(Also attributed to Alan Watts)
In my previous professional life I attended hundreds of workshops, conferences and conventions, mostly listening to the same information over and over to the point of glassy eyes and a nodding head. Some speakers would present the information in an entertaining fashion and this helped, but it got to the point that the “learning” part of all these gatherings took place outside the classes, presentations and lectures.
In the smoking areas, lounges and restaurants people would open up, let their hair down, speak more freely about the profession, their honest take on different aspects of it and extraneous matters that helped me learn more about people and cultures.
When I traveled to the northeast I learned their unique way of seeing things, the same with the west, mid-west and north-west. This helped in my profession because I had to deal with clients from all over. It gave me a frame of reference for different parts of the country and helped me understand the mindsets which helped avoid misunderstandings in communication. What was once taken as brashness, arrogance, weirdness or indifference was now understood in the context of their cultural environment.
The dry, repetitive learning of the workshop/conference was necessary in the beginning to develop a good understanding of the basics, but the real mind-changing learning took place through social networking in informal settings.
The internet has brought this incredibly effective form of learning to our offices and living rooms, or even the porch, local coffee shop or swimming pool, wherever you are connected. Although this new style of networking and learning is fraught with difficulties, it is also an exciting promise of change and personal growth like we’ve never known.
As for blogging, as it relates to a small group, professionally focused blog such as Relib, I think the key to successful, fun, generative learning is a combination of the workshop approach and informal social networking. They should be combined in the same place for it to grow and develop into something greater than the sum of its parts. Splitting it all up in different categories is to me antithetical to the way we interact and is somewhat superficial. It also leads to camps of like-mindedness and misses the point of broad learning and liberation from the same restrictive control measures you find all over. The good thing about a blog community is that you can easily avoid certain blog posts by simply not clicking on them.
I realize there are those who fall on both sides and those who haven’t fallen on either side. I have heard the complaints about the looseness of the discussions and I have heard the complaints about strict workshopping. As Gary mentioned on my previous blog post, liberation is a big word. I truly believe both can be joined into something wonderfully different, but it takes an understanding of cooperation, innovation and a beginning vision of what is hoped to be accomplished. It also takes an open mind and loosening of control.
I don’t presume to have the vision of what is to be accomplished but I do intuitively sense the possibilities. Excuse some of my grand statements, they even make me blush and cringe, but Liberation is a grand idea and it goes way beyond the basics of a profession such as real estate; it goes to the heart of human interaction and deep learning. And if I may embarrass myself a little further, it goes to spirituality in the broad sense of the word: human connection through open and honest communication. For me this entails seriousness, humor, debate, compromise, standing on principles, the whole gamut of human interaction, while all the time keeping in mind the small and large aspects of our profession.
This is where I will stop today, but I would like to start a conversation about what we all hope to accomplish here. Why are we here? It may be more banal than my grand musings; if so, in the words of the Church Lady – Nevermind.