Photo: From the video (c) Honda

Pictures are used for fund-raising, for sensitizing the public and for informing about people in need. The discussions were about the effect of pictures, what is a good picture and what are the possibilities of the language of pictures. And where are limits and dangers of misuses.

There were very interesting inputs. The head of the media service of the catholic church showed how today there is such a flood of images, that images are destroying themselves. The speed of the image flood keeps increasing. There is a trend from static images to moving images. Images try to capture attention, to rise emotions, and this often by means of creating irritations.

As an example of irritation he showed an unusual video about accident prevention – there are more people dying by stumbling than by cars. Irritating pictures are often used, but they can (consciously or unconsciously hurt feelings like the exposition arranged with plasticized dead bodies or pictures hurting religious feeling like the Danish caricature of Mohammad. Personality rights can be violated, when images are used without the consent of the persons shown, especially with children from developing countries.

A well-known Swiss filmmaker spoke about his portraits of people living on the margin of society – people in need, physically or mentally handicapped people, so-called “local idiots”. He tries to give them a voice and show the individual reality, which might deviate from social norms. He tries to “meet levels” and not to stand above the portrayed ones.

The last speaker was from a marketing agency, he spoke about the problems of time and money in creating impact: You see about 2000 pictures a day, everybody wants to have your attention. He presented examples about what is a powerful image. He gave 9 theses, seemingly contradicting themselves:

The strongest image is positive – showing a video clip of positive emotions. The strongest image is negative – often used; is a symbol; is created in the head (he showed a text of an Indian campaign against killing female fetuses, just a text describing how you can kill the fetus and try 3 month later to get a boy…); can be just a phrase (an inspiring campaign of a Japanese city turning its destiny from a big coal mining town to a non-successful amusement park going bankrupt, and now to a city of love where there is no divorce -recreating its destiny and attracting people from all over the country); is costly; is simple; is an experience (a campaign of Red Cross Portugal selling hope in a shop); and is a reality.

The strongest image factor is the idea. And this is true also for other inspiring activities. Inspiration comes through ideas, and this is the moving factor – not money or greatness. Master DK says: “Energy follows thought”. This is an applied form of it.

The hall where the meeting took place. For me the red decoration was a symbol of the images crying for attention.

The Klee museum: Moving lines of attention

I was much interested in the way the dialogue between business and users is being orchestrated and in understanding better the strategies and technologies. It was fascinating to see how the mechanics of human curiosity and gossiping are being used in this. Most relevant is to understand the users and what they want. This is often not so clear, and easily the gap causes miscommunication.

As expected at such a conference, people were busily twittering the whole time. There was a feeling in the room of keeping oneself in a state of excitement and continuous communication. The last speaker even highlighted this as a kind of telepathic inter-relationship between all participants. I thought I don’t want this kind of permanent interconnectedness. Inter-relationship is not just in talking, but, more so, in silence and in subtle linking through meditative work – this not particularly being the sphere of social media marketing.

So I didn’t join the conference with twittering or linking in, trying to keep the everyday information overkill with some inner filters at a distance. I had some talks and took some good inspirations back home. I now ask myself if I shall nevertheless do a step into the twitter-world after some steps into Face-Booking. I saw interesting vistas, but time is scarce…

One’s own website is just the top of an iceberg where the sphere of social media networks like facebook, twitter, flickr and the like offer fields for extension of the scope of influence.

At the end she asked me if everything was fine, and I remarked that the hair in front of my left ear was still a bit longer than on the right side. She hold her fingers on both sides, looked and said: “No, it’s o.k., with some the ears are not at the same height.” I looked a bit incredulously, smiled, paid and went home.

Looking into the mirror I saw that on the left side the hair was about 1.5 cm longer than on the right side. I thought, “Oh, now also my eyes start shifting, my whole head is getting into a transmutation.” I took the razor blade, cut away the hair on the left side and thus did a “surgery” to bring back the proportions of my poor head.

The story reminded me of my parents who used to tell me that when I was a little boy and had to clear up the toys spread on the floor, “Oh, I can’t do it, my arms are too short.”

Also in spirituality you come often across what we call “spiritual excuses”: You can’t do this or that because, and then comes an explanation in which you try to believe yourself: “It is my Aries moon which makes me so aggressive”. “The sun in Gemini gives me difficulties concentrating…”

My wife and I like playing with it, looking if the other is witty enough to look through the disguise of the excuse…

Man is very creative in inventing all kinds of excuses… (Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci)

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.

“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

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

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.

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.