Live from Boston, it's theCUBE. Covering IBM Chief Data Officer Summit. Brought to you by IBM. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the IBM CDO Summit here in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Paul Gillan. We have two guests for this session. We have Rebecca Shockley. She is the executive consultant at IBM Global Business Services and Alfred Essa, Vice President Analytics and R&D at McGraw Hill Education. Rebecca and Alfred, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Thanks for having us. So I'm going to start with you, Rebecca. You're giving a speech tomorrow about the AI ladder. I know you haven't finished writing the info. Shh, don't tell. You're giving a speech about the AI ladder. Right. What is the AI ladder? So, when we think about artificial intelligence or augmented intelligence, you know, it's very pervasive. We're starting to see it a lot more in the organizations, but the AI ladder is basically says that you need to build on a foundation of data so that data and information architecture is your first rung. And with that data, then you can do analytics. Next rung. Move into machine learning once you're getting more comfortable and that opens up the whole world of AI. And part of what we're seeing is organizations trying to jump to the top of the ladder or scramble the ladder really quickly and then realize they need to come back down and do some foundational work with their data. You know, I've been doing data and analytics with IBM for 21 years and data governance is never fun and it's hard. And people would just as soon go do something else than do data governance, data security, data stewardship and especially as we're seeing more business side use of data. So, when I started my career, data was very much an IT thing, right? And part of my early career was basically just getting IT and business to communicate in a way that they were saying the same things. Well, now you have a lot more self-service analytics and business leaders, business executives making software decisions and various decisions that impact the data without necessarily understanding the ripples that their decisions can have throughout the data infrastructure because that's not their forte. So what's the outcome? What's the result of this? Well, you start to see organizations, it's similar to what we saw when organizations first started making data lakes, right? The whole concept of a data lake, very exciting, interesting, getting all the data in together and whether it's virtual or physical. And what ended up happening is without proper governance, without proper measures in place, you ended up with a data swamp instead of a data lake. Things got very messy very quickly and instead of creating opportunities, you were essentially creating problems. And so what we're advising clients is you really have to make sure that you're focused on taking care of that first rung, right? Your data architecture, your information architecture and treating the data with the respect as a strategic asset that it is and making sure that you're dealing with that data in a proper manner, right? So basically telling them, yes, we understand that's fun up there, but come back down and deal with your foundation. And for a lot of organizations, they've never really stepped into data governance. Because again, data isn't what they think makes the company run, right? So banks are bakers, not data people, but at the same time, how do you run a bank without data? Well, exactly. And I want to bring you into this conversation, Alfred, as McGraw Hill, a company that is climbing the ladder in a more steady fashion. What's your approach? How do you think about bringing your teams of data scientists together to work to improve the company's bottom line, to enhance the customer experience? Talk to our viewers about that. Yeah, first, I'd sort of like to start with laying some of the context of what we do. So McGraw Hill Education has been traditionally a textbook publisher. We've been around for over 100 years. I started with the company over 100 years ago. You aged well. But we no longer think of ourselves as a textbook publisher. We're in the midst of a massive digital transformation. We started that journey over five years ago. So we think of ourselves as a software company. So we're trying to create intelligent software based on Spark data. But it's not just about software and AI and data. When it comes to education, it's a tale of two cities. This is not just the US, but internationally. It used to be we were born, went to school, got a job, raised a family, retired, and then we died. Well now, education is not episodic. People need to be educated. It's lifelong learning, right? And it's survival, but also flourishing. So that's created a massive problem and a challenge. So it's a tale of two cities. By that I mean there's an incredible opportunity to apply technology, AI. We see a lot of potential in the new technologies. But in that sense, it's the best of times. The worst of times is we're faced with massive problems. There's a lot of inequity. We need to educate people who have largely been neglected. So that's the context. So I think in now answering your question about data science teams, first and foremost, we like to get people on the teams excited about the mission. Mission, it's like, what are we trying to achieve? What's the problem that we're trying to achieve? And I think the best employees, including data scientists, they like solving hard problems. And so the first thing that we try to do is it's not what skills you have, but do you like solving really, really hard problems? And then taking it next step, I think the exciting thing about data science is it's an interdisciplinary field. It's not one skill, but you need to bring together a combination of skills. And then you also have to excel and have the ability to work in teams. You said that AI has potential to improve the education process. Now, people have only so much capacity to learn. How can AI accelerate that process? Yeah, so if we stand back a little bit and look at the traditional model of education, now there's nothing wrong with it, but it was successful for a certain period of years and it works for some people. But now the need for education is universal and lifelong. So our basic model, current model of education is lecture mode and testing. Now, from a learning perspective, learning science perspective, all the research indicates that that doesn't work. It might work for a small group of people, but it's not universally applicable. And so what we're trying to do when this is the promise of AI, it's not AI alone, but I think this is a big part of AI. What we can do is begin to customize and tailor the education to each individual specific needs. And just give you one quick example of that. Different students come in with different levels of prior knowledge. Not everyone comes into a class or a learning experience knowing the same things. So what we can do with AI is determine very, very precisely, just think of it as a brain scan of what does each student need to know at every given point in time. And then based on that, we can determine also, this is where the models and algorithms are, what are you ready to learn next? And what you might be ready to learn next and what I might be ready to learn next is gonna be very different. And then, so our algorithms also help route the auxiliary of information and knowledge at the right time to the right person. I mean, you're talking about these massive social challenges. I mean, education as solving global inequity and not every company has maybe such a high-minded purpose. I mean, but does it take that kind of mission, that kind of purpose to unite employees? I mean, both of you, I'm interested in your perspectives here. I don't think it takes a mission of solving global education. I do firmly agree with what Al said about people need a mission. They need to understand the outcome and helping organizations see that outcome as being possible gives them that rally point. So I don't disagree. I think everybody needs a mission to work towards, but it doesn't have to be solving global. You want to extract that mission to a higher level than making the world a better place. Exactly, or at least your little corner of the world. And again, what we're seeing, the difficulty is helping business leaders or consumers or whomever understand how data plays into that, right? So you may have a goal of we want better relationship with our customer, right? And at least folks of my age think that's a personal, what a one kind of thing. Understanding who you are, I can find that much more quickly by looking at all your past transactions and all of your past behaviors and whether you click this or that. And you should expect that I remember things from one conversation to the next. And helping people understand that, helping the folks who are doing the work understand that the outcome will be that we can actually treat our customers the way that you want to be treated as a person, gives them that sense of purpose and helps them connect the dots better. One of the big challenges that we hear CDO's face is getting buy-in. And what you're proposing about, you're this new model really appending the old stage on the stage model. Is there a lot of pushback or is it difficult to get the buy-in and all stakeholders to be on the same page? Yeah, it is. I think it's doubly difficult. The way I think about it is it's like a shift change in hockey where you have one shift that's on the ice and another one that's about to come on the ice. That's a period of maximum vulnerability. That's where a lot of goals are scored. People get upset, start fighting. That's what you do. But organizations and companies are faced with the same challenge. It's not that they're resisting change. Many companies have been successful with one business model while they're trying to bring in a new business model. Now you can't jettison the old business model because often that's paying the bills. That's the source of the revenue. So the real challenge is how are you going to balance out these two things at the same time? So that's doubly difficult, right? I want to ask you quickly, because we have to end here, but there's a terrible shortage of cybersecurity professionals, data science professionals. The universities are simply not able to keep up with demand. Do you see the potential for AI to step in and fill that role? I don't think technology by itself will fill that role. I think there is a deficit of talented people. I think what's going to help fill that is getting people excited about really large problems that can be solved with this technology. I think, actually, I think the talent is there. What I see is, I think we need to do a better job of bringing more women, other diverse groups into the mix. There are a lot of barriers for diversity and bringing talented people. I think they're out there. I think we could do a much better job with that. Recruiting them, great. Alfred, Rebecca, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having us. I'm Rebecca Knight for Paul Gilland. We will have more from theCUBE live coverage of the IBM CDO Summit here in Boston coming up in just a little bit.


