Lightning Chats
Discuss a shared challenge, brainstorm ideas for a project, or learn more about a case study at Gather's lightning chats. You can also subscribe to a lightning chat calendar on Google calendar or on iCal.
- Revisit some favorites: While we work to plan future lightning chats, take a stroll through the notes and full video from previous chats, which are posted on Gather. Find the full list here. At the top of the list you’ll find October’s two social media-focused chats, looking at how your Gather colleagues use Reddit and Nextdoor as part of their journalism.
Note: The Nov. 29 chat we sent out last week was in error. In fact, it happened last year! If you want to learn about applying to engagement jobs, here’s the chat recap.
Jobs, Fellowships, and Funding
Check out our full list of jobs, fellowships, and funding opportunities on Gather, and let us know what we're missing. Here's what's new this week:
- Campaign Manager, Free Press: "The campaign manager will help expand Free Press’ local-journalism project, News Voices, on a national scale. This will entail exploring and running state-based campaigns to transform local news; coordinating collaborations and workshops with newsrooms and community groups; and building a network of organizations, journalists and activists who work in journalism and community engagement.
The campaign manager will be responsible for creating and executing campaign strategies, training reporters on cutting-edge community-engagement strategies, and fostering relationships with Free Press’ growing list of 1.4 million members, hundreds of national and statewide allies, and the broader public to transform how communities stay informed and civically engaged. Our outreach and organizing activities prioritize working with people of color, women and youth." Learn more.
Community Updates
If you haven't joined the Gather Slack community, you're missing out on a lot of brainstorming, advice giving and collaboration. Join here.
|
|
Meet Peter Pula, this week's Featured Member.
Name: Peter Pula
What you do: I founded Axiom News almost two decades ago and with that team co-created a practice of Generative Journalism. As far as I can tell we coined the phrase. Then in 2015 I founded a community dialogue initiative in our hometown called the Peterborough Dialogues. Our aim was to bring dialogue and media making together to cultivate generative communities. As it turned out we then had, in Axiom News, a trans-local media work, and in Peterborough Dialogues a local dialogue work. So the dialogue and media were kind of two ships passing in the night. So the job of bringing the two practices together wasn’t quite done. The Peterborough Dialogues though were super successful and have contributed to the deepening of democracy in our city. We’ve since purchased Electric City Magazine with a view to bring engaged journalism and community dialogue into partnership. During our recent municipal election season we hosted six All Citizens Meetings in which we surfaced a generative image of the future shaped by community members.
In the meantime, Axiom News is soon to be reinvigorated as we turn our attention back to trans-local new narrative contributions. We are working on launching a Dialogic Media Making series on Generative Education and Reimagining Democracy. I am also co-founder and a director of the Resonance Centre for Social Evolution. So, all this stuff is in an increasingly interdependent ecology.
Why you’re on Gather: Inspiration. Every time I receive the Gather newsletter I get a lift. I feel excitement about all that is going on in the network and the abundance of giftedness and possibility at work. I feel less crazy. I send the articles to people in my network to cultivate a new narrative with them. From what I can see, Gather is the community leading journalism to its most generative future.
One thing you have to share on Gather: Having had been part of a democratic newsroom working from generative practices I guess I would like to share our experiences and what we’ve learned. I would also like share spaces with anyone who is working on things I care about. It would be fun to collaborate to create a trans-local, federated news network to cultivate a new narrative, to work alongside others to discover the generative story people in communities are living into.
One thing about your work that gets you especially pumped up: Resonance. I love hosting deep dialogue that creates resonance between and amongst people. I get shivers when it happens. There is this moment when you can feel the shift in the room, as people suddenly connect on deeper and higher planes than what everyday discourse offers. That’s the part of the Work I personally feel most drawn to, energized, and nurtured by.
Who or what inspired you to get into this work: It took me a long time to understand this, but a Sacred Wound. I feel called to host hospitable dialogue and discovery spaces in which shy souls are welcomed and held in safety enough that they come out and play, are received in their giftedness, and so find their way to community and contribution that is life giving, nurturing, and fulfilling for them. I have found that most souls are shy, from seemingly on-top-of-the-world executives to people who are imagining their way out of poverty and/or in from the margins. There have certainly been people along the way who have offered those gifts to me. Michelle and Yvonne from the Axiom News team. Folks in the Appreciative Inquiry community. Peter Block. Chuck Peters. Griet Bouwen. And especially my life partner, Jocasta Boone.
Would you rather work in chaos or quiet? I’d rather work in a cycle of rich community connection followed by a reflective, quiet, and sense-making period than be in the same modality or energy consistently.
Links for ways to connect with you.
www.axiomnews.com
www.peterboroughdialogues.media
www.electriccitymagazine.ca
www.resonancecentre.com
peter@axiomnews.com
|
|
|
|
If you’re hungry for in-person connection, we have another suggestion. Have you checked out Gather’s 
nally know only three of them. That’s six potential new friends I’ve started to reach out to.