Change-making our culture - The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture

My friend Amy Elliott recently suggested I check out this program for Cultural Agents from The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture(The USDAC is not a federal agency).  This ties in directly with my thinking recently around the differences/connection between movements and culture.   For example, the relationship between a political campaign and having a culture of being engaged has been something I've been focusing my energy and time on.  I won't go into it fully now, but I'd like to highlight the USDAC's Statement of Values:

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT:

Culture is a human right.

Coherence Toolkit with Trusted Sharing - Powered by Awesome Facilitators

Howdy partners, it's me, Ty.  Today I have a video that my friend Charles Wu made for Trusted Sharing.  Learn about our Coherence Toolkit and ask me about it next time I see you down at the saloon or yoga den.

Major announcement about TopFloorStudio

Dear friends,

After 10 years of working with some of the most creative and talented folks I’m happy to say that we are continuing that tradition into the future.  Greenstone Media, an Asheville company, has acquired TopFloorStudio and has my full confidence in disrupting the regional tech scene.  They will work with the utmost of integrity and innovation.  I met Greenstone Media when I asked a friend for the name of the person who did his beautiful App and Website and he told me about Nathan Silsbee, CEO of Greenstone; and he couldn’t say enough good things about Nathan.   Since then I’ve been solidly behind this firm.  Greenstone has treated many of my past clients well with nothing but good feedback. 

Improve your life journey with Mentoring

This is a short post, but is foreshadowing a larger article I'm writing in collaboration with some folks about the power of mentoring, my experiences with co-mentoring and break-through conversations.  Stay tuned.  
Update: my friend Galen Radtke, inspired by this blog post, wrote a build-on post: http://www.wamerjam.com/on-mentoring/


Here is to personal breakthroughs!

I've had 2 simultaneous (over the same few weeks) breakthroughs with 2 mentoring relationships and so I hope to share to encourage everyone else.

I have believed for 10 years or so in the idea of mentors, folks have helped me to move to the next level like Jonathon Flaum​, Ed Brenegar​ and Jenny Fares​.  This month I helped someone I mentor, after about 2 years of working together, find the job in the profession they want.

Then I had a huge breakthrough yesterday with one of my mentors who has changed how I look at conversation and collaboration (which is quite vital for my role at Trusted Sharing).  The other learning was its all about the learnings.  And another learning business is not to stay busy but to help life flourish.  May the cup overfloweth. So if you can find a mentor or be a mentor for someone in need - consider it.

We are all in this together.

Cities 3.0 - Interconnecting Cities with Maggie Ullman

My interview with Maggie Ullman about how interconnecting cities will lead to a healthier world.

http://ashevillegrit.com/cities-30-interconnecting-cities-maggie-ullman

5 Posts that you may enjoy from Ty's 2014 writings

Trusted Sharing was very honored to sponsor a series of events that happened in Asheville in October around Dynamic Facilitation and Wisdom Councils. We had many great people including the founders of these modalities, several authors and some renowned filmmakers. Here are 2 articles that I organized and edited that you can read.


Asheville Wisdom Councils Declare our Social Contract is Broken (on System of Abundance Blog) Wisdom Council Intends to Bring Participation to Asheville’s Government ( on Asheville Grit blog)

In March we partnered with the fine folks at Peppermint, an open source operating system built using the Ubuntu (Linux) codebase. In the process of writing the story we reached out to Peppermint's partner in Africa, Marc Stephan Nkouly, and heard some wild stories. The article was picked up by OpenSource.com, they are an online publication focused on how open source is applied to different areas including business, education, government, health, law and other disciplines of life. Read the article here: Peppermint introduces cloud-based open source desktop to Africa (on OpenSource.com)

One of the realizations I had after our podcast, Spark Tech Talk, interviewed Steve Wozniak, was that connecting with your heroes in meaningful ways was possible. Most folks who have "made it" and are thought leaders want to give back and help spread there ideas even further. So one day I reached out to Harrison Owen, a personal hero of mine and the founder of Open Space (tech folks may know unconferences or barcamps) and asked him if we could do an interview. To make it a truly collaborative experience I partnered with my friends over at Mycelium project, Matt and Ashley, and they ran with the interview. Here is the article: Harrison Owen Interview: Inviting Flow and Self Organization

An on-going theme for me and my life is to work in the social enterprise space. Someone I've worked with and connected with over the last couple of years is Paul Polack. An amazing mind, a leading social entrepreneur and to say just an author would be an understatement. He is like Bill Clinton in my book. One thing that stood out to me was Paul Polack's amazing energy. At 80 years old his mind is more active than most 30 years olds I know. Read the article from January here:  Paul Polak interview about his new book The Business Solution to Poverty

Asheville Wisdom Council Declares: Our Social Contract is Broken

This is the harvest of our collaborative blog session. There is more information at the bottom of the blog post. Each section was written by a different person, but we hope it is cohesive enough for you, my special reader. We start the blog out with Susan and Ruth telling the story of Asheville Wisdom Councils. Please keep reading, at the bottom Jean explains how Wisdom Councils work and Jim (founder of Wisdom Councils and Dynamic Facilitation) has 2 stories from the Wisdom Council that happened in Asheville recently.
~Ty

In the Summer of 2013, Ruth Backstrom and Susan Michael were discussing how the political situation in NC had changed dramatically in just a few months time, making it much less representative of ‘we the people.’ They had discovered Jim Rough’s book, “Society’s Breakthrough! Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People” and realized this might work in here. So they called Jim to see about bringing his work to Durham where they lived. Jim suggested that they start by organizing the first seminar on Dynamic Facilitation - the powerful method used in Community Wisdom Councils to bring unity within virtually any group - including a very diverse and polarized one. Thus in Sept. 2013 the first Dynamic Facilitation workshop happened in Durham and two attendees - employees of the city government there, were so taken by the process that they organized a second seminar for their staff to learn Dynamic Facilitation. In that seminar, in March of 2014, 6 people from the Neighborhood Services Department attended. Out of that they created Community Listening Circles within neighborhoods to solicit feedback for budgeting priorities. Amazing!