Hey Pete. Hey Jay. How are you doing? Good. How about you? All things considered pretty good as it goes. I'll change. I'm gonna change my Four seasons background to something more social. Here, how about this? That's social. Or just a little retro. Or I happen to like this one. Yeah, it's a good one. We bought one of the we have two green screens in the house now We have one pull-down one that's behind the April and basically we have a pull-down one that looks like a roller You know, it's full movie projector size. It hang and then I hung Cables from we have a wood ceiling a nice wood ceiling. So I hung cables in three different locations in the flat So it can be behind April at her desk, which is what we're that's the default setting It can be in a place the only place kind of in the flat where we can stand in front of it And have a camera in front of us on a tripod and then behind me sitting at the chair that I usually sit at And then we also bought one of the big oval flop open ones which are impossible to close if you're one person They are like it says and it says on Amazon like, you know Kind of top. It's like no no no one person's not gonna close this unless they're Samson and Really nimble because you know, it's it's it's got very very robust wire and I was using that here And it turns out that CPUs and the zooms algorithms are good enough that don't don't need the green screen anymore And it was really like kind of cumbersome and annoying to move in and out and set up and tear down and all that So now I'm like just defaulting to to this which is more fun than the boring place. I am I'm a little jealous. I have my main computer is a 2015 MacBook Air and and the CPU doesn't doesn't go there. And then I have a newer one 2017 MacBook and it too doesn't have enough oomph Well, I would hi Judy. Well, I was I was on I was on a call day before yesterday, I guess with Sunil, you know Sunil Mahaltra and a new friend Richard Merrick Merrick Who is awesome and at the end of the call discovered that both of them own the new M1 Macs They just got them What I literally checked one out at like I bought it at B&H, but Then I started to look at there's a bunch of stuff. That's not compatible with it yet And I'm like, yeah, I can't apparently even an emulation mode if it if it fails emulation You're cooked, but even an emulation mode. It's faster than an older hardware. Yeah So that's pretty good I'm looking forward to when I can when I can get one. I'm looking forward to getting a gig so I can get one Exactly exactly Hello everybody Very necessary interplanetary interplanetary faces. Yeah Charles is on a space station orbiting home planet Behind everyone.  I'm doing okay. I'm doing pretty well.  She The way I described mom's life is sort of as an arc. She had a she had a bumpy ride up She has she had a really nice flight through the middle and then she had a bumpy ride down and Unfortunately, I was sort of the manager of her bumpy ride down because she refused to do any planning and also refused to acknowledge That anything was going wrong and also started getting paranoid. So all of that combined to make some for some Challenging bittersweet moments on the way down. So last year for example, and I did I did a day trip to LA and Checked my emails at noon and messages at noon and she had sent me 15 texts and emails wondering if I was dead where I was And I had told her just going for the day Etc. Etc. And then three days before that her neighbors had called 9-1-1 twice on her Because they found her outside in the rain in her slippers and robe looking for me in the parking lot Disoriented and I had told her like I'll be right back like So so that's what that's why she was an assisted living This year so so mom's passing was was kind of My dad died in 83 suddenly After surgery so so that was that was like Painful in a different way and this was more natural and she's in a more peaceful place and my The thing I don't know what the afterlife is or if there is one or anything like that I thought the one thing I know for sure is she's no longer a prisoner of her body and her mind Which we're not helping not helping her anymore at this stage So that's good and then and then everybody's been so fabulous with with Condolences and help and conversations and all that That that's been wonderful, so and and last thing which is actually really relevant to OGM My management of her soft landing was eating like a quarter of my cycles emotionally attentionally All of that and I get those back to be more present here And so forth, so that's actually a good thing She was a firecracker Jay, and I really loved Retreat or on the mailing list is like damn that's smart She was awesome I was trying to have some example there Pete. I Could go back to the mailing list and probably find something. Yeah, I don't have anything off and Mom somehow just This is a piece of something slightly different, but somehow mom found style like in the world and so I grew up in Peru in Lima Peru my first 10 years and We had Vogue and Bazaar on the coffee table and that that'd be interesting except Mom would take pages from Vogue and take him to her to her dressmaker and say can you do this? and boom there'd be like like a Knockoff in her own custom fabric or whatever up some really cool thing And it wasn't that she was knocking up like G-vongi and whatever It was just like good-looking stuff that looked great on her So I did that album and some of those dresses and outfits and like the mid-riff outfits and all that those were Done by mom taking a picture to her hairdresser And then I don't know how but mom heard about Noel furniture and Noel was sort of expensive modernist furniture And in this day when they didn't really have they sort of never had savings or anything I thought they kind of lived from from budget to to living But mom bought a bunch a bunch of Noel furniture and had it shipped to Peru And so I grew up surrounded by the Aero Sarn and the pedestal table the big oval table and the tulip chairs Yeah, that was my dining set and the big womb chairs from Noel Those were our living room comfy chairs and we just you know I could curl up in there like five of me could curl up in there comfortably And I have no siblings, but but all of that and so the house was beautifully decorated and I'll add a little story So we had three houses that we rented in Lima The we were in the middle house when mom went to visit a house that was for rent and With no intention of moving whatsoever and it was this big place out of town a ways And it was owned by an art collector who had an antique store downtown where we happened to have bought a chess set Which we still have which I still have now. Yeah And her name was García La La Fee So we called this the La Fee house and mom went to see it and it's like that's really cool But we can't afford it. It was like more than twice the rent We were paying so then the Sierra sort of invited herself over for coffee and Kind of check mom out and saw what mom had done with the place and said we'll give it we'll give you this place for the same rent you're paying now and Anything that you see in the house any antiques you can keep them out like anything you don't want to use store but whatever you want to use keep and So there were all kind of like beautiful wood furniture and some some Gippus and frames on the wall and all kinds of cool stuff So mom blended modernists with really antique in those kind of dim pictures I don't have good quality photos of them But if you went through the photo album you see some photos of interiors And that's the blend of old and new and it was glorious And I just feel really fortunate a that I that I had that and I have and I have no idea where mom Found that because the rest of the family On both sides is not particularly aesthetic Right, my dad was a good painter. He had a really good eye for stuff, but but nobody else like my mom's parents looked like Germans Just normal, you know normal everyday dressers and everything else and and so so I don't know where it comes from But I'm happy that it was there Certainly was colorful. I I especially like that little clipping from the paper where she rift on Liking her old car instead of the new ones that beeped and yelled at you and did all kinds of stuff And that's why she was still driving her 20 year old car Exactly. Thank you. And that was it from the days when getting a letter to the editor published in a magazine was a big deal So yes, exactly that was exactly what that was. Ooh look So that's kind of by way of my check in I guess and I'm happy to be here and let's take a path Let's take a path up the up the up the gallery here and start with Julian Ken and Scott So I'm still struggling with importing the secret the ACMC graph digital library into Neo4j Which is a big step that I need in order to get some useful information out of that database So that's my check in Thank you. Good luck. Are you stuck on any particular thing? Is it just just Getting one frame of thought to get along with another frame of thought Sounds like the condition of the world right now Ken Scott Kevin Hello everybody Well, I love that getting one thought to go on with the thought that it's definitely the condition in my mind these days I don't have a lot to say I've been enjoying I've had the last two days team one has been meeting and we've been going over our Our giant Miro board and trying to make some sense of making sense And I think we're we're coming along. We still have quite a ways to go but You know a couple things that I thought were really interesting One was we came up Jerry was was talking and mentioned this word about civilization building Which just really fired my imagine up my imagination up about One of the things I think that sets OGM apart from people who are working on the business we really want to Have that larger arc of civilization building. So that's kind of got my mind fired up about OGM and That's you know, it's we're still waiting for some rain down here. It's been very dry in California and Supposedly there's some rain on the way in the next few days or get our fingers crossed because fire season is not over yet And you know, the last thing we want to do is have another drought on top of on top of pandemic So, you know, we're hopeful However, it is cold enough to to note that you're in sight instead of bound on the patio. Yeah, that's been going on since Mid November. Yeah, it's been about a month But it's just to you know, it's in the 50s out there So if I were if I were really rugged if I like young and still living in Maine when I was where I was growing up That'd be not a problem, but I'm old and cold so Anyway, it's great to see everybody Thank you And I'll I'll try to send some of our rain down because our forecast right now I looked at the app this morning It's like little clouds with drippy things for the next 10 days like apparently there's some rain in our forecast So we can send it down to you Scott Kevin Rob So I'm kind of in a Working on my own sort of state at the moment which happens when I want to try to synthesize something I find it difficult to Include too many other people when I do that What I've been working on is this set of meta-skills for young people so Thinking tools basically building them or equipping them with the building blocks of thinking and One of the things I mentioned to Ken, I think it was Ken and I had a conversation and I suggested that the problem wasn't that Kids couldn't solve problems. It was that they couldn't turn a mess into a problem and It's the idea