Biodynamic Agriculture

Text of WMM input to teleconference Mon6Jul09 6pm EST

Dear Common-Ground crew,

This is my input to the Monday 6July2009 6pmEST teleconference.
Given my input is contrary to where the agenda has been heading, and I
am only available for the first 30 minutes of the teleconference, I am
taking the liberty of sending it to all Common-Ground crew today.

Opportunity
There is an opportunity to create an Australia-wide organisation for
sustainability professionals that fosters interaction across the
corporate and organisational boundaries that otherwise constrain them,
so that they may collectively share knowledge and views, create change,
influence policy, expose myths, and undertake action toward a common set
of stated objectives.

Prosperity
For an organisation/community to prosper, each member must find a reason
to become and to remain involved. So far around 130/150 people have
expressed 'interest' in becoming involved, some of whom met in
'worldcafe'
groups in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, 12 of whom met at
the Common-Ground retreat.
In order to harness the expressed interest and to make the most of the
opportunity, I believe a complete re-examination of the actions arising
from the common-ground retreat is imperative .

Why I believe we have lost our way?
The 'worldcafe' meetings were an appetiser, the Common-Ground retreat a
wonderful journey, but my reflective view now is we took an inadequate
roadmap into and out of Common-Ground.
* The agenda taken into Common-Ground seems to have been too loose to
take advantage of the opportunity created by the preceding work; * The
output from the 'worldcafe' meetings was brought to Common-Ground but
not referred to during the weekend, possibly disenfranchising those who
had input to those meetings; * The "Awakening the Dreamer Symposium" was
very skillfully facilitated by Tathra, a wonderful experience, but
peripheral to the task of creating the objective organisation; * The
main output from the weekend (The how, who, when, where, why
brainstorm) ignored the 'worldcafe' outputs and was not distilled into
statements that would be meaningful to those outside the common-ground
group involved; * The outputs from the 'worldcafe' meetings have not
been circulated, and some of the output from the retreat has not been
circulated for consideration; * The guiding principles v2 put together
late Sunday and added to by Simon and edited by Monique according to
group inputs are a group of 'Motherhood' statements applicable to
aspirations that are so broad as to be almost irrelevant. They are the
wrong message at this point in time, if ever.
If these are sent out to the wider group as the output from the retreat,
my belief is we will lose most of the expressed interest. These
statements are not something that I can relate to, even though I had a
hand in creating them.

What we need
* An interim steering group;
* Clear agreed objectives;
* A clear action plan;
* A proposed organisational and legal structure; * A proposed means of
funding .

Interim Steering group
1. Should be made up of people who are able to commit sufficient time to
coordination activities and who are prepared to be facilitators rather
than owners; 2. Should take the agreed action plan and deliver it at an
agreed time.

Suggested Objectives
1. Create an Australia wide group of sustainability professionals; 2.
Create an independent web portal for the organisation; 3. Create a
statement of purpose and intent.

Proposed Action Plan
1. Admit we stuffed up, and be prepared to start over; 2. Examine the
success factors of other organisations who represent professionals
across organisations; 3. Create a proposal for organisational and legal
structure that is democratic; 4. Create an email to send to all who have
expressed interest inviting expressions of interest to become a member
and to form a leadership group, asking what each person would want from
a group (described in opportunity above); 5. Devise an interim budget
and funding proposal; 6. Devise a proposal for selection/election of
leadership group; 7. Investigate the cost and work required to develop a
web portal; 8. Initiate process for selection of a successful name; 9.
Devise an ongoing action plan to cover period until leadership group
assumes management.

Random thoughts
* What is it we want to achieve?
* What does making a difference look like?
* Almost all change is incrementally achieved, and even the paradigm
shifts you may know of, look like increments when viewed on a world
scale; * For an organisation to gain credibility and hence retain
professional membership, it must take action measured by the community
as worthy of respect.

Mal

Hello,

Do you guys have a website? Would love to explore your work.

~Bowo

oops is my rant going to go down in history for ever and ever now? can it be deleted, once you've fetched me out of the wieserearth ocean and connected me to yourselves?..

oops... that was the rest of me credibility down the drain..

Dear world, do not judge the intelligence of this group by me!