The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

  • Generosity in action

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    My good friend Lars Pind runs a company, Collaboraid, which embodies generosity in a number of ways. They develop e-learning software based on an open source platform, which is generous in itself, since they spend time and energy not only on creating solutions for their customers (among which you’ll find MIT, Heidelberg University and Greenpeace), but also on improving the platform itself.

    And now they’ve taken it a step further, and have arranged a two-day conference about the technological platform for anyone who’s interested, and people are coming from all over the world. Cost of participation: Zero! They spend a lot of time arranging this event but won’t make a single buck on it. They do it simply for the sake of the community, and because they think it will be fun.

    What does it signify, when a company does something this generous?
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  • Book review: Expanding our now

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    This book is Harrison Owens second book about Open Space, and it contains stories of how he arrived at the concept of Open Space, and of how it has helped and transformed various organizations.

    Also, the book touches on time, or rather on our perception of it. All we really have is now. The past is over, the future hasn’t yet begun. But how long is that now? A week? A year? An instant?
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  • Participative democracy in Porto Alegro

    In the Brazillian city of Porto Alegro, every single citizen is allowed to contribute to deciding the city’s budget. There’s articles on it here and here.

    The decision process includes two huge annual assemblies and myriads of smaller special interest meetings – which sounds a little like Open Space. One of the lessons learned is, that everybody can contribute, including the poor and the less educated. They are given time and space to learn the process, by those who are more experienced.

    The results have been amazing. Since they started doing it in 1989, the number of houses with running water has gone from 75% to 99%. Housing assistance has gone from 1.700 families to 29.000 families, the number of public schools has increased from 29 to 86 and literacy is now at 98% (better than some parts of eg. the US). And of course, the benefit of having a population who feels part of the decision proces is hard to quantify, but impossible to ignore. And best of all: The process has spread to more than 100 cities in South America.

  • Quote

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    Perhaps it is the hedonist in me, but I believe that gatherings designed to achieve useful results can only be fully effective when the participants are having fun. The issues on the table, and the implications of the outcome, may all be deadly serious, but creative interchange, to say nothing of innovative results, seems to disappear quickly when a dark cloud of solemnity hangs over everything.

    – Harrison Owen in Expanding our now.

  • Self-organizing motorcycles

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    Every year, on the last thursday in march, motorcyclists from all over Denmark meet in Copenhagen. This is the day when Bakken (an amusement park outside town) opens, and it has become an event for thousands of motorcyclists.

    The most fantastic thing about it is that nobody organizes it. There’s no planning committee, no sponsors, no management, no advertising, no participation fee, nothing. Motorcycle riders know about it, and all day long they arrive from all over the country, parking their bikes all up and down Nørrebrogade and adjacent streets.

    The whole thing started around 15 years ago, with just a few friends meeting at a certain cafe, to drive out to Bakken. This year they were expecting 8.000 bikes.
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  • Free books on leadership

    Questia.com are putting a lot of free books and articles on the net, and this week the focus is on leadership. Here are their prime picks in that category.

  • Book review: Fish tales

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    When you make room for play at work, great things happen. They discovered this at Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle. Selling fish can be hard, boring and repetitious, and a few years back they had very little fun doing it.

    And then they changed that. Today they have a lot more fun, give their customers a better experience and sell a lot more fish. This has been documented in a film and accompanying book called “Fish!” and in an additional book in the series called Fish Tales, which contains some great, true stories of organizations at play.
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  • Feelgood movies

    Carsten and I arranged a feel-good movie night last week. It’s simple: Get some nice people together and watch a movie that makes you feel good. We saw Field of dreams, which to me epitomizes the genre. It contains every single element that makes a good feel-good movie: It’s a quiet, touching movie with a positive theme, it shows people acting selflessly and it has a happy ending (essential to a feel-good movie). Also, Field of dreams is about forgiveness, redemption and second chances – themes which often figure in feel-good movies. Other excellent examples of the genre are:
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  • Open Space week

    It’s always a joy seeing Open Space meetings, and this week I’ve been part of two VERY different ones. First, last wednesday I helped organize a workshop for 25 teenagers from the worst part of Copenhagen. We’re talking 25 kids aged 12-18, with completely different attitudes and backgrounds.
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  • Restoring nature, restoring yourself

    Here’s an article about a seriously ill ex-soldier in Seattle, who decided to spend his last days cleaning up a creek near his home. During that project he got better, and today he works with many other people to restore the environment around Seattle.

    This is a beautiful example of helping yourself by doing something for others, in this case for nature. Sometimes the best way to help yourself is to forget yourself.

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