that that it's it's the creation of the problem the selection of the problem That's actually the bigger deal and as you as you start to look at reality That's what that's how reality presents itself. It doesn't present itself as a little Bundle of certainty with the correct answer It's it's a mess and you have to actually formulate a problem And so that that's kind of what I've been thinking about and then I was walking through the grocery store and there was a headline in the newspaper and it was talking about the the The word is escaping me the thing that we're now taking to prevent the virus vaccine vaccine That 54, you know comes and goes Anyway, and the headline was 50 states 50 plans And I thought that that was an interesting Amalgamation of what I've been thinking about Which is okay. There's no there's no way to do this You know you have to every individual has to figure out a way to do this Okay, well now every state is having to figure out a way to do this and that also fit Well, I thought with the idea of quests as we're talking in the OGM sense in that well If he did me, you know, is there a central way of doing it? Is there a central plan? Where is it? we've provided these tools the vaccine and now you Use your best judgment to to implement with that that tool so Thanks God And there's these eternal kind of planning and management Conundra like should things be federal or centralized or should it be the Decentralized right or federalized or whatever the right word is and then I come back to things like slavery should slavery be an option by state Like should you be able to move to a state that has slavery? It's like no That that was that was sort of the ease one of the easiest ones for me But but how much do you delegate out, you know in a decentralized way and how does that work? And then from an OGM and a design from trust perspective The more you can trust the fingertips the better the more you can create systems that rely on local intelligence local knowledge local context the better Because most problems are better understood by the people who are there and if you look at Lynne Ostrom's principles for governing the commons One of them is like let the people who are on the commons closest to the commons do the the structuring of Of the commons. I heard that said like the front line is always, right? No, that's cool. In a sense Yeah, which isn't entirely true, but I believe Judy Judy had said similar things as she's this balance between the high level and the local Make sure that we're also accommodating What's going on in that and I put some links that might be good resources for you Scott in the chat I put in like what should we learn is a thought in my brain where I've attached a bunch of stuff And also how to ask better questions or all sorts of movements about asking better questions And they're all under life advice, which is a huge thought. So if you're interested Klaus Kevin Rob. Oh Sorry, that's not the order I had before but you've got you all have moved in my window. I think it's Kevin Rob class. How about that? Okay, good. I'll go. Thank you Yeah, we're getting a lot of traction on this friends and family fund for entrepreneurs who don't have our rich and their uncle and And There seems to be a national phenomenon that we're going to be able to localize that The folks we're working with can't get a key balloon because they don't have 25 friends with 25 dollars to put up on Kiva 20 and so we're we're Getting we've got a new young guy who wants to like I wants to lead the expansion of it And I think we can do that Kiva analysis with that all those accelerators to make that people aware of that There's also a guy from Duke who's doing this national landscaping of impact funds and they did the capital stock structure and big project finance to private equity adventure to series a To see and then they said friends and family and so well what if they don't have a rich uncle and you know He's from Duke and so like the concept of not having a rich relatives couldn't commute compute to And so I think you know our message is to those folks the folks who build the funds don't realize why their loans aren't going out because we have Capital that is equity to make people eligible to get a loan So anyway, I've got some allies linking up around that one other odd thing up. I'm in this This Facebook group of left leaning in a wombians and really poor county in Mississippi where I'm from it went 88% for Trump and People say that about 12% of the people wear masks and it looks like about a oops Kevin you've heard of the people are skeptical of the Okay, can you hear me? I'll turn off my video. Yes. Yeah, it seems like about 88% of the people are skeptical of the election and the vaccine Right. Can you hear me? Mm-hmm? Yes. Can you hear me? So anyway Okay, so it seems like About all the Trump votes are skeptical of the are pointing posting pictures on Facebook of themselves with a handgun saying I'm going to Georgia to defend the second amendment Wow I Thanks Kevin this whole thing is such a twisty turny thing and I think today is the day today's safe harbor. Is that right? Tuesday was safe harbor Tuesday was safe harbor So today or tomorrow is another deadline that locks things in and for on the 14th 14th is when they vote. Yeah And then Congress certifies sometime like January 6th or something like that. Yeah Um Kevin have you done stuff on owners? Just a sort of shared ownership structures like land trusts and other kinds of things Yeah, I have and land trusts are okay But you know like the Somalis don't want it because you can't get a retirement out of it because you share that land There's a thing we're doing in Chicago that looks pretty interesting as an idea by a guy in the neighborhood We're working in where older people will Pool their home equity in neighborhoods where it's running down And there's a lot of empty houses to create down payments for other folks to come in on their block who then makes their house more There secures their asset and so our equity fund might do a renovation equity after that So, you know, and then one other thing that is really cool there. We're trying to bring in from balsamore this woman's got Black folks wanting to move back to black neighborhoods. And so she's got 30 people doing pre-committed home ownership demand to then transform a block And we're wanting her to come alongside so there's there's things like that But you know for a lot of poor folks Land trusts are not good because that's their only asset and it's their only intergenerational transfer And so it theoretically it works but that's because they don't have any other asset and don't have money in a bank Right, right. Thank you. That's but it's a cheap way to get in is just that you you can't pass it on Right, right. That's super interesting. Thank you so Rob cost Hank Hey, good morning everyone I am Jerry, I appreciate hearing your stories. My dad passed a few years ago with Alzheimer's so kind of I wasn't the primary kind of day-to-day person but definitely Can can relate there in terms of the arc I thought that was an interesting way to to talk about it I've been trying to get back into photography, which is a passion of mine. I found that over The summer I've been doing a lot less of it. And so I think Maybe for some obvious reasons, but not necessarily so right we we kind of have to push our creative boundaries and I'm maybe feeling like I'm coming out of a shell a little bit. So that's good I think you all know I work in and around the federal government So the government is posed to shut down tomorrow But the house did pass a one-week extension that likely the senate will pass and the president will sign and I Thinking common thinking is that there may well be a shutdown next friday But of course with all the craziness none of this ever gets reported or So it's interesting how a federal government shutdown used to be such a big news and now it's just like Who cares That is crazy. We'll see how that plays out next week If anything interesting happens, I could send a note to the to the mailing list or something but Um, it doesn't affect our business too much Even when the government shuts down, there's whole hosts of scenarios and things that What stays open and what shuts down and a lot of our work is in homeland security, which mostly stays going and Um, it gets into kind of arcane details from there um I I continue to be shocked at the number of people that are Maintaining the view that there was wide-scale fraud and voter you know corruption and That whole texas filing a lawsuit and all the other states joining on is just kind of blowing my mind Um, I don't think anything will come of it, but I think it's just really breaking the country I mean it I think a lot of us thought things would get better after The election a couple weeks would calm down and and it's just the opposite I mean that 20 to 30 percent is just On on a different wavelength so Agreed it's really it's deeply concerning. It just kind of blows my mind Yeah, I mean I would I was pretty convinced there was going to be violence in the streets mid november So I'm very happy that didn't materialize really really happy that didn't materialize Now I think there's going to be like a schism in the church there's going to be like The the eastern orthodox america and then like this this split off piece of country that is running a parallel government that has no authority But has will cooperate on nothing whatsoever in the middle of a pandemic in the middle of climate change You know in the middle of horrible stuff going on And just just shocking that some of the republican Politicians are standing by trump still The best read I've got on this is that this is a form of loyalty test That 72 million people voted sort of apparently for trump and that other republicans are scared Out of their wits that if they buck trump and recognize biden as the president the survey that that's shocked me was 29 Republicans out of the 249 republicans Will acknowledge that biden has won the election 31 of them will acknowledge it when the electoral college has voted So the numbers don't go up any better right and and it's like How do we actually run a democracy like how so so there's there's a real schism A real break in the country that that It's not getting better anytime soon. Exactly. Exactly. Thanks claus hank charles Yeah, I guess some of the Turm oil that's in the that's in the society in general is reflected in in My experience. I just had last weekend this week I'm doing a webinar for business climate leader citizen climate lobby on soil and soil restoration and that's Centred around decoding climate solutions act, which is a piece of legislation That's already in both houses and has bipartisan support And it would basically circumvent the farm bill by Funding farmers to change their practices and this is on a national scale. I mean, this is a big deal And the bill is really gaining traction and we got joined by the returning people volunteers and I never heard of this group, but These are these are highly motivated volunteers I mean these people work all over the world and and come back into retirement and they're so alarmed You know that they want to re-engage and They're familiarized themselves with the topic because some of them are also ccl volunteers and they're now so animated that I had a marketing meeting yesterday to to promote the