BeautyDialogues

The Power of Language

I have long been thinking about how language creates reality, and how important it is to be conscious of this in our communications.

I touch on some of the practical aspects of this for web communications in The Art of Words, a piece on language taken from my Beauty & Technology Squidoo Lens, but there is a much deeper study I would like to make on the subject. In particular, how to use language (in the widest sense of the word, including image and sound and movement) to bring an aliveness and awareness of the natural world into online communications which can otherwise seem disconnected and a little unreal. But that is a topic for another day.

Today I want to talk about a post I ran across recently by Kate Rutter of Adaptive Path. In it she says:

"I honestly feel that in order to create engaging digital experiences, we need to continuously evolve how we think about them. And this means we need to change the words we use to design them. What we need are new metaphors to play around with…words and terms that unleash fresh thinking appropriate to experiences in the Web and beyond. A language of experiences that can prism through different devices, objects and spaces."

My own interest in language includes but extends beyond this professional concern for design coherence between interactive devices, but what I really liked about Kate's thinking was her recognition of the power language has to effect our experience and to limit or extend our sense of what's possible. I love where she came out as a result of her experiments:

"It sharpened the realization that I was not a web designer. I was a designer creating an experience for the Web. And that’s a powerful shift in perspective. It’s one thing to say “I’m an experience designer.” It’s another thing to really think like one..."

"At the start of the Web, many of our approaches were limited by the technology. Now we run the risk of being limited by our metaphors."

Can you think of a metaphor that describes how you'd like to experience your online communications?

We Are All Connected

My magical friend & mentor FireHawk Hulin passed along this fabulous video from the Symphony of Science, which samples media snippets from the brightest scientific heart/minds of our time. The message is simple: "we are all connected", but there couldn't be more crucial knowledge for us humans to carry as we go into our next decade.

The power of this symphony's lyrics is literally stunning, and I find myself fascinated by the last line of one stanza - "we are a way for the cosmos to know itself" whose implications are still reverberating ...

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We're made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

The World Cafe Online Community Takes Off!

Finally! The long awaited new World Cafe online community has taken wing! We've been working on it for several months now, starting with an extensive comparison of features, costs, ease of use, etc. on over 15 platforms. We finally decided on NING, a popular social media platform which met our needs and more.

Once the site was designed and built, we invited a "beta" team of experienced World Cafe hosts to seed the community with their wisdom - the stories, ideas, images, and sounds that inspire them, the questions that keep them up at night. This period was very sweet, and I was touched to see people who were new to the technology willing to overcome their fears and jump in to share their knowledge and dreams.

With the ground thus firmly laid, we invited the rest of the community to join us. And boy, did they come! In the 11 days since we've been launched, over 700 people have arrived and registered. It's been fascinating to watch the numbers rise. You can literally sit there with the "People" page open and see a new person join every few minutes. The real thrill, though, is to see where they're from.

They are coming from Brazil, Israel, Italy, Finland, Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, the United States, Russia, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Chile, Mexico, Portugal, the Phillipines, France, Ghana, Indonesia, Columbia, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Belgium, Spain, Croatia, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Yukraine, Poland, Switzerland, Peru, Dubai, Slovenia, Tahiti, Venezula, Jamaica, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, Bolivia and Austria. Watching this confluence you get a palpable sense of a new kind of community - a truly global World Café - taking form before our eyes.

I'm very excited about it all, and deeply appreciative of the generosity which has been called forth from this diverse and dynamic group of people. I can't wait to see what evolves there.

Contemplative Twitter, or #co-tw2

I've just finished taking part in an experiment on Twitter initiated by the consummate Techno Shaman George Por. The idea and instructions were posted online, and the invitation was sent out through the Presencing Institute's online community site yesterday afternoon, but for those of you who like their news delivered directly, here's the gist: it was a one hour experiment laid out in four 15 minute segments - the first of which was to contemplate the following question in silence, somewhere away from our computer screens: "What is needed for openness and dialogue through tweets to scale and affect positive change in consciousness and society?" 

Reaching for the New

One of the most prevalent concerns I come across with new blogging clients, especially those who are starting to blog as part of a business strategy, is anxiety about their writing "voice".

Many feel a strong taboo - for whatever reason - against revealing too much of themselves, they aren't sure about sharing their most closely held dreams and hopes for themselves, their work, and the world. Instead, they imagine they need a standard "professional" tone to give them a voice they can feel comfortable with and others will recognize. In other words, at that moment of truth they look to the conventional rather than braving the step out of the box to find their own voice. Unfortunately, nothing could be more misguided.

Now I'm not saying there aren't occasions in which that standard professional persona might be exactly what is called for, but one of the great opportunities opened up by this era of social media and blogging is transparency; we get to see each other as we are - I begin to learn what it's really like to be you, and glimpse what you see and what you dream of. Not to mention the slightly unintuitive marketing truth that the more specific and unique your "brand", the easier YOUR people can find you.

My whole blogging experience is an example of going out on that particular limb. When I first started writing about my ideas for a more "human", nature-connected and sensory-based online experience, I felt pretty out there. I wasn't sure anyone would understand or take me seriously, and in the beginning I wasn't even sure what I meant by it myself, but it was a road I just had to follow. Now I have at least two paid projects going that are expanding my ability to develop exactly that niche, clients who wouldn't have known about my particular passion if I hadn't "put it out there".

So I keep telling my fledgling bloggers to brave their dreams and dare to be exactly who they are. If enough of us do so it just might change not only our own work, but what it means to be a professional.

My New Avatar

I've been working with Kara Brown on an avatar for my social networking sites, and am pleased to show you the jewel she came up with...  and share what a wonderful experience it's been working with her on this project.

First she looked at my other avatars, which were mostly photographic, and then we talked about who I am and what I want to say about myself in this medium. She was totally open to my thoughts and feedback, and really heard the essence of my message.

I love what she did with the background, indicating a magical web of connection and inspiration, a green web that connects us to each other and to the natural world.

If you'd like your own, completely customized avatar, or have other illustration needs that could use her playful impressionistic style, give Tara a call! She's talented, intuitive, reasonably priced and I can't recommend her enough.

Sharing the Gift

There's something tremendously satisfying about really helping someone. These days my joy is in helping others navigate their way through web 2.0 challenges. Maybe that's because I know what a little knowledge and confidence in that realm can open up for them.

In the last few days I've helped several people get their bearings in Second Life - get their avatar to look the way they want it, learning to move around and use the menu controls, etc. I love seeing people gain confidence in themselves and enjoy participating in that magical world, but I think my favorite thing is helping people get to grips with blogging.

Each blog is as unique as its author, so it's important that the design and structure of a blogging platform be totally aligned with what the blogger wants to say; what kind of experience they want to convey and evoke in their readers.

Whether it is something as simple as customizing an RSS feed or helping someone through the initial stages of conception, there's something fascinating for me about my work with blogging. Blogging is so personal in many cases, so creative and authentic and raw - something new venturing out into the world, a harbinger of fresh wisdom and beauty and knowledge. There's a particular thrill for me in having a part in introducing these new voices and their new visions.

One thing I've found is that no one knows it all. We can always learn from each other, and I love being part of the chain of sharing what I have learned as much as I enjoy learning from others. This flow of generosity and freedom is really the essence of the gift economy upon which so much of web 2.0 rests, whether or not money is involved.

There's something deeply magical about this, and it goes far beyond web 2.0. In fact, part of the power of web 2.0 may be in its awakening of this deeply human impulse to share what we know with each other. Whatever it is, it sure feels good to me, and I plan to continue being of help when I can, as long as I can.