The Co-Intelligence Institute
Author: John Abbe Issue: 2023-01-04
The Co-Intelligence Institute
by John Abbe aka Slow
For decades now my long-time friend and fellow activist Tom Atlee has been curating the growing world of grassroots co-intelligence and generating theory from it, as in his first book, The Tao of Democracy. (Tom was also mentioned in the 16 November Plex newsletter, in Charles & Peter's co-debrief of the Community Wisdom Gardening event.)
In the past few years, a new board has been hard at work to grow the Co-Intelligence Institute (CII), the small nonprofit Tom founded. The new board, with members from age 30s to 70s, along with other associates have been mostly heads-down this year, and this work has now borne some fruit we can announce publicly:
First of all, we have a brand new website, at a new URL -
http://co-intelligence.institute/
It highlights three areas of focus for the Institute's past and future work promoting and developing co-intelligence, with each area having plenty to dig into. For example, our Learning Community page points to many public events, including a recent Real World Co-Intelligence call, Exploring the Austrian Climate Assembly (a call recording is available). This was a deep learning experience for many who attended including the presenters, who appreciated the opportunity to see their own work in a broader context.
Institute Associate Rosa Zubizarreta is the lead organizer of these calls. As she wrote in a CII newsletter, she came across the work of the Reimagining the Civic Commons movement at a recent "Reimagining Democracy" conference, and our January Real World Co-Intelligence call will feature a speaker from that world. If you're interested, you can sign up to get an email whenever these monthly calls are announced. Other upcoming events on our Learning Community page include a four-session book group, and a patterning ritual for the New Year.
Another thread of our work is transformational storytelling. We showcase some case studies on the Real-World Examples page. These include classics such as the Maclean's magazine 1991 "People's Verdict Experiment" (including links to the 1999 interviews Tom commissioned). Also a very up-to-date article by CII board member Andy Paice, "Polis & the Austrian Citizens’ Climate Council." And the 2015 use of Pol.is by vTaiwan which achieved a broad consensus among both traditional taxi and Uber drivers.
On the Tools page, we offer a large sampling of group processes, organizations & organizing methodologies, and politics & governance resources which exemplify co-intelligence. Featured is the Wise Democracy Pattern Language cards, developed by Tom Atlee and CII Associate Martin Rausch. Among many other resources we also include a link to the story of CII's lengthy involvement with Dynamic Facilitation as a sense-making social technology, including how it spread to Europe and its uptake in Austria in particular.
As with most nonprofits this time of year, we are fundraising to continue and expand our work in 2023. If you like what you see on our website and would like to support more of that, here is our donations page.
Related:
- John Abbe (author)
- 2023 (year)
- Topics: Hosting and Facilitation