event And we have people coming in who are marketing specialists media specialists who really want to to get going with this so it's it's I mean, it's to me a reflection of how alarmed people really are and at the same time We have to also understand that this bottom up pressure that is building here with with so many volunteers is going to impact industry Uh, certainly in the food the food businesses. I was saying is as Um vulnerable to change as is the energy sector Now you have fortunes that uh that are at stake here for people who And who I mean multinational corporations who have vested interests That that we haven't been really so aware of right everybody understands the energy system We don't understand the food system and I think I think these things are connected, you know, I think that uh the the the rate of change the the uh, the uh Impact of change is threatening these industries um is causing a backlash where the the uh Control over the political process is really at stake here, you know, and if Biden comes in There's already all kinds of things primed that will go off like a like a shot monster administration is seated In a good in a good way or in a bad way In a good way in a good way. I mean starting this carry, you know in in uh, we joining the paris accord and I was in a meeting yesterday that was hosted by the united nations with the four per thousand organization and the europeans They've submitted a proposal where European communities cities in in europe Who who have no capacity to sequester carbon into soil because their soil is already healthy and saturated are going to partner with cities and communities in africa in asia and And and and obtain carbon credit by helping them restore, you know, the environment and their soil I mean, these are massive. These are massive things that um That will impact how the other countries are Formulating their food system in in contrast to the industrial, you know, the effort anyway It's busy It sounds fabulous. I love I love all the energy and and attention and resources that are showing up I So i'm i'm now sort of able to focus a little more on our gem and one of the things that that i'll start Doing over the next week or two is shaping up quests Like what is a quest and one of the quests is sort of like what is our organizational structure? How does that work? So i'll i'll post that to the to the list into the discourse But I think we clearly have a food system quest That we need to shape up so I'd like to do that in a way that gives you more resources to draw on in ogm Klaus because we have a lot of people who care about this You've clearly been sort of the tip of the spear to use a bad bad analogy here for us But I think one of the important things ogm can do is is is to help Accelerate the dissolution of the world's large problems In whatever ways whatever with whatever skills we have Yeah, I actually have a specific thought you know i'm Connected now with two ogm is two NGOs who One one is focused on farm Community on supporting small farmers Now this lady is already supporting 3000 farmers in south america and these are small scale groups to to Become commercially viable even on their little level and then another group is is which is intentional communities And The idea would be to join into a concept where Intentional rural communities become a design your concept design and that we originated in our The session The sort of thing that we could spin this off And that could really be stale, you know if we can get funding and And also the professional support to make to create a concept that is presentable That sounds great. I love both of those missions. They sound awesome. Thanks class.  Um, I think I have Found myself I mean and all of my check-ins for the past couple weeks I've really just been talking about thinking about how people are talking to each other and discourse and all that stuff And um, I think that I have just kind of started to ask myself as I've been trolling through Social media where you tend to see obviously like Very one side like super far one side or super far the other Opinions that are obviously meant to to get you like thinking Or at least spur a quick thought You know and naturally leave a lot of context out because you only have x amount of characters or you know A little square inch of room to show your stuff and I've just found myself asking like What would have to be true for me to think that this is the case, you know Um, not what is true But what would have to be true for me to actually believe this or like feel strongly have to put this forward Which hasn't like led to it's led to a little bit of frame breaking and internally, you know, um, but not you know, it hasn't like The holy convince me of some of the absolutely ridiculous points of view that I see But it's been an interesting exercise for me and it's kind of it's it's gotten me that it's felt like very og me And it's gotten me to think about just like the the concept of like humility of thought that bounces around in some of the conversations that we have, you know, where we Um, I think we're all pretty pretty clear and thorough thinkers But are open to the idea that we're not 100 right and that we haven't thought about every single thing Or every single point of view Which is good. So it just kind of made me feel like good about the Just being in this space and being surrounded by these kind of by you guys. So Appreciate that. Um, just another thing I have been thinking a lot about Some of the conversations in our tuesday calls about how we're using our How to engage in like the the ogm, you know, communication ecosystem in the best way Um And that's honestly just a plug to tell you what I'm thinking about. I don't have anything super substantive to share there So anyway, that's that. Um, I'll concede the rest of my time Thanks to our colleagues from the other states um Hank there's a there's a a guy I back on patreon His name is tie wells and he runs a podcasty thing in an interview series called let's chat I think I've mentioned on one or two long ago ogm's And he basically sets up a table and some cameras and nice mics in front of a church a mall or something like that in some place And his opening question is what is something you believe in 100 percent? And he's a rhetorician. So he then says that his his next question is okay, so 100 means you're completely solid on this What what could happen to shake that that belief and he walks down that path of people to to see if he can Sort of slowly open up how they think about staff or what their belief systems are. This is pretty cool um And that that's just his mo Charles lauren neal Great to be here. Um, yeah picking up on this communication ecosystem and gearing up into this beat reporting mode Um Yeah, in terms of the discourse forum in particular and also bridging the csc akura and Just to say i'm i'm excited. I have energy. I've been talking quite a bit with p comminsky and others Um and getting some good engagement on some threads. Um seizing the reins there um So more to come there. I'm not minding edging toward saturation. This is my thought of the moment there.  Um, we are on great terms. I was delivering candles for hanukkah Um And but we we found some spontaneous time to kind of bond in the co-parenting mode. There's some always various issues and things to discuss with the kids Um I I'm not very religious, but I did um also for the first time since the pandemic visit the rabbi Yesterday, um without really going into much of the story. It was just kind of meaningful to connect and also have some interaction there our older daughter is sort of soonish heading into Abundance for preparation time. So it was some some things there and other things like that, uh, we're on the verge of doing a tech shabbos every week We didn't pull the plug or flick the switch yet, but that's um On the table and of course he's saying he's he's quite uh orthodox and we're not at all but um It's like just do it. It's not going to happen if you just look at it and talk about it so More to come on that um the keywords for today because student tonight is the first night of hanukkah Which is not one of the high holy days actually in the Jewish tradition, but it's a famous one because it's like The solstice kind of goes back to the pagan times with The light coming a little more and more So the keywords are miracle victory and light and also family and i'm super appreciative of our family here in ogm um And lastly key collab is continuing to to co-evolve iterate pivot in our messaging processes and there's a lot more kind of uh Snexy sarky sexy snarky is what I wrote Fun sense making fantasy tech to come and so over to you Lon so um, you know, I've been continuously putting like tons of hours into um Trying to create some kind of um document like a knowledge repository that people actually Look at so I've made like dozens of versions of this all of them have been failures and um it's like No, the one you shared the one you shared just recently was beautiful your story of how you got to where you are It's gorgeous. So it's not failing. So this is so this is the latest version right here so I keep doing it over and over again and Basically what people have told me so this is so this is what I imagine to be a quest template except that from doing this template I would say that the problem with the quest is that a quest is epic and that means that The if you fail the failure is epic And so what I'm trying to do with this template is to create um So a template is something that you follow And so it's kind of sets an example So what I'm trying to do is setting an example of being authentic and Sharing What happened when I tried this You know experiment so You know, I kept kind of you know Trying to document the story without Completely removing myself from it and people just kept saying we want a story and so it was really hard for me to kind of like put myself in it and Tell the story of what actually happened but I just finally did it and I feel that It's at least a more interesting document and It so it takes it out from the you know, like the perspective of You know Kind of neutral and just being like this is this is what happened to me and this is this is how I view it so You can take a look at it and give me feedback, but you know, so it Now that it's so personal It's like, you know, I'm afraid that it's going to be hard for for for people to give me feedback But I you know, I still do want it. You know, I won't be crushed. It's I'm I'm used to You know People telling me You need to redo it like this And so I just kind of wanted to create that sort of environment that we can this is a community Where we can be real and share our Problems and our failures and our successes as well. So just wanted to set that set the tone um, Lauren, thank you and and I will say my own reaction to this to this mural board was a awe because it's beautiful be Appreciation because you embedded the videos and the videos are edited like you've you've put in work over work Over time over work doing this So that you're really Sort of it's topiary you're you're like you're pulling out the mickey mouse that was in the hedge that the rest of the people The rest of us might not have spotted And and then that made me sort of stop and pause and not add things to it because it didn't feel like a place for commentary And also because Miro doesn't have a