!

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So today, was another one of those days – that literally, I just let go, and let god, and things came together in a wonderful synchronistic way, as usual.

I spent the day today at the Bioneers conference… (see http://www.bioneers.org for more info). I was working at the Pachamama Booth, in the pavilion, and then ran the A/V (Audio/Visual) for the short version of the Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium, that triggered my travel out here…

Being at the booth, hearing people walk past, and sharing with people where they’re at – I got a real sense of discontent.. People were keen to indulge themselves, in what they felt was right, or wrong, and blame, and judgment, almost savouring the opportunity to agree about their disagreements with “mainstream” society.

So the 3 hr version of the Symposium worked really well – and I managed, between the light switches, the audio feeds, and the DVD to keep the program on track, from my end – even if occasionally we skipped a few slides, or I wasn’t sure what was meant to be happening. It all worked like a charm, and I could feel how people had really been impacted, and transformed through the process. That was wonderful!

Then, after the symposium, it was “back to work”, to hand out at the booth, and talk with people, though I decided, Lunch/dinner was much needed – especially since I hadn’t eaten all day (thanks to the blessings of the opportunity to fast during the month of Ramadan).

After finally getting some food, and getting back to the stand, I finally realised that I didn’t really want to hang around much longer, and decided to call it a day. The tables seemed pretty quiet, the parties had all started, many stalls had packed up – I figured, it was pretty safe to just leave things, and move on…

So I left with my bags, and made my way to the outdoors, wanting to get away from being indoors, and wanting to just get some “air”… I wondered outside, and bumped into my friend Aslan, a fellow “hummingbird” (the name given to our group of facilitators that got trained in the US, to deliver the Symposium).

Chatting with Aslan, I decided I wanted to head back, and figured I would just make my way to the car park, and hopefully hitch a ride to San Francisco, since I hadn’t arranged anything else… Aslan suggested the “grandmothers” talk – and so I wondered into the large plenary room, and after sitting for a short while, decided I’d try my luck with hitching a ride…

As fate would have it, or perhaps as a consquence of how the universe is so connected, I must have stepped out in perfect time, since right in front of me, looked like my housemate, Lynne Twist. She was walking just far enough ahead of me, that I couldn’t be for sure if it was her or not, and so kept walking behind her, hoping to get close enough to see her, before shouting our behind her… As she bumped into someone, and turned halfways, for a hug – I realised, it was her, and called out to her – she was just getting ready to leave, and so I ended up getting a ride back to the house, and as luck would have it – she was coming in the morning – so I got a ride with her this morning too!

Don’t you just love it when the universe unfolds like that? I was eager to learn why I wasn’t concerned about getting a ride there and back, even though I had rides to the event Sat morning, and a ride back on Sun eve… And now I knew why! Just like the finding of the apartment – it’s like the Universe just conspires to help and support me, whilst I leave it in a place of trust, and continue to strive for the result… Funnily enough – when I don’t even try, just holding the thought, isn’t enough for me to manifest anything.. My experiences in Peru last year taught me how being in the space of ready anticipation never moved anything towards me, but as soon as I took action, or did something, then something would move towards me, and just appear into my life, as needed. Trusting, and working with this benevolence is a gift in and of itself, that really helps me remain calm, trusting, and present to each moment (though sometimes even that’s not enough!)

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