Santiago
On Thursday May 30, we once again held a meeting, the whole
group, in the offices of Mc Cann Erickson.
I initiated the meeting giving a theoretical frame in regards to how one
sees the publicity and communication. We initiated with a classical video of
the 80s about Paradigms and I ended with the basic principles of David Cooperrider and the appreciative
inquiry.
We had agreed upon that each of us will make a map which will show how to
make it function with synergy, and, some of us from the group actually did
so.
Recent Activities
I want to inform you formally about some activities we have performed with Angelica
in relation to the Images and Voices of Hope project which I am in
charge in Chile;
1. Angelica convinced me I should assume the leadership, and I accepted.
2. I invited Macarena Garcia, a journalist student of the Universidad Catolica, to participate
in the project complementing the leadership of Wendy
Chadwick. Macarena is very solid, persistent and focused person.
3. I called for a meeting the 7th of may in the Mc Cann offices:
- Sergio Vergara with his project " Good News Agency"
- Maribel Vidal, Vicepresident of Strategic Planning of McCann Erickson
Chile and Pablo Walker, General Manager with his campaign "Think Positive".
- Wendy Chadwick and Macarena Garcia, in charge of the " Imagine Chile" ,
a project of young people.
- Mariella Rossi, Journalist of the " Desafio" (Challenge)
magazine.
- Maria Olga Delpiano from the newspaper El Mercurio, and obviously
- Angelica Fanjul, representative of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual
University.
4. The only person who didn't answered me was Meme Ducci. We decided to
maintain her out of the following meetings but to ask her help when we need
it because it has be this way always.
5. I began the meeting, thanking everybody for the attendance. I made a
little resume about the IVOH dialogue, telling:
- About the three convoking institutions
- About the Theoretical Basis:
- Language creates reality
- Pygmalion
- Placebo Effect
- About the Sports Marks
- May 2000, launching in Chile with the attendance of Judy and Gayatri
and the speech of Humberto Maturana, and the workshop in which we learnt
about the Appreciative Inquires.
- September 2000, meeting with the young people: Workshop of Appreciative
Inquiries in San Miguel County with Christian Warnken ( important
journalist and interviewer) and H. Maturana.
- January 2001, Portillo Retreat with the presence of Judy and Gayatri
- January 2001, conference and workshop for a journalist group of he
public sector, with the participation of Monica Herrera.
- October 2001, attendance of the chilean group in the IVOH meeting in
New York
- November 2001 beginning of the Imagine Chile project
6. Then I asked each of the attendants to introduce themselves and their
projects and to tell us about their status. It was very nice to realize that
all of us were in the same position: to join us for generating changes for a
better world.
7. Next, I asked everybody to answer the following questions:
-What of this project would seduce for continuing with it?
-What benefits do you get that motivates you for this gathering?
I was the first one in giving the answer as a mean of inspiring others. I
said something like: Having got to this age I have discovered there are not
only scrap food, but scrap medias and scrap conversations. I want to
participate in dialogues with people with which I can learn and reflect, I
like to do innovative things and I feel that the publicity and the journalism
are
in crisis and that it is required to reinvent everything specially to form
a different communications professional.
8. Each of the attendants told us their benefits. I present here some of
them:
- Maribel Vidal told: From the moment I met Humberto Maturana and I saw
the " Think Positive"campaign; I realized the power of the communication.
- Pablo Walker told: I want to sleep quiet, but I am a pragmatic man and
I need to ask myself , What should we communicate people to make things
change? We are an agency that is able to influence the means and we have 60 proffesionals available who knows about communication.
- This was a key question. Maria Olga Delpiano told: I think that chileans are willing to stand on their own feet and stop thinking about the
government, authorities, etc to give the solutions.
- Then I added, that I agreed and I would like them to understand that
nothing comes from the outside , but from the inside
We achieved very good ideas.
Agreements:
Next meeting will be hold the 30th of May at 16:00 hours, in the Mc Cann
offices, in which:
- I will present an approach of Maturana's theory.