widget that says this is just a conversational widget Right, it would be cool if there was a little a little phone icon or a little TARDIS icon or a little something that said right here is a place where you cannot damage this This particular perspective review But you can chat and have feedback around the context contained right here where the icon lives for example, right? So I added a link to this Miro board in my brain connected it to you And and and that was the most that I could that was the most I could do to weave what you've created Which is really useful and beautiful both which is rare Into my own personal context. So it made me reflect on Like the ogm-iness of okay How what what is required so that this this story you have told Very honestly with really lovely sort of production that includes the pieces that one would need to go listen to to follow the story What what what would it take to take that a couple steps forward Into an environment that allows for the conversation we're looking for and the memory Sharing that we're looking for does that make sense? Yeah, I think that the next step would be it's for people to add comments and Have the comments be more than the ordinary comments And be like snarky comments or like a shit like they are personal perspective or Like other people taking a risk and actually like, you know writing the comments of something that you know Is there really personal perspective cool, so anybody who wants to take a look in there and and offer feedback and And however and then back to what Charles was saying, uh tiffany schlain is a friend She's the one who sort of started the the technology shabbats Her father was Leonard schlain Who wrote several books? He was a surgeon, but he wrote several really perceptive books And the one that affected me a lot was the alphabet versus the goddess, which I really really enjoyed it was one of those sort of He it was a premise about history that the linear alphabet really fucked up our ability to think and You know it had the opposite effect of what we thought it did like everybody thinks the oh awesome We got the alphabet we could write books we could communicate and he says when we created the linear alphabet We suddenly shifted our brains into linear top-down A hierarchical paternalistic thinking and it sort of lines up with a bunch of other stuff. So it's a big thesis You know and then he walks it around the world and says compare pre-alphabet greece to post alphabet greece in pre-alphabet greece you have Athena and Dionysus and Bacchus and a whole bunch of Mars and you have sort of men and women creating the world together And then all of a sudden post alphabet you have men giving birth from their head and their thigh And and there's sort of a deprecation of the divine feminine and a bunch of other really really interesting stuff And I'm like holy crap really because I had arrived at a different sort of at a similar thesis from a very different path about yin and yang and whatnot, but This statement about thinking reminds me of what tufti said about powerpoint uh-huh Can you remind us the tufti quote? That it turns people into a serial line of thought with no ability to go Out extend and and explore. So yeah, everybody's seen that the powerpoint gettysburg declaration Gettysburg address, uh, I'll find the link. It's really funny. It's like what if Lincoln had used powerpoint? You're like, oh my god All the magic all the magic is drained Nicely out of uh out of the address So let's go after scroll way back up to figure out neil doug hamilton Would you will you give a link to that? I think in a powerpoint. Sure. Well neil is talking. I'll find it Yes, I was looking for a hook. Um, nice to see you guys here today. And sorry for not having been around for a few weeks Um, firstly, I disagree regarding powerpoint. I think that powerpoint played as a linear set Is too linear the plate as a card set is very powerful And so played as a card set requires the intuition to tune into the audience and see where they're at And to play that next stepping stone And if they're ready to jump onto it, then you've already made progress But if they're not ready to jump onto it, you can say, oh, sorry, that was the wrong slide and go to slide 27 Um, and I do that regularly when I'm with uh, diverse groups Which brings me to one of the reasons I guess I haven't been here for a little while is the the frustration of trying to keep track of the complexity of 316 email groups multiple platforms And try and also bring transformative influence to the places where I'm actually putting a feather of brain power into and heart power into in europe and the frustration is that There are so many people who think they're doing something useful And They're building a platform on level three and the building goes to level seven And they don't even know there's a level five And they don't want to look any further than level four and it's just It's just so frustrating and it's so difficult to lift the whole playing field to the next level And so we can coordinate at level all we like and it ain't going to be enough And so my frustration is that As my energy goes into these attempts I find myself in a loop that reminds me of the trauma of previous failures And so I get to a point where it actually becomes Self-destructive to try and stay in that space And yet I know that if I change what I am doing It's not going to make the difference required for any future And this is the problem with having I think a complexity lens and recognizing How close we are to absolute social and ecological collapse And so the hard part then is how to hold that energy And to focus that energy and to bring it gently and disrupt coherence compassionately Which includes playing powerpoint slides as As cards and dropping things in and seeing who's attracted And I'm heartened by the fact that people can still see me Through their barriers and through their inability to speak out honestly from within their institutions and within their consortia and so There's a trickle of people that are connecting deeply in the way that I think Lauren is calling for And they're they're seeking what I can bring But a lot of the groups I'm in I actually feel that the immune system is trying to destroy me And so I get to a point where the energy required to then pick up all the new content A new context that's gone under the bridge during my night your mornings Is Almost too difficult to grok when the energy has been pulled from my sails And so I I feel I used to sailboard and On days when gusty winds would come There'd be calm periods where you spent balancing on your board Waiting for a bit of wind and hanging on to the hanging on to the sail And suddenly this gust would come and you'd have to brace yourself if you brace too far you'd fall backwards if you Didn't brace enough you get flicked forwards. And so it's a bit like that. It's it's like You know revving on on a jet ski A gust of wind comes I catch it in the sails I sail along and then just peters out again And that's my my journey over the last few weeks I think I am making a difference In lifting social fields I'm seeing little bits and pieces recorded in mirror boards and power points and policy documents But getting people to even think about the governance beyond the internal What do we get commons to actually say what are we doing about the whole of europe economic and cultural commons? Is virtually impossible And I hear what claus was saying before about the the wonder of people who are waking up to their need for nature in A continent that has very little left And so they're looking for how do we sequester? Carbon somewhere. How do we find nature somewhere? How do we bring our increased consciousness from our complacent? You know comfortable position in economy somewhere because it ain't going to happen here Unless we stop doing what we're doing and face that reality and come up with systemic innovation Rather than just do the wrong things writer is a real battle And it's good to be back with family again. Thank you, but it's it's so difficult to keep a track of where is the conversation and How to bring something meaningful to that conversation? In the current threats i've got it's not to diminish any of the work that's going on But i'd love to see somewhere for how this is being integrated and synthesized And forgive me for not having been on board for a couple of weeks So it'll take a long time to catch up, but I ain't got time to go back through everything that's already under the bridge So forgive me and nice to see you all. Thank you. Thank you so much. Neil Thank you for for being here in in the first place um, I don't know I don't know if this Is helpful to you, but I just want to riff on what you said for a moment, which is Large-scale societal chain. It takes forever and then I think changes relatively quickly like like all of a sudden We look back and it's like well crap two years ago We were thinking like that and now we're thinking like this but it doesn't happen very often and It takes the work of many people who are pushing in many different corners and tugging and turning and and putting and basically introducing communities to each other Introducing ideas to communities pulling them all and And for the people doing that work there are this little visible change and there's lots of frustration and lots of pushback in particular If their ideas run really contrary to the dominant conventional wisdom Which is I think the case for a lot of us I think I think I think many of us are trying to bring ideas to communities Where the communities ain't that happy to hear the ideas, but there's a piece of the people that's like Yeah, that would be great, but it's never going to work because reality and and we'll never get there because Problems in the in the way and Trump the Trump apocalypse and the pandemic or whatever, right? But but I think a key here is to keep the wind in your sails to keep your sails filled through personal relationships energy whatever But then also to to find ways of being more effective in telling the story in more places And I think that that's a that's a very og me theme all of it all of what you're saying because I think part of what we're about here is collecting up synthesizing and then putting back in the world the best ideas we know about how to fix the how to how to improve civilization to go back to what Ken picked up from the conversation yesterday Just just just add very briefly to that Jerry generally agree with you and I do Everywhere I go I do what she said The frustration is when you're watching a 15 year project pre bid Setting its sails for something less than is required and needed knowingly doing that because they're ignoring reality hoping to get a big win gain in terms of economic benefit And me knowing it ain't going to be enough And also knowing that it's going to suck all the resources from all the places that could be doing transformative work And I've seen this happen 327 times Right and so if they get off on the wrong floor with all the equipment Nothing goes to the top and there is no mechanism yet to support those that are doing the groundbreaking sense breaking meaning making synthesizing conscious whole systems anticipatory design effort that actually leads other people into beneficial markets And actually gives us the resources required if we redirected those energies at a higher plane at