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Corporate Culture and Spirituality Conference

Corporate culture and spirituality may look like strange bedfellows, but with the increasing awareness in businesses today on the importance of fostering personal development and excellence on the job, a spiritual focus is not a surprising development.

Spirituality can be many things to many people, but to me it is a tool to get to know yourself, to improve your understanding of the world and to become happier. And these aims make a lot of sense at work.

That’s why I think the 2004 conference on Corporate Culture and Spirituality looks very interesting. It’s held this year in Bangalore, India, and aims to:
* Challenge the general perception about business & spirituality as dichotomous areas
* Enhance the value and efficacy of conventional management practices by partnering with spirituality
* Evolve a larger joint-role for corporate and spiritual leaders in addressing complex global issues like terrorism, corruption and poverty
* Develop business models that create and sustain inspirational communication and bonds within organizations

Which sounds pretty good to me. With sessions like “Maximizing Ethics and Profits”, “Persevering Excellence amidst the Chaos of Change” and “The Bottom Line, a Perspective in Time” it looks like the conference is firmly anchored in the current needs of organizations worldwide.

The conference was held for the first time last year and was a great success. In 2003 it was mostly attended by indian business leaders, this year the focus will be more international. The conference fee is 700 euros, which isn’t too steep for a 3 day conference aimed at top executives.

I’m going to Goa, India in September for the Open Space on Open Space conferece, and now it looks like I’ll have to seriously consider going to India twice in two months.

August 26, 2004

Athens 2004

I’m back from a week in Athens, and what a week. Patricia and I have been visiting my sister who heads the Art of Living in Greece, and between touring all of Athens and catching some olympic actions, it’s kinda nice to be home again, so we can relax after our holiday :o)

The people of Athens are incredibly nice. We were met with smiles everywhere we went, at the olympic games, on the beaches and in the streets. They’s all friendly, kind an open.

There’s plenty to experience in Athens, and we made the most of it. The acropolis is beautiful of course, and evokes the concept of Greece as the birthplace of our culture. The food is excellent. How a greek salad (tomatoes, cucumber, feta and olives with a simple dressing of olive oil and vinegar) can taste so good is beyond me. We went to an outdoor cinema, and saw a greek movie (with english subtitles) under the starry sky, with the lights from the Acropolis just off to our left.

We went to a couple of beaches and swam in the aegean sea. We also got great tans :o) We walked the streets of Athens withut much of a plan, sitting down at a caf? for beer or coffee frapp?s whenever we got too hot. We always pack books, so we can take a reading break if we want.

We went to no less that six different sports events: Fencing, badminton, beach volley ball, athletics and two womens handball games. At one of the handball games I had the pleasure of teaching two american guys the basics of the sport. They worked as volunteers, got free tickets and had never seen a handball game before.

We even made a new greek friend, Nick, who let us stay in his home for a few nights. That’s the hospitality of the greeks for ya.

It’s been a great week, that’s given us a great feel for what the olympic games do for a city. My main question now is: How quickly can we get the games to Copenhagen?

August 25, 2004

Open Space world map

Check out the new and improved Open Space World Map. It’s a seriously cool visualization of how Open Space Technology is spreading around the world.

August 25, 2004

More stuff from the happy-at-work conference

We’ve received some more follow-up material on the happy-at-work conference. Suna Christensen is an anthropologist who participated, and has now written a short report on the conference. It’s fascinating reading, and here’s one of my favourite bits:
Work life and private, personal life is traditionally two separate worlds. But through inclusion of being human on the job this conference created a connection where human life as such stretched beyond the known borders. In me an experience was created which means, that it no longer makes sense to speak of work environment as terms or conditions under which we work. In stead, we must search for (new) words and concepts that – as the conference did in practice – kan represent the (contradictory) conditions under which we work.

Music to my ears :o) You can find the whole report here – in danish only, though.

Merete Klussman also participated, and she wrote a personal account of her day at the conference. Her article is an excellent description of the day and what participants could get out of the conference. Read Meretes story here.

August 16, 2004

Unemployment

Here’s a very funny inside look at unemployment.

August 9, 2004

Bad astronomy

Philip Plait debunks weird, pseudoscientific claims at his excellent webiste badastronomy.com. Here’s his take on what it’s like to stand up for science:
Have you ever gone to a carnival, or a fair of some kind, and played the game “Whack-a-Mole”? It’s a table with holes in it, and little mechanical rodents pop their heads out for about a half a second. You have to hit them with a mallet. If you wait too long, they duck back under. But every time you hit one, one or two pop up again. No matter how many you whack, there are always more.

Pseudoscientists are like those moles. You can whack one down, but then another springs up…

He does an excellent job of it. For a taste, read his debunking of the claims that the Apollo moon landings were faked.

August 5, 2004

Better than sex

Inspired by this list of things that are the new black, here’s a Google-assisted list of stuff that is better than sex:

Baseball, Beer, Chocolate, Climbing, Coffee, E-mail, Fencing, Fishing, Food, Gardening, Go, Hack mode, Halloween, Hockey, Nothing, Poetry, PS2, Skiing, Skydiving, Sleeping, Studying, Syntax, Thanksgiving dinner, Trail running, Trick or treating, Wakeboarding, Walking, Werthers, Video on Demand

August 4, 2004

Scott Kurtz is a genius

Scott Kurtz is the writer/artist of the PVP online somic strip, and at the recent San Diego Comics convention, he made an announcement that may change the future of newspaper comics syndication:
But I’ve already become attached to the idea of seeing PvP in the papers, and that’s why I’ve decided to start a new program. In the coming months, I’ll be putting into effect, a program in which papers can receive PVP for free. That’s right, free. They don’t have to pay me a cent for it. I will provide for the papers, a comic strip with a larger established audience then any new syndicated feature, a years worth of strips in advance, and I won’t charge them a cent for it.

The exposure and prestige of PvP appearing in daily papers would more than pay for itself in a months time. In exchange, I can offer the papers a comics feature that’s tried and tested, funny and best of all, free. They have nothing to lose or risk financially. They can see, in advance, a years worth of strips so they don’t risk me flaking out on them. Most of all, I can provide them with yet another bargaining chip against the very syndicates. This is the perfect climate to take this step.

That’s a brilliant, innovative and gutsy move and I really admire him for coming up with it. You can read his entire text here.

August 1, 2004