- Each one will bring a model for integrating our projects and to answer Walker's question
Both Angelica and Wendy, commented that everywhere is happening the same,
a lot of dialogues centered in the Mediatic Communications are opened. It was
reinforced the importance of the Appreciative Inquiries methodology. It was
reinforced too that " Think Positive " has become a mark.
A Three-day Retreat at Portillo
12 - 14 January 2001
The Chilean core team for Images and Voices of Hope decided to
put together a retreat type experience similar to what some of them
had experienced at Peace Village. They chose a slow resort in the
Andes called Portillo as the site and convened some 40 people from
all walks of life to come together for a weekend of dialogue and
reflection. They invited Gayatri Naraine of the Brahma Kumaris and
Judy Rodgers to join them for this program.
To get to Portillo one climbs into the car in Santiago and heads
directly into the Andes driving above the timberline to a beautiful
lake "Laguna del Inca," which some say is the highest lake
in the world. Elevation at Portillo is over 7,000 ft. The lodge
where the retreat was held offers a breathtaking panoramic view of
the lake nestled into the mountains.
By the time we got to the top of the mountain, Gayatri was
running a fever. Pablo, the doctor-translator, insisted she go to
bed where she stayed much of the weekend. Everyone else had dinner
and then gathered in a circle for a "check-in."
There were six members of the core team. Monica Herrera, who runs
five communication schools throughout South America, and who had
key-noted the first IV of Hope conversation last May, helped
coordinate this weekend. Others on the core team were Wendy
Chadwick, who has led many of the youth initiatives and who, with
Monica, was at the Summit at Peace Village, Anna Maria Torres, Camila Zamora, and Angelica Fanjul of the Brahma Kumaris. This
group, along with Judy Rodgers, met intermittently throughout the
weekend to make changes to the agenda to accommodate the shifts in
the group.
The group was diverse. There were artists, radio producers,
television directors, communications consultants, educators,
psychologists, engineers, and business people. Most were from Chile,
but some were from Bolivia and Argentina. There was a nice mix of
men and women, and ages ranged from 17 to over 60. Two of the
Chilean boys who had been with us at Peace Village in the fall,
Pedro and Eduardo, came for the weekend.
 On Friday night, everyone
introduced themselves and spoke briefly
about what brought them to this retreat. Then we all went to bed.
Saturday morning some got up for an optional class on meditation and
silent walk by the lake. While that was going on, the core team met
to talk about what focus the weekend should take. Judy wanted to
share some research with them from Jonathon Haidt of the University
of Virginia in the US about the impact on viewers of watching images
and stories of altruism. The core team had a different request.
Monica Herrera suggested that a subject of great interest in the
Chilean culture is Power. She went on to explain that Chile is a
patriarchal culture, grounded in the experience of being a Catholic
country. When you add to that, the experience of living under
various dictatorships, there is a tendency on the part of the people
to believe they must wait for permission to act...to believe that
power resides with someone else. So it was decided that we would
make the subject of the day Personal Power ... and The Power of the
Messages and Images and Stories we create.
Everyone relaxed over breakfast in the dining room and then
gathered in the meeting room to begin the day. Judy opened the
morning talking about an essay by Vaclav Havel called "The
Power of the Powerless" (1978, Open Letters, 1965 - 1990). In
this important 1978 essay Havel talks about the impact created by
"second cultures," something we sometimes refer to as
"an underground" - those publishing books and magazines,
giving performances and concerts, seminars and exhibitions that
offer a parallel information network, separate from that of the main
"polis." Using this as a starting point, she talked with
the group about the power we have to create a difference in the
world with the images and the stories we create and distribute.
She explained the research Haidt is doing on the emotion of
"elevation" and how those watching films of Mother Theresa
working in the slums of Calcutta was emotionally effected and moved
to take action in the world. Then as a case in point, she showed the
video, "Improbable Pairs." After that the group divided
into pairs to do Appreciative Interviews using a similar set of
questions to those used at the Summit in New York.