the start It's amazing what we could do And it's so frustrating to watch it and to watch the the literal pardon expression clusterfuck of brexit going on What's happening with covet and various regulations and the inability to even follow simple instructions for personal benefit Let alone for collective benefit, you know, you can see that the dynamic is not there to allow this transformative shift Even though multiple incremental shifts will change the consciousness We need stronger transformational whole systems anticipatory design leadership and we ain't got a lot of time to do it Thanks And thanks Neil and and one of the things that really frustrates me a lot over time from what you just said Is when really great ideas and really powerful people have to dumb their ideas down because of assumptions about what the client will tolerate Like like the client isn't even in the conversation But we've already stupided down the idea because Because we make a whole series or somebody made a whole series of assumptions of what's palatable what's fundable What's profitable what the goals are etc And so exactly and so you a whole bunch of energy goes into something that is less than it could be Self-sense self-sensoring by less conscious gatekeepers Exactly exactly. I see it all the time And and so that makes me want us to find and you to find our way To the most receptive organizations That are in a position to make a difference and are really like like how do we how do we find our way to the best possible partners Who have resources and scope and activity in the world to do this with them and turbo charge their efforts Because that will fill our sales like crazy That will give us resources to stay alive and keep doing this and then we can propagate it to other organizations But I you know, I'd love to know who those organizations are and and who's running them because in retrospect You can go back and say oh during the 60s It was these couple organizations that did what we look now at as pivotal seminal work, right? And so and so what what of those organizations in our decade here? And through through the thick of of all these piled-on crises Um Thank you, and I've got to find my Doug Doug Hamilton Judy Okay, I think I came to an idea this week that helps explain Why it's so hard to have conversations that are strategic and it goes like this A belief can meet either of two criteria Either it can relate to fact Or it can be a tribal marker that you are belonging to a group and the idea that what we believe and what we say Keeps us in tune with a group that we care about Is probably much more important than it fixed the facts That's a pretty shocking idea A An example that's fascinated me this week. I run a seminar from a biological researchers And we meet once a week and it's been pretty serious and it's going along very well But in the last few weeks it's been breaking down because In the social isolation of coven The people in the seminar want to be social with each other more than they want to be serious And so the conversation about seriousness is really flagging And you can just feel the need the desire to be with the group And what you're talking about is just an opportunity to be in the group That's pretty strong Most of my time these days is working on my book called garden world politics Where the idea is that we should solve two problems simultaneously That is how we get food and where and how we live the aesthetics and the ethics of living And so blending those together and avoiding the agribusiness model approach to the future Has been important and of course i'm looking for an agent in the publisher So at some point i'll come to the group and say help help help me do this Another thing that's with communication that's related to the marker Is I participated in a number of now zoom seminars at stanford And i'm really struck by the style Of the younger researchers of talking so fast that you can't get a thought in It's a bam bam bam bam style of talking and it seems to me it really gets in the way of the speaker Reflecting on what they're saying much less than the audience Thank you Hamilton do you have to bounce at the top the hour? Okay, good because i've got kevin jones and i think scott raised his hand a little earlier and then i'll go back to the queue so kevin Yeah, just you know if you want to fund the most effective organizations, then you've got the bigger organizations who've been able to pay for metrics that the big funders Recognize and so that's how new and innovative organizations don't get on the list And that's also how indigenous and organizations led by people of color don't get funding so It's a there's a selection bias around metrics That are you know, you end up funding stupid things like the united way or their equivalent when You know the united way is never where you should give your money those sorts of things Makes sense and when I say I'd love to find the organization's best adapted to this I don't mean the largest best funded with the most metrics That's how you will find them see that's the thing you're going to look for the ones that are judged to be effective And those are the big ones who who who've made the metrics to to to get on those lists Let's try to agree with that. I mean it depends on who you're asking right and how and how they're looking Well, that's how the funding goes. I mean, you know, I totally agree with that Yeah, totally agree with that Okay, I I I firmly disagree with your approach. So Scott um, my comment was about the dumbing down and this also seems to relate to what we're just talking about here about finding the right ways and the right people my observation is that We've been told that people don't have an attention span, which I think is related to um You know, we need to dumb it down for lowest common denominator And yet the rise of the long form podcast I think stands in stark contrast to that You know, people are watching Joe Rogan for three hours talk with someone, you know, and I think that maybe it's not the organization but the content in the format that actually enables that kind of information to be taken and consumed and um, yeah, that that was just the observation is that we have things that are said that In how people are behaving that are in contrast to We need to keep it shorter and shorter and shipper and simpler and And those are very deep conversations that are wide-ranging yet people are tuning in by the millions Thank you, Scott. Um, Hamilton Judy Pete Uh, hi everybody, uh, it's funny. I wonder if it's easier to go later in the conversation because there's so much to build off of earlier in the conversation because I I I almost wanted to respond to Hank and Doug and Kevin guys, um, it's interesting, you know, the thing that's resonating for me, um Is the divisiveness that what, you know, we're talking about brexit, right? It feels like the us feels so divided that no one else has this problem, but you just we read the it's everywhere and and why we're so divided um Russell brand had a really interesting article in new york times the other day take take or leave him But he's he's a he's a good writer and he wrote about brexit and he his last paragraph was the real thing is the Is our isolation and individualism, right? It's not about being on either sides. It's about being so absorbed with the self and And consuming, right? It's just the wrong things that That in and I think we live in a world where we feel like we should be less isolated because the ease with which we can connect in some ways But I think actually it's driving more isolation and because it feels like it shouldn't be It's even amplifying it and I think if that's what's and I don't know how we get past that, right? But that's what I think we need to go after um, I loved, uh Hank what you were saying about what I think it was what I stand to learn from this person or where's this person, right? Or something I just that's so great, right? I um And and I just did this workshop. We led this workshop a couple workshops of this Professor from harvard francesca gino and her mantras is thank you because It's an empathy. It's an empathy thing, right?    We're all gonna die So I might as well not be the one hurting the most when the truck hits the Wall or something like that. I mean, there's a really nihilistic kind of thing going on And the narratives of hope or connectedness or whatever else are struggling to be heard like really struggling to find their way Through this mess So if we had to design a civilization level case study for ogm to tackle I don't know that we could do better than the present moment Right like like we're We're presently in a in a shit show that's perfect for what we're working on. Yeah, I'm claus put fantasy land I've not read the book or watched the whole video, but I've got it in my queue claus. You want to say say something about it? I mean, you know, I'm I'm sort of immersed into spiral dynamics because to me this is Just a form of sense making that is that is easy to understand And we talked before that donald trump and trumpers per se are in red It's a violent form of expressing yourself And then his clue, which is the next level up Which are evangelicals and the the characteristic of clue is that we believe in things that are not real You know, we believe in magic. We believe in things that we can pray into existence Following that is orange. So we are pretty much in orange and then you have green, which is no the environmental the Connecting connectivity this nature and so on. So this what we have right now is dominant bright blue expression And you can't ration with these people because it totally believes things that don't exist So it's like it's like arguing with with an evangelical who wants to convince you that jesus walked on water You know, and there's like nothing you can do to to say otherwise and that is This this and these are the same people who Declared someone that declares them on an enemy of god and then feel free to kill them because you know, it's an enemy of god so blue is um Is what we're trying to escape, you know, we're trying to move out of blue and the the the Um, the the world's people that is being threatened here by a significant portion Of the american public is creating these enormous tensions. I mean, that's sort of my interpretation But there's like no reason or logic or rationality. So we The characteristic but what's bio dynamics is trying is is conveying is that each of these colors speaks their own language Now you have to The words you choose the paradigms you you you use um, are different in red versus blue Shoot we miss j sorry, uh, hamilton you want to drink this? No, I just want to Close that and and going back to what Doug said and building up as I have a quote I have all these quotes there and one is I don't know who said it Because that beliefs are the enemy of facts, right and and you know I read that every time and I hate that it's like but I think you can fix that but that's where we are right now We live in that world, right where They can be the enemies of facts This magical thinking claus. I'm just reading that this fantasy land. It's so true. Yeah Um, current emissive super interesting, uh, Doug Uh, just to follow up on that It's not that the belief is the enemy of the fact It's the desire to be a member of the tribe By exercising what the tribe believes I think that's so important And so it's not that we go after our enemies we appear to go after our enemies in order to bind ourselves to our tribe I completely agree. Yeah, and I just want to surface A thought that just keeps troubling me about spiral dynamics, which is articulated in what claus was saying so I Think that framing all trumpians as red is part of the problem like like like those poor red people We must uplift them because we're teal and like we need to bring we need to bring those poor people to our level Is is what I hear a lot from spiral dynamics and and a whole bunch of trumpians might just be Smarter than a whole bunch of other people because they see the system is thoroughly broken as it was before trump showed up like like trump inherited And co-opted and ate a whole series of dysfunctional things that were happening in the world Which caused a bunch of people to go. Oh, this guy. He's the only one who's actually talking about how fucked up the system is and Many of the people backing him are placing wagers on the table that are these deadly civilization level wagers But they're wagering that if the system is broken enough Maybe we can find our way to a different system.  