Tag: systems

School?

Posted on by philipdodson

Most education has, and is still, been all about preparing a workforce for the industrialised system, to be compliant and not question the rules, not about bettering society for everyone. The current education system is one of shaming us into the unattainable goal of perfection and actually preparing us for a world that will no longer exists as it is by the time most children have completed school.

What if the school curriculum was centred on respect, kindness, empathy, understand, love, worthiness and compassion? What if we were taught properly how to listen and then communicate with each other?

What if you taught meditation, spiritualism, and learnt about awareness, being in the moment, consciousness and acceptance?

What if we were taught about respecting nature, growing organic food, caring properly for animals and the environment? What if were educated in respecting and honouring our own bodies and looking after them?

What if school was soul, body and mind? Not a glorified memory test to be graded for employment.

I wonder if the world would become more kind, more empathetic, more compassionate, more understanding? Would we be more in the moment and more connected? Could we be more at peace within and to world around?

It’s possible and surely worth a try? After all what we have tried hasn’t gone all that well.

Now we are talking…talking coworking

Posted on by philipdodson

Day 2, Coworking Europe Conference and Copass Camp Dublin.

I am still here, day 2 of a conference, WTF. So yesterday was mixed, the morning was painful for me, too much jargon, serviced offices, real estate and slides, with exception of Hector’s amazing and very funny slides in his ‘best of the day’ talk.

The evening was great, we had a small group connecting over dinner and sharing and chatting. The human element that keeps bringing me back to Copass camps.

I knew today would be good. It is, sorry to break into jargon, unconferencing day, open sessions put together by the participants and this is the real practical, knowledge sharing stuff, that has huge value. Listening to people who are doing it.

The other thing that signified a good day was ahead, we started off learning 5 different handshakes and practicing them on each other. Great physical human connection, this is what is often missing from conferences and life.

One of the first sessions, which was a session suggested by Bernie, Jeanine and me, was an open group discussion simply based on the struggles/problems that small independent coworking spaces face. The dirty end of coworking as opposed to the 5 million-member super shiny desk factories, filled to the brim with their happy shiny people sitting in leather sofas, perfectly chilled, and sipping their low fat chipa-mocha-latte-cinos polishing their investor-ready slide decks on their Macs(OK so that’s sounding a little bitter Philip).

The discussion was passionate, and I felt it could have gone for another hour with topics ranging from noise, commisions, optimum size for a coworking space to work, cleaning, loneliness, and a few more. Talking about the everyday lives of a struggling space owner.

I then moved onto a session discussing systems, software, invoicing, platforms and so on. Not an area I know much about, admitting again in public that I don’t know everything. Again, an open discussions, with some very short pitches from software providers. I realise from this session that I’ve been a complete idiot running a coworking space for 5 years without software to manage it. Wow, I love this listening and learning stuff.

OK, so I am going to spare you the complete blow-by-blow of each session. The point is, this is what makes me want to come to conferences, shared real human stories.

Real human connections, not a person talking at me or worse still reading a slide that I can read myself.

Day 2 has been fab, it has been great learning, thanks to all the people who shared their knowledge and stories.