At my office, I started 3 months ago some activities using new communication instruments. One of them is the use of Facebook for corporate communication, a social community website, the largest of the world, allowing to build-up groups of so-called “fans”.  It is fascinating to see the growth of the fans of the site, thus expanding the range of the communication target group.

I observed it with a critical interest, for I didn’t want to expand into trashy communication. I read a lot about the questionable sites of Facebook. I came to consider it a valuable instrument and pondered for a while upon using it as another communication channel for the Circle of Good Will. So profiting from the skills learned, I now set up two pages, one for the Circle of Good Will, and one which will be communicated a bit later…

When done with discernment, Facebook is a real Aquarian instrument: very easy to operate, networking and “pervasive” – though it might take some time until the “dynamics” of this instrument will develop.

A friend send me the link to an interesting website (German/English), the Gaia Media Foundation, a non-profit organization in Basel, Switzerland:

“We communicate information for a holistic and up to date understanding of our existence, and the potential of human consciousness. We equally respect the knowledge and the experience of ancient cultures, spiritual traditions, and of modern science, without committing ourself to a particular view or direction. We advocate the firm belief that the ability and desire to achieve transcendence is inherent in man, and that expanded states of consciousness shed light upon the knowledge of the laws of life, of nature, and the universe. An awareness corresponding to universal laws not only guarantees humanity the surviving, but also allows us a symbiotic and hedonistic existence on Gaia, our home planet.” (from the website)

Sunrise this morning at Lake Sihl, Einsiedeln, Switzerland

Some time agou I posted a blognote on the Playing for Change series. A Belgian friend now sent me the link to another song of this inspiring session. And she added a link to an interesting video on the functioning of the right and left hemisphere of the brain, by Jill Bolte Taylor.

Sculpture of an angel by an African artist in the park of a castle near the Baltic Sea.

For over 6 months I was in a coaching group for project managers. It was a small group of 3 persons with a very experienced process consultant with whom I’m in contact since about 16 years. We had 6 sessions together and today was the last one. It was very fascinating for me to have here a space for reflecting the dynamics of complex processes in our projects. The general experience is that situations who seem to be clear tend to do into some kind of diffusivity. Quickly the landscapes change, and situations or agreements which seem to have been clear are getting uncertain or silently enormities happen which you tend not to note at first hand: The commitment of team members changes, the external partners have another understanding than oneself, and though it seems that it has been clarified on paper and in contracts, the clarities tend to diffuse. The process consultant today gave us a paper with the sentence: “With the time every project starts living lies”. You must be very truthful, careful and attentive to see the subtle changes and, if necessary, to do the needed interventions.

The last weeks I had been writing poems (condensed thoughts) – in German – in the early morning hours about observations and experiences. One of them reminds me of this morning’s topic of the coaching group, so I translated it into English:

Where the path might lead me today?
Questioning I stand at the threshold
of a new morning.
Every day opens, related to
the previous one
and embedded in old tracks,
but there are always
new wanderers waiting
and even the seemingly old companions
enter every day
into a new landscape,
where the sceneries keep on changing.
Often a friend seems to hurry ahead
or fall behind
or take to another way
and slips away, mostly unnoticed,
but frequently also only a cloud
or a bend hides the view
and the closeness remains nevertheless.
The community of
those striving to the common goal
gives protection and strength
in dangerous times.
For suddenly the way might lead
through rough areas
and besides it open abysses
of incertitude, irritation or
poisonous clouds of fear,
or there is
a fight against fatigue and
weaknesses and
threads to the body.
It is good to have
a skilful guide,
whose leading hand
gives strength and shows the direction
and sees that the
group of wanderers
stays together and always
keeps the eye on the
star of the goal.

Marzili bridge, today at noon time in Berne, on the way home.

Yesterday I felt a great relief: At noon we had the launch of the new intranet of my office. We had been working for the launch for over one year – and the whole process took more than two years. (I had mentioned the project in a number of posts.)

About 2 months ago we saw that part of the project had to be taken out into another project: The document management, which shall replace the file explorer, turned out to be more complex than we had thought during the concept phase, so it will be developed in a second tranche of the project – again me as the project manager. We will start when I’m back from January’s holidays in India. It seems that this will again be a long project, we will start with a pilot.

