Presencing the future of CI Convergence

Dear Co-Conveners,
Our journey to convene the convergence of the Collective Intelligence field has been, in my experience, a remarkable practice in living in the unknown, letting go of some treasured ideas, sensing into what wants to emerge, and (somewhat) fearlessly experimenting with technologies and methods. I have been heartened to find that we strive to listen to each other empathically and generatively -even when that is not easy- and that we seek to find out what the participants really want, even if we're a bit timid about calling them up.
I believe that we, in various ways, have been practicing aspects of Scharmer's U-model...we have been semi-consciously, somewhat stumblingly presencing the CIC. As George notes, Scharmer did not invent the U-model...he developed it from observing extremely generative and influential master practitioners, creators, and leaders across the social spectrum.
How marvelous to consider that we, little old us, are naturally tuned to this powerful and profound human pattern. And how much more effective and graceful could this process be if we were consciously practicing it in its ideal form?
So let's find out...George and I would like to explicitly invite you all into a Presencing Circle, for the purpose of together explicitly presencing the future of the CI field and framing the CIC learning journey.
George noted in a recent email the following reasons for calling this Presencing Circle:
• The Presencing perspective provides a dynamic balance of design and emergence. It is a "freedom technology" in the sense that it can increase the freedom of all project participants ( and all who are involved with it) to reach higher possibilities, in every step on the U.
• I see communion and agency co-arising in our convening/hosting team. If we use Presencing, I think we can take those co-arising spirals to a couple of notches higher/broader vistas.
• Personally, I feel so inspired by my conversations with Otto and colleagues in the Presencing Institute's co-initiation circle, that I want to bring the whole of my work and life to the level of presencing their highest future possibility. That's why it was truly inspiring to learn that you (and maybe Sheri) are interested to explore the relation of Presencing to our CIC work.
And Otto on presencing circles:
Create circles in which you hold one another in the highest future intention. There is an invisible movement going on in the world. It's a movement that is manifest in a variety of forms and practices, practices that rest on the same underlying principle: to form a collective holding space in which the participants support one another in making sense of and advancing their life and work journeys. It's also an old movement. It is what the band of real friendship has always been. But it's more vigorous, fragile, and vital today than ever, because social norms and structures are disintegrating and dissipating left and right. As the world turns into a burning platform we also need to somehow progress with the ordinary business of life. In the midst of chaos and breakdown, we must develop the ability to stay calm and discern the path forward. Developing the capacity to operate from the nothingness of the now, the ability to discern and take the next step in situations where old structures have broken down and new structures haven't yet emerged, is perhaps the most important core capacity of navigating work and life in this century.
This is not something to 'effort' or 'add to our workload'. It will simply be a slight shift in the way we are framing who we are together, the nature of our attention to the work we are doing, with practices to build capacity for doing this.
With this practice and in this Circle, perhaps we can, more authentically and more gracefully, find liberation from the disabling gravitational pull of the past, and source our actions from the emerging field of the brightest future for CIC and ourselves.
Susan