<-- See the links to the left for further notes

Hello everyone

On Sat, Oct 13th five keen convenors met to discuss our next steps for Wise Democracy (Caspar Davis, Colin Dower, Jan Cadieux, Philip Symons, and George Sranko). Many others sent their regrets ahead of time for all sorts of very good reasons... so we know many more of you remain engaged in these discussions.

We had an open and free-wheeling discussion (as well as nutritional
goodies), including the following items (-- don't overlook #6 below -- The Big Ripple!) (also see Caspar's notes appended below):

1. Random-selection: Jan presented and clarified her idea of inviting
groups to take part in an experiment in wise democracy, and then making a random selection from the members of the groups that step forward. Most of us were in agreement that we didn't want to undertake the same random selection process applied in the first two Wisdom Councils (using the phone book and cold calling). After two runs we know the process works, we know how to implement it, and now we feel it's time to try a different approach to experiment with building a better base within the community and to involve new people. We don't think we would learn anything sufficiently new by repeating the entire process a third time. So there seems to be fairly wide acceptance of the idea of approaching groups directly and drawing our list of randomly-selected names from that pool.

2. Wisdom Council #3: Those of us at the meeting expressed reluctance to immediately launch into a third WC. In keeping with what emerged above, we feel it is time to evaluate and to integrate the lessons learned as we takeour next steps. This means actively working together over the coming weeks to make some decisions on where we want to go as a Wise Democracy group.

Some of us expressed an interest in trying a Wisdom Council in a school setting and we'd like to support Brigitte in taking this approach. We also entertained the idea of helping organizations and groups to undertake a WC of their own.

Philip the miracle fund-raiser has aquired funding for WC3 for this year, and he is fairly confident that some money will also be available next year. So we have a bit of wiggle room in terms of timing.

3. Creative Insight Council (like WC but focused on an issue): There was also quite a bit of discussion around the idea of hosting an Insight

Council, asking a randomly-selected group of people to address a particularissue or question. Philip has contacted Denise Savoie, requesting her input on an issue or question she would like feedback on -- with no response as yet. For many of us, this seems like an attractive next step in continuing to explore wise democracy in Victoria. Some of us feel that a real-life, hot issue would engage more people in the community and help create traction.

4. Richard Moore: Richard is keenly interested in the work we've been doing with Wisdom Councils, and will be in Victoria Oct 30-Nov 3. He would like to meet with our group and is interested in participating in public meetings, as well. (Richard, please feel free to add your thoughts)

5. Dynamic Facilitation workshop (Oct 31 - Nov 2): Jim Rough needs more people to sign up to make the Victoria event viable. He really wants to support our group with DF skills and is inviting people to contact him if you have any interest at all. For those within our group the cost is flexible and something can likely be worked out. Please contact Jim directly at (360) 385-7118 or (360) 531-0932 or jim "at" tobe.net or DeAnna Martin deanna "at" dynamicfacilitation.com. Dan is the local organizer 595-2290.

6. BIG RIPPLE TIME. November 3, Jim Rough and Richard Moore would like to participate in a facilitated session with us -- the Convenors. Jim and Richard are two of the leading thinkers in this field of Wise Democracy and we are some of the leading practitioners... and I'm talking on a global scale! It's time to talk about what we've learned and where we're headed.
Please mark your calendars and plan to participate in a rare opportunity to create some really big ripples (without fear of drowning). I'm working on a venue. I'll keep everyone posted.

My greatest hope is that each of you will stay engaged as we continue to explore wise democracy together. All sorts of possiblities are perking... for example, Doug has raised some interesting new ideas in his recent emails.

NEXT MEETING: Next Saturday, October 20th, 1831 Fern Street meeting house to continue discussions and to organize upcoming events.

Warm wishes to each of you!
George

PS: I'm going to continue archiving our discussions, including this note on our wiki site at www.wisedemocracyvictoria.wetpaint.com. My aim is to help provide long-term context to our decisions and help those who are away or out of the loop for a period to keep informed. If you would prefer not to have your input archived on a public site please let me know by flagging any specific pieces.

Email from Caspar (14-Oct-07):
Here are my thoughts from today:

The first two Wisdom Councils seem to suggest that Wisdom Councils
chosen randomly from the entire population of a place like Victoria
are unlikely, in the course of 8 or 10 hours, to come up with
anything much different from the positive but bland statements of the
first two Councils.. These statements have not stimulated the public
conversation that we hoped they would, and it seems unlikely that
these kinds of statements will ever stimulate much discussion.