Being the project manager I had a lot of trouble with instructing the team, finding and describing mistakes and cleaning the system. The last weeks we had been working on the migration of the content from the old intranet into the new system, and the team of our info-managers had done a good job, but – mostly out of ignorance – also created several “crises” by trying to adapt things in a “try and error”-way. I sometimes was reminded of Hercules fighting with the Hydra: Having cut off one head, two other heads appeared. The mistakes of the system didn’t seem to take an end.

Hercules fighting with the Hydra. Image of Antonio Pollaiuolo, from Wikimedia Commons

And then the launch – the director giving congratulations, the head of the agency speaking about the pioneer work and me about the team-work and the surprises of the process -  happy faces all around.

An hour after the launch new problems popped up – no safeguarding possible with different pages, strange way of presentation of the news in one of the news aggregators. This morning some other questions popped up…. The last months my patience has been tested a lot – and quite some times I failed. It seems that my personal testing phase isn’t over yet.

An old sewing machine – not so complex than a modern web collaboration technology, but also helping to stitch different matters together.

Last Wednesday I participated in a workshop of my office on image language and the way we use images at the Red Cross. Though three years ago I had built up the image bank we use, I hadn’t been much into the topic of images, especially not the last year.

The meeting was held in the rooms of a media agency in Berne, by a photographer and an art director, specialist of visual  design. After an introduction to image theory, image language and picture assessment, we had a look at our publications. It was very interesting to see these visual specialists “from the outside” giving a critical look and showing flaws and shortcomings. We see the pictures with your own intentions, without noticing that they might stand in the way of the perception of others. When pointed out, you understand the questions arising, but as a lay person you normally just feel that there is something not at optimum with a picture or a detail, be it in the composition or its placement in a publication.

They showed us a number of examples of how enterprises or other organisations have defined their “image language” and present themselves according to it, giving thus a visual message linked to their vision and mission – in the form of colour selection, emotional tones or image composition. They showed us extracts of photos from which everyone immediately recognised the related organisation, without seeing any brand sign.

In the afternoon, after an input about image rights and models of  licensing we did some picture research in image banks like Gettyimages, Fotolia or Corbis. It’s not easy to find pictures for visualising a given theme.

Then we tried to define some basics of the picture language we want to use. It was an interesting discussion, to describe some do’s and don’t’s without becoming too rigid in regulations. It made me think about the way I work with pictures for the Good-Will website, especially when I am preparing powerpoint presentations on different themes of the wisdom teachings.

Seeing the costs of professional image licensing gave me an idea of the great treasure I collected with the pictures given to me by friends from all over the world, which I use for illustrating the teachings. Of course, they are not done by professionals with their high-tech equipment, but nevertheless many of them have quite a high quality standard.

Shooting or seeing photos is not just a process of the eye, but of the mind, the photographer. The way he captures a scene or how he selects a detail expresses very much of the consciousness with which he is working.

Photos of an iris, by a friend. The iris is also part of the eye and a Greek goddess of the rainbow, messenger of the gods, like Hermes. In Wikipedia it says, As the sun unites Earth and Heaven, Iris links the Gods to humanity.

An Indian friend forwarded me today the following text with an interesting story about decision making. How would you decide?

“A group of children were playing near two railway tracks, one still in use while the other disused. Only one child played on the disused track, the  rest on the operational track.

The train is coming, and you are just beside the track interchange. You can make the train change its course to the disused track and save most of the kids. However, that would also mean the lone child playing by the disused track would be sacrificed. Or would you rather let the train go its way?

Let’s take a pause to think what kind of decision we could make…

Most people might choose to divert the course of the train, and sacrifice only one child. You might think the same way, I guess. Exactly, to save most of the children at the expense of only one child was rational decision most people would make, morally and emotionally. But, have you ever thought that the child choosing to play on the disused track had in fact made the right decision to play at a safe place?

Nevertheless, he had to be sacrificed because of his ignorant friends who chose to play where the danger was. This kind of dilemma happens around us everyday. In the office, community, in politics and especially in a democratic society, the minority is often sacrificed for the interest of the majority, no matter how foolish or ignorant the majority are, and how farsighted and knowledgeable the minority are. The child who chose not to play with the rest on the operational track was sidelined. And in the case he was sacrificed, no one would shed a tear for him.

The great critic Leo Velski Julian who told the story said he would not try to change the course of the train because he believed that the kids playing on the operational track should have known very well that track was still in use, and that they should have run away if they heard the train’s sirens.. If the train was diverted, that lone child would definitely die because he never thought the train could come over to that track! Moreover, that track was not in use probably because it was not safe. If the train was diverted to the track, we could put the lives of all passengers on board at stake! And in your attempt to save a few kids by sacrificing one child, you might end up sacrificing hundreds of people to save these few kids.

