Sunday Agenda
- Check in
- Opening Blessing
- Review WWWs
- Weekly event logistics
- Review Agenda
- Service call enhancements
- Evaluation
- Closing Blessing
Check In
- Eric … I’m sleepy, I worked all day at the AGM for MHI because Michelle needed to go to the Garth Brooks concert
- Brandon … We had family photos today in our Garden and it was cleaned up super nice
Opening Blessing
May we be gentle with ourselves when we are less than our best. May we find ways to amplify the bright spots where we are happy in the sun and our thoughts words, and actions are aligned with our highest aspirations. May this work together be joyous. --Blessed Be
WW(W)s from last time
Organize the WW(W)s by person and then due date if desired. We’ll start checking in on topical community protocol and meditation for each mini-period between workbees. Holacracy founder Brian Robertson says these are bad: http://holacracy.org/blog/the-insanity-of-the-what-by-when
- Ben … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing
- Ben … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Ben … send a bio for the Octavia Butler event to John … by tonight
- Ben … learn more about the Octavia Butler event … by next call
- Ben … sign up for the Octavia Butler event … by next call
- Ben … buy plane tickets and arrange lodging … by next call
- <s>Eric … meditate regularly with Ben ... ongoing
- Eric … meditate regularly with Brandon ... ongoing
- Eric … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing</s>
- Eric … schedule an event with Gaia’s People … by the call after that
- Eric … contact members of Gaia’s People with a survey to find out what they want from the group … by next call
- Eric… learn more about the Octavia Butler event … by next call
- <s>Brandon … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing</s>
- Brandon … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- <s>Brandon … upload the stories … very soon</s>
- Brandon … work on SolSeed/Earthseed service calls … on the workbee
- <s>Brandon … check whether John is going to OEB regardless of acceptance</s>
WWWs
- Ben … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing
- Ben … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Ben … send a bio for the Octavia Butler event to John … by tonight
- Ben … learn more about the Octavia Butler event … by next call
- Ben … sign up for the Octavia Butler event … by next call
- Ben … buy plane tickets and arrange lodging … by next call
- Eric … meditate regularly with Ben ... ongoing
- Eric … meditate regularly with Brandon ... ongoing</s>
- Eric … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Eric … schedule an event with Gaia’s People … by the call after that
- Eric … contact members of Gaia’s People with a survey to find out what they want from the group … by next call
- Eric… learn more about the Octavia Butler event … by next call
- Brandon … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing
- Brandon … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Brandon … work on SolSeed/Earthseed service calls … on the workbee
Weekly Events Logistics
Midweek
- April 7 Work-Bee: 6:30 PM PST / 21:30 EST
Weekend Service rotation: Eric, Ben, Shelley, Brandon
- April 9 Service: 8 AM PST / 11 EST … Eric (for Brandon)
- April 10 Business Call: 5:30 PM PST / 20:30 EST
Service call enhancements
The service calls are the part of SolSeed that we are most faithful with and look forward to the most. We’ve done more than 200 service calls. Let’s take this bright spot and make it even brighter :-) What’s working with the calls:
- They are beautiful
- Eric loves the chance to write his “prayers” to Gaia
- It hurts when I have to miss one.
- It feels like we are doing something unique and well aligned with our highest aspirations
- I aspire highly to do the services
- The seasonal openings and the props that go along with them really engage everyone (including the littles)
- We’re so faithful with them … they definitely shape our lives.
What could be better:
- Technology often gets in the way
- Speaking in unison would be a lot more powerful if we didn’t have a half-second lag
- When someone has issues with Skype or their computer it can be upsetting
- Sound quality is often very distracting
- It isn’t clear how scalable the online service is … could we easily handle 10 locations? Or even 5?
- It would be nice to do more of them outdoors in wild settings (five fingers on that!)
- If we had more people so that we could do local ones with a critical “mass” (sorry for the pun) it would feel like a centre of growth for us
Strategic options:
- Try to grow local congregations so that the online isn’t necessary
- Embrace the online, make it a lot better and grow that way
- Create multiple online services with different subgroups of locations
Explorations:
- What could we do to make the online an integral part of the offline? So that even if one location had a dozen people the online participants from places that don’t have that would be welcomed and would have a good experience too?
- Do more than one service; an offline for the big group and then an online with select people from the big group and other groups?
- What if we did some timeshifting? High fidelity recordings of the offline service that could be sliced up and interleaved with the online. For example, the seasonal ritual at the beginning could play back and all the online folks could go along with it (and each other) and be guaranteed to have at the very least the high fidelity recording that was downloaded earlier to participate with even if their connection got spotty. A client (the SolSeed ansible) downloads the service onto your computer ahead of time and then you can follow along with the service at your own pace or at a shread pace with other online people. When the unison stuff happens the only thing you hear is the play back or there could be a ripple where the first person gets just the playback and the second person gets the play back plus the first person in unison and so on so that person n gets the play back plus persons 1 to n-1 all in perfect unison. That could scale to any number n people (like even a thousand). This can be done with singing too.
- A smart app could allow people to share with each other in groups of 5 (pods).
- Do it at the same time of day in every time zone. So like Ottawa is the first group to go. They are in the woods and not online. But someone gets it back and uploaded before the local group in Portland can go out to the woods with the recorded group from Ottawa. But then Hawaii can do the same thing but with both the Portland and Ottawa groups and multiple groups in the same time zone can use the same recording in parallel. Nothing private gets shared. So the sharing isn’t shared to the next time zone or even to the whole group if people have concerns about privacy et cetera.
- This is a cool way of doing it, but I like the idea we came up with on Thursday night as well with the recorded, on-demand services that are available all the time. For example for people who are maybe not even sure about us they can go online and participate in a service. They can get instructions online and just view a service and follow along and go “hey I like this” and then decide to join an online service.
- These seem to be deeply complementary.
- What would we need to make this happen?
- Beautiful settings for the local gatherings
- Excellent cameras and micro-phones to record the local gathering
- Must be unobtrusive in addition to high quality
- Perhaps include an area of the gathering that will not be recorded for those who don’t want to be on the recording
- Permission slips granting the use of images and likenesses for those who sit in the recorded area
- The technology to sync recordings online in real time
- Perhaps we always start by ringing a bell (easy to recognize and sync the waveform)
- Use a different bell to end the recorded parts so that the automation can be turned on and off with something very non-electronic
- Excellent portable speakers
- Excellent portable screen and projection (or something that let’s us see into another world)
- Should fit in seamlessly in the natural setting
Evaluation
- Eric … I am re-energized to work on the BRD for the Thursday night vision of this.
- Brandon … I find it hard to image putting the current version of our service on the web because of how clunky and non-Gaian our technology currently is. This on the other hand, I could really see doing and going out to some beautiful natural setting for this. And inviting people to it.
Blessing
Sometimes when we come together the work feels far more aligned with our highest aspirations, far more filled with hope than other times. Let us feel gratitude that this was one of those times. -- Blessed Be