Our greatest problem in organizing the first two councils has been
getting people to serve on them. Jan has suggested a novel way of
going about this, essentially by enlisting the aid of sympathetic
organizations to supply the names of some or all of their members to

the pool from which the random selection is made. This approach
offers several possible advantages. In the course of recruiting
groups, we would be educating a lot more people about Wisdom
Councils, and a much higher proportion of selectees would likely
agree to serve.

This method, like the method we've been using, would be a lot of work
but might be worth trying. However, there is no reason to think that
councils chosen by it would come up with any more provocative
statements than the first two councils.

Another possible approach would be to go ahead with Wisdom Councils in schools and other organizations as the opportunities present themselves. It seems likely that councils conducted in smaller groupswould share more common reality and would be more likely to come upwith issues that have traction in the groups.

We have also had inquiries from Denise Savoie and possibly others who are interested in having councils explore particular issues. These
would not be proper Wisdom Councils, but could use random selection
and dynamic facilitation; Jim Rough has called such councils Creative
Insight Councils, which seems like a good name.

Jim Rough and Richard will both be here at the end of this month, and
Jim is apparently interested in facilitating the Victoria convenors
in a discussion of where we go from here on Nov. 3.

I think that this discussion will be very useful and that we should
make no decisions until we have had it. At the moment, I am feeling
enthusiastic about Wisdom Councils in schools and other groups, and
about Creative Insight Councils, but I am not so sanguine about the
ability of Wisdom Councils to stimulate the kind of community
engagement that we have been hoping for.

Caspar

Email from Colin (14 Oct '07):
Yesterday at the meeting with Jan, Caspar, George, and Philip, in
addition to some fine food, we had a wide-ranging conversation about
possibilities for Wise Democracy. I'm still pondering some of the
ideas from the conversation, and the various e-mails to date, but I'd
like to pass along something about next steps.

My understanding is that Jim and Richard would like to meet with the
Wisdom Council conveners when they're in Victoria somewhere around
the first of November. It was suggested that we wait until after the
get together with Jim and Richard to decide how we proceed and I'm in
agreement with that suggestion.

Between now and then, including the scheduled meeting October 20, we
can continue to present and provide feedback on various ideas, as
well as clarify the details of the get together with Jim and Richard,
plus potentially plan a public event with them while they're in
Victoria.

Cheers,
Colin

Email from Philip (14-Oct-07)
Thanks, George (and Caspar, and also Colin in a separate e-mail) for pulling
these thoughts together. I was thinking about writing some notes myself, but
the sun was shining, my garden, what I could see of it above the grass, was
beckoning, so I put off writing, and am happy I did as the three of you have
expressed well what was said at the meeting, and what I have been feeling
for some time.

Despite Jan's wish NOT to go over the whole discussion again, I fear this is
what will happen on Oct. 20th., but perhaps that is inevitable, even if we
do some e-mailing beforehand. I can't be there, lucky me.

Less fortunately I will also be absent on Nov. 3rd, as I'll be tied up in a
regional Unitarian conference that weekend (which is also why we need to
find somewhere for Richard to go after he's spent a couple of nights with
us, as I believe Marya has agreed some time ago to billet Unitarians from
our of town here). I regret missing the Nov. 3rd discussions. I hope I will
have time to speak with both Jim and Richard before they depart in different
directions.

Philip

Email from Doug (14-Oct-07)
Hi Everyone, did not get back from Oregon in time to join your
meeting yesterday, sorry. Good discussions going on.

With respect to Random Selection, I agree with the ideal but the
practice is not very easy or very satisfying until the
Public-at-Large is MUCH more aware of the Wisdom Council's
presence. The pain of doing "cold" telephone calls to people in
their homes who are already inundated with harassing business calls,
is far too arduous, and the telephone book excludes so many people anyway.

Perhaps a return envelope in the original mailing, indicating
interest could alleviate that?

The ripple effect (ordinary citizens buying into grass roots
empowerment) for the Wisdom Councils as practiced so far, either may
have significant time delays, or is simply minimal in its impact,
from what I have seen so far. We do not have time to wait for
decades for the ripple effect to come into force. Should we
sacrifice having some real impact for an ideal in our minds? Let's
instead hold it as an intention and be satisfied with our imperfect
but practical attempts to work towards it?