After a coffee break, the group reconvened to talk about
Appreciative Inquiry. Judy explained some of the theoretical
underpinnings of AI, the Placebo Effect, the Pygmalion Effect, the
research on internal dialogue, and sports performance. She also
talked a little bit about dialogue. Referring to some of the ideas
offered by David Bohm in the book On Dialogue, she made a
distinction between a discussion in which we are all defending our
positions versus a dialogue in which we are co-creating meaning.
After some conversation, the group headed for lunch and a break,
while the core group headed for lunch and another meeting to
recalibrate.
The core team agreed to stay with the original plan of having the
groups cluster in interest groups as they had done at the Summit. So
after lunch, everyone self-selected into one of several groups:
education, communication consultants, artists, healing, and
reconciliation. This group on "reconciliation" was
considering the national conversation that was being set in motion
by the impending trial of General Pinochet.
The conversations in the interest groups were very rich with
groups asking for more time to take their conversations deeper. They
were urged to think together about actions they would like to take
in the world and any requests they would like to make of each other,
or promises they would like to make to each other.
 There was an
interesting experience in the reconciliation group.
Most of those attending the retreat could fairly be said to be
opposed to General Pinochet and in favor of some type of
retribution. In fact there was a tacit assumption that virtually
everyone had a similar perspective on this until one young man
spoke up. Nelson Rodriguez Harvey is a charming man, a business
manager at Telkom in Santiago. He was in the reconciliation group.
After the group's conversation had begun, he quietly said, "My
father was a General in Pinochet's army." The group seemed
surprised. He explained that in his home, conversations around the
dinner table had centered on the new economics and the establishment
of a modern country. He was sure his father had never killed anyone
and was somewhat dismayed with the recent revelation about what had
happened to the "detained and disappeared." This
explanation by Nelson had a clear effect on the room. With his
candor and sincerity, he put a human face on "the other."
His story softened the inclination towards polarization on this
delicate subject in Chile.
The group meetings continued into dinner. Then after dinner,
groups began reporting out. These reports were hard to contain and
finally the group called it a night about 10:30. Some of the
participants decided it was time to celebrate and started up the
music and dancing, which went well into the night.
The next morning, the core group met again. "Shall we take a
closer look at this subject of the reconciliation? Or shall we
return to the subject of Power?" The group felt that Power
should be the focus of the day. Monica Herrera took the lead here
with a short exercise in which she asked everyone to rate themselves
on a scale of 1 to 10 as to how much power they felt they had at
home and at work. The group fell silent and began making notes to
themselves. It was clear that many were struggling internally.
Finally, one by one they began to talk about their self-ratings. The
ratings varied wildly. Some rated themselves low at home because
their grown children would no longer obey them. Some felt their need
to compromise of matters of budget or shared work deserved a reduced
rating. "Is the power to influence a power?" Some queried.
One woman devised a formula and ended up with a rating of 7.7.
Monica guided the group in a lively conversation about power that
led up to the morning coffee break.
After the coffee break, the group gathered again in a circle -
and found that Gayatri had appeared after being one of the
"disappeared" for two days. She expressed her regrets for
not being able to be with the group and then talked about what it
means to develop personal power. The group was clearly moved. She
led them in a short meditation.
The plan for the day was that the retreat should end with lunch,
so after the meditation, we went around the circle so that everyone
could say their good-byes. Each person was invited to say whatever
they would like to say to the group and to make any offer or request
they would like to make. Looking around the circle on Sunday was
entirely different from looking around the circle on Friday night.
Here was a group of forty friends and colleagues. At the end Gayatri
went around the circle, giving each person a sweet.
The group lingered for a while talking, expressing their
affection, trading business cards, and finally trickling out the
door to their cars to begin the trek down the mountain. About a week
later, one of the participants from Bolivia made good on her closing
offer by linking everyone up on a listserve.
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