I arrived in Sao Paolo knowing no one. The conference sponsors who had promised me a grand tour of the city were nowhere to be found. Then I remembered seeing some Brazilians on the Internet Time Community. The next day I met Luiz, Fernanda, and Barbara.
Over lunch at Fernanda’s, we discovered shared interests in David Cooperrider’s Appreciative Inquiry and Marty Seligman’s work on unlearning helplessness. Luiz was a fan of my book on Informal Learning and has incorporated it into his practice. The three of us will be getting together in Berkeley next month.
That night at dinner, Barbara and I talked of her work using networks to further teacher education. When you’re on the same plane of understanding, it’s amazing how conversation flows. It was like single-word poetry of the song the Waters of March: the net, the blog, the students, the ah-ha. The next day Barbara and I had lunch at the Mercado:
Wednesday is feijoada day, so I was introduced to Brazil’s national dish:
The number of people on the streets around the mercado was amazing to behold:
Yesterday evening, Luiz and Fernanda and my new friend John from HP went to surreal exhibit of far-out techno artworks on emergence. Explanations were minimal; a number of the interactive experiments weren’t working. For a while, we stood watching three koi in a large plastic tank supposedly interacting with music. On another floor, we twisted a 3′ long rod attached to a chrome globe that was supposed to generate sound and create a 3D image; the screen was dark. And so it went.
Fernanda had to leave for her Humberto Matarana conversation group, but Luiz, John, and I headed to File 2008: Millions of Pixels, a mind-blowing series of interactive video events. Here’s John racing the clock to sort the video blocks by color:
We played and played until the show closed for the day.
Here’s a video of Luiz attracting flocks of virtual butterflies to a red orb. You had to be there. This was poetic and transformative. I’d like to have something like this set up in my house just for blissing out.
Alberto joined us for supper and discussions about the practice of conversation, the work with Matarana (who had been to John’s shop in Corvallis a few years back), the difficulty of changing organizations, how to spark collaboration, and outcomes of Luiz & Alberto’s 25-year partnership.
Here’s a meta-lesson from these experiences. Were it not for the Internet Time Community, none of these things would have happened. The community structure was a snap to set up (start your own at Ning) and takes nothing to maintain. Most of the time, there’s not much activity. That’s the long tail at work: nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, HIT, nothing, nothing, nothing. But in this case, the stars converged to create new friendships and connections.
I’ve experienced Sao Paolo through the eyes and stories of people who live here. My new friends have introduced me to fresh ideas, inside looks, great food, a culture I did not know, and marvellous sites. Add to that the satisfaction I feel from knowing that my work is not in vain; its ripples have touched the shore here.
The Internet Time Community is one year old this week. Imagine how great it’s going to be when things like this are commonplace, and people more and more interconnected.
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