While we are all aware that life is full of tough decisions that need to be   made, we may not realize that hasty decisions may not always be the right one.

Remember that what’s right isn’t always popular… and what’s popular isn’t always right.
Everybody makes mistakes; that’s why they put erasers on pencils. “

Three days ago I got an e-mail from the webmaster of the site “Wicca & Esoteric Library“. He had seen the publications of the Circle of Good Will and asked if we would like to publish articles in his library: It is a “totally free resource and will stay so for as long as I can keep it online.”

I had a look at the site and thought, why not. Though there are quite a lot of “adds by Google” all around the published texts (clicking on them will cause costs for the advertisers and makes the cash tills ring with the site owner and with Google), but maybe this way some people will find the wisdom teachings which wouldn’t stumble across them otherwise.

I wrote to him, that I could contribute some articles, but since all of them are written on the basis of the wisdom teachings, especially those of Master KPK (Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar) and Master EK (Dr. Ekkirala Krishnamacharya), they should not go under my name, but under “Circle of Good Will”.

This wasn’t what they had designed: He answered, I could take one of the names of the Masters as the author, since for legal purposes he needs the name of the author. I replied that this isn’t possible either: I have reframed the texts, without changing the content, by taking parts from many publications, often unpublished notes. From a “worldly legal side” I might be considered to be the author, from a spiritual point of view, however, I’m not and I would never claim it to be, because it is not my content, even though I am entitled to use the texts.

Finally we found a way – that I accept the legal responsibility associated with publishing these articles on the site, by adding the related details in their admin-space. This information is not visible to the outside. As per the details under the general information, I can add something about the Circle of Good Will.

Having these points – and some others – cleared, I added a few articles to different sections of the library. Three of them have been reviewed and published by now, some others probably will follow soon. You might have a look here, here and here. But all these articles and many more you find in a better formatted form as pdfs on the Good-Will site.

“The Writer” in a doll’s house, after Carl Spitzweg’s famous painting “The Poor Poet“.

Two days ago I read an interesting report (PDF) from Alertnet, the humanitarian support branch of Reuters Foundation. It is the summary of a workshop from July 24 in London about “Are Aid Agencies ready for the Blogosphere?” Nearly 50 people attended from 30 British-based organisations, plus experts from the media and non-profit sector.

In the blog-post on the workshop they write: “As one blogging true believer has said, blogs should be written while sitting in front of the computer in dirty pyjamas. They’re not the type of thing you write while wearing a suit. Much of aid agency communications is of the wearing-a-suit variety. Open and frank discussion is rare.”

About 2 years ago I tried to get the organisation where I work blogging – and resigned after a while, for there was to much skepticism from the side of the management. (However, I started then this blog.) Now it seems that a new interest of the international department is coming up again. I’ll sketch a conception draft in the next weeks, when I find some time…

Other aid agencies have started in the last times. A friend from the Swiss branch of a big international NGO to whom I sent the link about the Alertnet-workshop told me that it came just in time – they are about to launch a blog and he is just preparing a presentation to the management body.

Blogging can also be dangerous: A Swiss blogger about web security and anti-spam was attacked last weekend by spammers with a diffamation campaign, where in a faked mail he was announcing his suicide (I also got this mail). He got 10′000 reply-mails and a visit from the police in the night who wanted to prevent his suicide – of which he didn’t know. And the Google copyright expert William Patry just closed his blog because he was writing about the dangers of the copyright development and had loyalty problems with his job.

Not from the blogosphere, but from another sphere: artwork at the roof of Zurich Main Station.

I normally don’t do „corporate marketing” in this blog, but today I got a news release announcing a new way of communication to cross language barriers, which sounds very fascinating:

Together with IBM, the phone company Jajah has just started today a real-time free phone translation service called Jajah Babel that allows anyone in China, the U.S., UK and Australia to call a local number, speak in English and immediately hear the message back in Chinese Mandarin. It also works the other way round. So you can simply hand your phone to the other person or put the phone on loudspeaker, so they hear the message.

I wonder how the system manages to understand the ambiguities of language, which automatic translation programs don’t hit (for example: “Bill Gates” as the bill for the doors…), but nevertheless it is a great step ahead in finding a way out of Babylon.