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Dear Friends in FLOW,
I trust you are having a good summer so far. It's been great
for FLOW. In this brief newsletter I will cover:
- FLOW Activation Circle News
- Empowering Women Entrepreneurs
– Program & Events
- FreedomFest
- The FLOW Papers
FLOW Activation Circle News
Before venturing into the notes, as brief context… we are six
months into our initial “experiment” with FLOW community and
FLOW Activation Circles. Thank you to everyone who has participated
thus far and helped to inform the development and evolution of
the FACs. This is a rich and rewarding process for me and for
FLOW, which I trust will bear fruit for a long time.
Thank you to George Kao and the Presidio MBA program for hosting
us for the past several months. Since the room we are using is
being converted into offices, we will be moving the SF meetings
to another location.
The NYC group met on June 12th, Austin
met on June 26th, and SF met on June 28th.
While the NYC focus and process was somewhat different, the principal
focus and themes were:
- Moving forward & going
deeper – how
do we create optimal value for all involved with the FACs and
FAC meetings?
- Collaborative Action – what can we do together?
- Empowering Women Entrepreneurs – as a theme
and a platform for collaboration
Here are some insights, lessons, and suggestions generated by
participants and the process:
We ended up the meeting with an agreement to produce a “trail
run/rehearsal” of FLOW’s Empowering Women Entrepreneurs event
this fall. And had a lively and productive conversation about
how the SF FAC can evolve and how FACs in general can develop.
- Maintain a balance between structure interaction process
and responding to what comes up and unstructured networking.
- Exercises that quickly shift perspective and facilitate deeper
connection (such as the one we employed in SF) are great to
move thing forward and deeper. They are also fun and energizing.
- Reproduce the model used by many micro-credit organizations
of “passing the resources” from person to person, and rotate
among FAC members for an opportunity to have the resource of
the attention of the other members on their needs. Circle of
rotating mutual support.
- Each FAC sets own vision and goals for the year.
- FAC retreats/seminar – shared experience – to establish a
strong connection for ongoing collaboration.
The Next Meetings
NYC – 17 July, 6:30 – 8:30 pm, the New
York City Junto
Emily Maher will talk about her experience working in a microcredit
program in India.
Austin – July 21st at 4:00 – 6:00 pm, St.
Michael’s Church
The focus will be on Empowering Women Entrepreneurs by directly
supporting micro-entrepreneurial artisans in developing countries
by means of microloans, buying their products, facilitating distribution
and other support for them and their products.
San Francisco – July 26th, 6:30 - 8:30 pm at Green
Fusion Design Center in San Anselmo
The focus will be on organizing an Empowering Women Entrepreneurs
event in the fall. The event will be a “development workshop”
during which attendees will participate in refining the event
for presentation at The Crossings in Austin on November 30th
and in San Francisco a week later. SF FAC member Alicia Stammer
will be co-facilitating the event and coordinating attendees.
Rotary International SF Chapter and Bay Area Region will be co-presenting
the EWE event in December, in collaboration with Educate Girls
Globally, GIVE (Global Initiative to Advance Entrepreneurship,
Women’s Edge Coalition, Motto magazine, What is Enlightenment?
magazine, and others).
FAC - Development: Based on the past six months
of exploration and development, we are close to documenting and
passing on the FAC DNA to facilitate self-organizing FLOW Activation
Circles. We have great interest in starting a FAC in Boulder
and are exploring doing so sooner rather than later.
Empowering Women Entrepreneurs
You can download the newest presentation of the program here.
FreedomFest
John, Michael, and I had a great
time at FreedomFest in Las Vegas( well, I did at least, and
I think they did too). John's Friday morning talk entitled "My Personal Philosophy of
Self-Actualization: Leadership Through Personal Growth" was
extraordinary, and will form the basis of a chapter in The FLOW
Papers. CDs are available of all of John's talks, including his
Saturday lunch talk on Conscious Capitalism. Contact Tami Holland
for information on purchasing recordings from the conference:
tami@freedomfest.com
The FLOW Papers
Speaking of The FLOW Papers, we have a new table of contents
and introduction, and the rest of the book is coming together
quickly. We will begin publicly posting the contents again soon
and look forward to receiving your feedback.
Yours in flow,
Jeff Klein
Executive Director &
Chief Activation Officer
FLOW, Inc
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