I don't I don't like his approach at all I think we can get there a completely different way But but part of what lights trump's followers up is being treated as one down To smarter people who have better ideas who are going to pull them into civilization And and and I admire sort of an analytic frameworks of spiral dynamics And I just that's what doesn't give me that's one of the two ways that That using it doesn't give me any traction because i'm like crap. I like There's there's this definite notion of of levels of maturity intelligence value That are that to me are implied by the colored levels of the framework claus than neil Yeah, there is that means spiral dynamics. It has vertical and lateral The horizontal levels So within each color they are there is a spectrum of intelligence and cognition But there is a mindset that's prevalence within each color. And then the other thing is Teal is like way out there aspirational We have no idea what it is, but yellow is I think the color that is the emerging quality Because yellow is a systems focused way of thinking You know, they're removed from emotion systems focused when you look at the description of yellow I think that's where we mentally emotionally need to merge into So claus, can you can you confidence that some trump followers are yellow? um Yellow is an emerging and emerging quality I haven't really Yeah, that's I haven't focused on that question as to who is there already I mean, is that a possibility in your in your mind? For example the author of this book that we've been just reading here On on fantasy land. I would say this guy is yellow No, that's an example Yeah, okay. I crudence him um neil ventudi Just to pick up on what claus was saying. I will bet you there are apparatchiks behind trump that are yellow But trump isn't And so there are systems thinkers who could be doing it for good who aren't They're doing it for personal benefit And so this is the the the half of the spiral is about I and half of the spiral is about we And so the the shifting between I and we Is critical and so the tribalism element that doug and others have mentioned comes in on one side, but not on the other side Right, the tribalism side. It's more about personal benefit And the the life conditions the value sets and the behaviors are the three critical elements here The trumpians are more likely to survive in a collapsing world than any of us here Why because they're actually prepared to kill they've got the guns They're gonna go out and do it and they don't give a shit about the rest of nature anyway Because they don't see it they don't they have a higher power which is driving it now Now that I've said all of that controversial stuff each of us has all of these in us regardless of what level we've got to And it comes down to what order we play them in which is some element of cognitive and consciousness overriding of reactive rather than responsive and the more conscious we become the more responsive we can be And the more conscious we become of systemic conditions the more complexity we can see in sense And the more complexity we can see in sense the harder it is to actually make sense of the amount of messed up fragmented Challenges we have today, which is why it's not as easy as just do it right It's actually make choices based on the best understanding you have of the system which requires sense making And it also requires paying off one for the other in terms of priorities The energy goes where the attention is Where is the energy? Where is the attention and the and the energy goes where the attention is and the attention goes where the energy is And so then you play them to tribalism You change the life conditions by throwing in politics or throwing in bushfires or throwing in hurricanes or throwing in covid and People will regress to the level that suits them at that time In whatever level they've reached and so like Claire graves who instigated the work that then went into spiral dynamics Said very much. We're on a continual spiral of development However, it's not for him as an individual to decide which of those is best because it depends on life conditions And so it's pretty hard to be having transcendental thoughts who've been chased by a guy with a machete or a shotgun Right, so we have a noble obligation With the complacency of our current comfort levels with the current amount of economy The current amount of technology To be raising the awareness and the consciousness of as many as possible and we have to do it As I said before disrupting coherence compassionately gently lifting where we can not expecting everybody to be able to go there But showing them stepping stones And I heard a wonderful quote the other night on a rerun of game of thrones where the three-eyed raven says chaos is a ladder Chaos is a ladder if you can make sense of it But to people who can't make sense of it. It's not a ladder. It's chaos And so the magicians amongst us have to be magic And anything that looks like magic is beyond the sense of those who are currently watching it Thanks Judy can And then Yes, I'm going to go back to kind of a check-in point because I've been wandering this range between large organization impact and local community impact And I agree that the extent to which we can identify the large groups that have the capacity to provide High impact to the systems of change is really desirable But each level whether it's the individual in the community or the large one requires the human connection of developing the way to work together And my sense is that that's where we need to put our energy is on the human connection and that's why I like what we were talking about in terms of listening to people well and attempting to truly understand their perspective because the only way to engage people Is to develop a shared vision And even if it's a small step It's a positive small step and that shift in that one person May without my knowing it cascade into 20 other people that that person knows because their viewpoint has been altered And so I think it's very important for us to focus on Sympathetic listening if you will or good listening So that we actually Can enter and understand the story that we really don't want to be part of it all But need to understand with some compassion in order to find ways to shift viewpoint and I tend to think of it not so much In terms of hierarchy of impact. That's of course really important But the bigger the ship the harder to turn as a rule and so somehow I think if we can consciously identify And use our behaviors to in every interaction with every encounter Help that openness occur that sharing occur then the cascade effect is high because That will carry from the individual or group we're speaking with to the other individuals and groups with whom they interact And it's a it's kind of a conversion wave. I don't know how to say it very well But I've been encouraged with some good things that are happening locally and with some organizations That are much larger That are starting to put conscious energies in constructive issues In professional society scientific groups they're becoming More engaged in sharing their knowledge and perspective In ways that will help people understand the issues we're facing and the things that can be done to do it And so to the extent that we can engage organizations comprised of large groups of individuals Then those individuals become spin-off points everywhere And I know this is very diffused, but that kind of makes it og me Um, but I just want to put it in because it's so easy to become frustrated and and dwell in the Imminent apocalypse whether it's the social apocalypse or the planetary apocalypse and That's not how we move to a better place So that's my injection for today Thank you Judy The the analogy that Fills my sales a bit or lets me cope with the skills of change we're talking about is that The things we're trying to change are more like swarms than very large food carriers And if you think of it as one big vessel that needs to turn and will turn very slowly because it has inertia like you wouldn't believe Rather than one visibly large object that may be composed of a whole series of independent actors Who who when they turn in concert can turn very quickly? And are much nimbler than the large entity And so I know that there's huge institutions we're talking about but I think also that individual action Is really easier to do than it ever has been Like like we can act outside of institutions more than we ever could In in history just look at how people are trying to source their children's education in the middle of pandemic And we know what happens there So so maybe a murmuration of starlings is is a good metaphor for how some of these things need to change Neil Just wanted to make the observation that spiral dynamics talks about multiple levels of self-organization And it's the value means which create the platform for that level of self-organization So murmurations can happen on every level Right and the thing is that if you can self-organize Within life conditions with behaviors that work for you Then you will become effective and that's the story of civilization and the story of colonization and the story of destruction But if your worldview is insufficient to take into account the stuff that kevin's working on sorry that Who is working on the a dug the dug is working on right? How do you get a garden to function? How do you get people to coordinate at a neighborhood scale? How do you get an economy of scale? How do you get an economy that works with an ecosystem of players? all of these are Self-organizational models which will be restricted to the level that is capable From the critical mass or the the center of gravity of that group The challenge we have is to lift The level at which we're self-organizing by lifting the level of consciousness and ethics with which we're underpinning all the rules of self-organization And the challenge you've got in america is that your self-organizational model around the elections and the census and all the blue You know functional stuff that makes it all work has been upended now by the orange Which is saying this is how we do it for business purposes and Concentrate the wealth in the hands of