Diversity

I know I've been talking a lot about BGI, but I can't express the gratitude I feel for finding a program that has helped me take forty-seven years of seemingly incongruous experience and find a passion that is completely relevant to who I am.

This blog is an assignment from my Using the Social Web for Social Change class, instructed by Christopher Allen, who is well-known and respected in the field of digital technology and its effects on our social structure. Yesterday, Christopher posted a video by Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist who instructs his own social web class at Kansas State University. That is where I found the video that you see above. I love it because it's a great example of how the social web can bring out the common good in us all - the same common good that I believe we can build through more thoughtful community design.

I am also taking a Marketing class at BGI, where students are teaming up to research 3BL concepts. My team and I are investigating the viability of becoming 3BL developers of regenerative communities. Now there are many amazing concepts and technologies involved in truly regenerative community development, each of which would require a lengthy description. And I hope to discuss many of them in this blog. But I would like to first begin with the concept of diversity, because I have this Utopic vision of the future - a future that is founded upon the concepts that were expressed in the video above, by many people who chose to respond to a simple invitation on YouTube.

Thanks to the generous efforts of the folks at Re-Vision Labs, I now have a venue for an assignment for my Creativity and Right Livelihood class project - a creative session. A creative session is like a mini-brainstorm around a puzzle. Participants with diverse backgrounds churn out ideas in a moderated session with the idea of generating some form of cross-pollination. I chose to design the session around the following question "In what ways might we bring diversity into community development?" The term diversity is meant to include racial, socio-economic, religious and generational diversity, as well as the personalities we all are born with and acquire throughout our lives. Now, this certainly isn't a new idea, but perhaps we can find ways to approach it in a new way.

I would appreciate any feedback you might have. Thanks.