With respect to the Council of Future Beings application of random
selection that Tree (facilitator from Eugene/Atlee) and myself are
advocating, I believe an alternative approach is required. It would
be possible to advertise for people to volunteer, in general, to be
selected for a session of the Council of Future Beings. Various
excluded groups could be contacted directly and invited in a more
personal way. The selection list would grow organically, and
although it would be somewhat imperfect as a random sample (at first)
it would have the great advantage of being a list of people who were
motivated. The random selection would simply apply to the list of
people who offered to be selected. Then the organization of
convenors and members of a specific Council meeting would present the
outcomes at any hearings, public forums, legal proceedings, City
council meetings in order to consistently and responsibly put the
case that short-term profits are trumping the interests of future
generations by not including so-called externalities, clean-up costs
and other costs that are rarely factored into current
decision-making. A turnaround in this amongst other things, is
crucial to halt the industrial growth wastelands that we are creating now.

I have seen recent evidence about global warming that I found
shocking... and the machinations of the great Empire to the South are
showing signs of getting out of control, and the prospect of a
Neo-con Prime Minister with a majority here is scary. The time is
VERY urgent...

Let's put practicality first, and move towards the ideals as we are able.

Best wishes, Doug

Email from Gillian (14-Oct-07)
Please keep me in the loop! As I said to Jan on the phone, I need a
rest and cannot commit myself to anything at the moment, but I'm very
interested in another approach, grass roots and local, and particularly
in Doug's last two paragraphs today. There really isn't time for all
the WC process now, we have to ACT. The best advertising is always word
of mouth, person to person. Best wishes, Gillian

Email from Jim Rough (14-Oct-07)

Actually, I think the Citizens' Assembly is a very good example. As I understand it, they were not given free rein to come up with the best way of choosing a legislature, but were told that it most have the same number of members as the present legislature. I'm not sure if there were other constraints or not.

Wisdom Councils have total freedom (although I have heard some say that in Victoria time constraints have spurred facilitators to pro them towards the broad statements that have emerged) but they will not have "agency" until or unless have enough prominence to be taken seriously by politicians, media, and society at large. That is why Jim started out with the idea of a constitutional amendment establishing wisdom councils.

As I understand it, the present hope is that holding multiple wisdom councils will generate enough buzz to give them prominence and respect. On the basis of our admittedly limited experience in Victoria, I do not see that happening directly in a community like a city, let alone a larger entity. I think it may well work in a smaller entity, like a school, a neighbourhood, a government department or a corporation, especially if there are some "hot" issues that will almost certainly engage the council's attention - and from one perspective that is a back-handed way of constituting a creative insight council.

I think that the widespread use of both local wisdom councils and creative insight councils might well generate a climate in which wisdom councils could function as Jim envisages. But I have serious doubts as to whether merely holding councils as we have been doing will create the change we need. "Civilized" people have several thousand years of being conditioned to Authority, and all but the most genuinely anarchic of us ask of any institution (consciously or subconsciously), "Where does its authority come from?"

Jim answers (quite properly) that the authority of a wisdom council comes from the inherent power of people to determine the conditions that affect them. That is the (alleged) theory behind democracy in general, although the truth may be somewhat different. But very few people (except for some aboriginals) have any experience with people actually governing themselves. For most of, authority comes from powerful people, whether they are empowered by wealth, by institutions, or by other powerful people.

The Citizens' Assembly was able to generate some gravitas because it was constituted and funded by the government. But even with those advantages, it had some trouble getting people to participate.

In sum, I am not convinced that our society can leap from where we are to sufficient acceptance of big community wisdom councils as a prominent institution. I think that both smaller community wisdom councils and creative insight councils facilitated according to the principles of dynamic facilitation may be parts of an effective gradient approach to the idea that wisdom councils can lead us to a better society. Let us not make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Caspar

Email from Jim, Oct 18

Hi Caspar,

I like what you've written here. It seems to lay out the situation as I understood it ... at least until a few days ago.

In the last few days I've had the opportunity to experiment with the Wisdom Council process in a new setting ... within a conference. Well, it wasn't really a Wisdom Council, I suppose, since there were lots of compromises. But it worked well for bringing deep conversation to the conference and we had some intense learnings that improve the "traction" issue.

The conference was "The Great Turning" with an audience of about 160 "environmental educators." On Thursday morning I had a 75min Keynote opportunity, followed by two cycles of a "Wisdom Council experiment". ("Wisdom Council experiment" is our term for projects that are intended to be like Wisdom Councils, which teach us about Wisdom Councils. but which don't technically adhere to the principals.)

The idea was to randomly select people from the conference on two different days, who would participate in all-day meetings on issues of their choice and present their results to the conference as a whole. In the end, because most people wanted to go to breakout sessions, we allowed people to self-select. There were 16 (lots!) on Thursday and 4 (few!) on Friday.

We did two things differently with the second Wisdom Council. At the beginning I shared the story of the progress of the first WC . They got to feel into where the group had gone. When it came time for them to pick an issue they naturally took off from where the last WC had stopped! ... Wow. That was terrific. Then when the second WC finished we made a point to have them share their story of progress, where they started and where they ended up. Again, this was new. The audience picked up on the story like never before.