a few while making everybody else believe that you know They've all got it better than they've ever had it before um with 11 percent poverty right um How do we get that level lifted unless we tackle both individual? players within the swarm And have some transformational leadership from those who can demonstrate by example And so the flip side to your point jerry about which organizations are the ones supporting this Is for ogm to create the strange attractor to which those who are ready come Right and that's how chaos and k-word work Is that you create the attractor for things to be to gravitate towards? And if we can get the bid right As what it is that we stand for and why is it we stand for it? And here's the tools we can give and this is the energy and the commitment we put to it Then people will come Right because there there's a transformational leader in every organization. I've been into Generally trapped three levels below the ceo who thinks they're doing it. Thank you Ken and then pete and then we're going to be at the end of our call This is going back a little bit from some earlier stuff that was said but for some reason the wizard of os popped into my head Neil when you're talking about You know the people behind trump and it's like, you know what I loved about the wizard of os Is that for a long time, you know the the the Flames and the big head like oh, I am the great and powerful os terrifies people and you know And then the little dog goes over and pulls the curtain No attention the man behind the curtain. So where's our little dog to Pull back the curtain on the people behind this and show that we're all being manipulated in a way here because I think back to hearing laurence less to speak last year when he was saying that, you know, his research Is showing that 92 of americans are in agreement that the the government is not working for us We we have that alignment. So Instead of this red blue divide, there is there's a huge alignment There's huge agreement that things are not going well And then people get split into defending, you know, either side of it of blaming the blaming things I years ago, um right after bush landed on the aircraft carrier with mission accomplished I was asked to run a a cafe for peace activists and business people and forgive me if I've already told this story But you know, I didn't want to do it. I told the woman who was organizing. I don't want to do this She said why not I said because peace activists are the most violent people. I know they're out there with No blood for oil. No blood for oil. There's very little room to move a peace activist's mind And sure enough, you know, I got there and I said this is jennifer. She's our graphic recorder She'll capture today's output and I was immediately told you can't use capture. That's war language And that's the sort of reactivity that was in the room. So the first two rounds were a single Instruction that you were to sit at your table for and tell the story of the first time that you realized That um peace was important to you what woke you up to peace being something valuable And after two rounds of that in in the space of an hour, we went from peace activists and business people who had great animosity towards each other To everybody in this room has told a very touching story about how they woke up to peace being valuable And now we're in a position where we have a collective understanding of each other and of of peace So I think there are going to judy's listening You know, there are ways to work with groups of people who are at odds with each other To get them to come into some kind of space where they say I don't want to be your enemy I don't want to see you as your as my enemy. I want to work together on things that are important So let's do that. But don't in aikido, you know, you don't meet force with force Because everything moves in a circle, you know, you see it coming and you move with it So if we come at we have to solve the red blue divide by being the right ones or the smarter ones or higher up on the spiral We're gonna fail big time. But if we can if we can, you know Listen deeply and find out what these other people care about that we see as other and grant them legitimacy Then we have a way in we can pull the curtain back on the man behind the curtain and have them see That's just gas and fire, you know, and we've got the real power here. So Thanks for the wizard of us Um, I'll have what he's having Um, Ken, thank you that that was really beautifully put From a like really og me and heartfelt kind of place. I appreciate that because that because you know, Voice a lot of you know, I'm from all of us, don't you? Yeah. Yeah Um Pete Thank you. Um, sorry. I missed part of the call and And so for what it's worth, uh, I I didn't get engaged on the same the same topics even though they they sound interesting and fascinating Um, uh, two quick things. Uh, one of them is that I feel this this past week feels like We've been making a lot of background progress on on og me kinds of things. Um, uh, communication tools, um, free jay's brain Uh, understanding The form facilitation better things like that. So Nothing big to report but um, things are percolating along which feels really good and then Um, the content thing I wanted to share was actually an oddball off topic thing I think but still it's Exciting for me. I've been uh, super excited about space since I was a kid Probably since the moon landings So I know it's not exciting for everybody and and I'm also certain that that there are people who think it's a big waste of time But I kind of don't Anyway, the the recent spacex launch of sn8 was spectacular. Um, and and it's a funny thing because For an iterative iterative engineer from an iterative engineering perspective, it was like a mind-blowing success and it was super inspirational super exciting. Um, they they've got this big rocket that used to look like a Farm silo and now it actually has a top on it. So it looks cool and And retro and everything and it's huge And it got way up high in the air and then they did cool things like uh, they did the belly flop maneuver Where that they actually turned the thing over and made it start coming down and it came down perfectly They had everything under control It was going to the right spot and then at the very end it actually blew up, but Um, so it's it's been funny watching the people The people reporting on this and writing about it on the on the you know, both on the press and just people talking about it It's like They struggle with this. How do you say that it ended up being a spectacular explosion? But really it was a big success. So There have been a lot of easy memes, you know, like I don't know, you know positive and negative kind of you know, things Things go really well and then they go bad or things go bad when they fail or The the smart ones are the ones who say Things have an end and how it ended is not necessarily The way it went So the end is not the the whole thing So I watched the video of the shot And with no background on it just knowing a bit about SpaceX having watched the dragon launches and other kinds of things And I was like I was fascinated and I was inferring a few of the things you just said and then when it blew up on the pad I'm like, well, that's not too bad And then I saw the final screen where they have the chyron that says hey terrific success team really love that Which looked like spin because it's like There's smoke on the ground and there's like a little little heap of metal sitting on the on the launch pad That chyron doesn't seem to match What would have helped me a lot would be like then slide in from the right a bunch of check boxes like Today we proved this this this this this and this and they all worked really really well We didn't happen to stick the landing, you know that simple sort of affordance because because I'm Crazy impressed with how SpaceX is how quickly How third how well they're just doing all the things that they're doing like it's it's nuts And then one of the little pieces that that floated through my radar yesterday was that SpaceX is now the world's most valuable private company Seriously, I didn't know that so so sorry elan is tesla Which is more valuable than like all the automakers And this is just nuts So he is tony stark obviously But also a jerk and other kinds of things but but the scale at which This conglomerate of things is causing motion in the world is really impressive And the ways that they communicate are actually incredibly impressive So my little fix of check boxes would have taken like somebody with a little bit of power point just going zoop zoop Anyway, it was it was cool to watch thank you for your enthusiasm in your report and We're at the half. Does anybody have any wrapping comment for now I would like to do some wrapping lauren. I don't know if wrapping is is useful for check-in calls I think it's probably better for themed, you know, projecty calls So so i'm looking now just for whoever would like to Offer any thoughts to to wrap this call But not in the sense of of the actual wrapping exercise Ken Yeah, charles mentioned that it's the first night of hanukkah and my understanding of hanukkah is that um The there was a um a ruler who forbade the jewish people from practice in their religion Not unlike a situation might have right now where certain things are being prohibited and there was a terrible battle and they won and The warriors went into the temple and they took their spears and drove them into the ground and placed Uh Lamps on top but they went enough oil for one night and the miracle was that the Oil actually lasted for eight nights. So it is a time of miracles of light Of thinking we don't have enough light to survive this darkness in this dark time of year But actually We each are the oil that is going to be the miracle that's going to keep it going. So I think ogm is a perfect example of the miracle of the festival of lights. So Be your as buddha. I believe the buddhas last words were be a light to each other so Charles ken has set a high bar Go ahead I just I want to thank you ken for coming back to that and opening that up and just just to add on the other So as I was just reading yesterday trying to get in in gear It was originally unique unique holiday in the tradition in that it was Man oriented. So it was actually celebrating the victory which was the first miracle kind of against the odds And then the the rabbis injected god in Into it with the light thing And so it's like this double You know bridging bridging the the human victory miracle to the spiritual So I just yeah So against the odds victory You're also one of the few jewish holidays that's not tied to the calendar because it marks a victory It's usually they're tied to the phases of the moon and you know, all this harvest stuff and Well, it just happens to be around the solstice and that's pretty ancient stuff with the light and so Yeah Did anybody see the northern lights last night? They were allegedly on full display much further south than usual. We had dense fog last night. So there was no northern lighting Monday will be a full solar eclipse and apparently it will be spectacular Somewhere cool I know south america So thanks everybody. This has been an awesome call. I will post it online and we will see you on the intratubes Yay Happy happy bye for now. Nice to see you all take care. Bye. Bye