I think this is a major development that will really help with the "traction" issue. We didn't do it earlier because the facilitator plays a more substantial role. But the benefits are immense and trust of this sort has never been an issue. I think our new direction is to suggest to each Wisdom Council that, when they present their results, they present 1) the story of their progress, 2) the final message, and 3) then to share personal experiences.

Jim

Email from Dan Doherty Oct 21
I have been watching the discussion with interest, and feel the urge to jump
in...

WC3
At the moment, my wish is to host a 3rd Wisdom Councils in the City of
Victoria in order to complete our original plan.
(However I think it would be fine if a subset or offshoot of the conveners
group ran WCs in schools or hosted an insight council.)

There is something elegant and important about closing the circle with #3,
before changing course.
- the WC community is interested and watching
- there are people we do not know who are watchng for or who will respond to
the results of our experiment. - our debriefing will have more value and
integrity if we complete the plan.
- we have no way of knowing how far and deep our ripples are going or what
the tipping point is. In this game, intention is key. As Richard says "If
one community can do it, others can, and so on. All of the conclusions you
folks have come up with -- approaching groups, going for smaller scale,
using process variants -- all of these increase the probability that we can
create one of these tipping points."


I do strongly believe we need to manage the convening process so we do not
burn out,
and so personal value of convening is retained (even fun?)
- what is fixed and what is flexible?
- how can we learn from and adapt our process so we can sustain focus thru a
3rd round (simplify selection)
- how can we respond to the feedback we have received to improve the results
(e.g. multicultural representation)
- how can we facilitate outcomes that will touch, move and inspire people
(e.g. statements that include concrete action)

CREATIVE INSIGHT
I am all for the Creative Insight Councils
(or whatever we or the participants decide to call them).
I also agree refining Denise's questions with neutral open language may
result in richer dialogue with a wider audience.

DYNAMIC FACILITATION
In my experience we can talk all we like about facilitation techniques and
principles, but it is the living experience of a group of people in a room
(or in a virtual community) that matters. Our dialogue about facilitation is
an open, unfacilitated process. Interestingly the content seems to be about
control of the process. I believe the more a group defines and manages their
process the more they will own and live the results. Who writes what on the
flipcharts (head content vs heart content) is less important than ensuring
the energy of the group is acknowledged, honoured and facilitated. Rather
than defining tasks, I'd say notice what forwards the energy and what
hinders it, then do more of the former and less of the latter. My
experience of one person writing on a flip chart is that the energy only
flows as fast as the facilitator can write. If the facilitator needs to
write to integrate the info, I suggest that is the facilitator's need, not
the group's. Therefore, let the facilitator attend to the energy/flow and
let the group or assistants do the writing. Then of course there is
personal style...it has to work for the facilitator or he/she is not
facilitating, they are doing something else.

I look forward to exploring all this in our time with Jim and Deanna.
--- Dan (250) 595-2290


Email from Paul, Oct 22
I support what Dan is saying here.

Paul

Email from George, Oct 22

Email from Philip, Oct 22
Thanks for this, George.

I’m afraid I’ll miss the meeting with Jim and DeAnna on Saturday Nov. 3rd, as I’m not free that weekend—and Richard will have left, I gather, so he won’t be there either. I was hoping maybe we could get together Thurs. evening, but perhaps Jim and DeAnna won’t be here then?

I take it from what you say below that the Conveners’ meeting this past Saturday didn’t go any further than the meeting the Saturday before that. How many people did you have present?

When we get together again after Nov. 3rd, how will we make a decision on whether it’s a 3rd WC, or a Creative Insight Council? Before we can decide, we may need to look more closely at just what a CI Council would deliberate, how much information it might need, would 36 hours be time enough, and how much it would cost. Only then will we be in a position to decide between WCs (a known entity) and ICs (an unknown entity). Would it be a good idea for a few of use put our heads together beforehand to think this through, so we can come at least half-prepared?

I’m wondering how you are choosing to whom this e-mail was sent. We’re coming up against the old tension between democracy and leadership: we need a lead group for some early planning, but we don’t want to be exclusive if someone is keen to be included. Wendy is pretty keen, and she got Colin and me down to Swans Pub the other night, where we had a good little discussion. Should she be included, and what about Brigitte (or ???)?

Should we try for a lunchtime get-together at a pub again for this preparation planning? Some people may not be available at lunch, so a pre-dinner, or dinner meeting might work better.

Some thoughts from others receiving this would be helpful.

Philip

Email from George, Oct 22