Christinaswwworld Unlimited

Exploring my benelux surroundings, Dordrecht is a darling town I've enjoyed discovering in the Netherlands. It's such a friendly place - local families socialize on front porches and terraces. Though it's not a super tiny town (worthy of 2 train stations!), everyone knows everyone. A man who spoke with me on the street for a moment told me so. He knew right away that I was a stranger since the don't get many tourists in Dordrecht. He thought maybe I'd come for the little fair that was in town that weekend. Altogether a lovely late afternoon. In case the embedded slideshow below doesn't show up, there are some photos on flickr I've shared over here .

Wow, the last month of my life has been incredibly content rich. Processing all the themes that emerged for me from my Shine UK shared air experiences - particuarly with @DaveDawes , @RedButtonDesign and @liadavide , and from spending 3 intensely bonding days in Geneva with a powerful small group of women social entrepreneurs - all in transition with new innovations at late stages in their brilliantly impactful careers. Around those physical movement for real time immersion I've been trying to put an ambitious plan for cosi10.com together, and facilitated a session on Transparency at an all virtual "unconference" this weekend called Radical Real Time . I have also joined the Board at @ HubBrussels , which has involved (by my own choice) quite a few hours over the past few weeks, as I've sat in on some staff team meetings and attended lengthy General Assembly and Board meetings involving discussion about a lot of operational development issues. All this experiential

It's sometimes odd to reflect that I have been planning events since way back in high school. It's quite a rollercoaster of a job, but somehow there's something magic in what can happen when you add structure to people interacting with each other. I think I am addicted to whatever that thing is. I have often described myself as a crazy social scientist who loves to experiment with human behavior. Tweaking social alchemy is a thing I'm good at. In high school, I was the commissioner of activies and the homecoming committee chairman and the graduation ceremony organizer. What a lot of thankless work, but I fell in love with social alchemy even then. In college I organized a group fundraising event system for people (like me) who needed financial help to go and work 3 month internships in Washington DC. In Geneva, my 4 housemates and I threw great theme parties - Mexican Fiestas and champagne only formal holiday fetes. By the time I returned to DC to attend grad school, I

In the background as I work this afternoon, I've got TedxVolcano rocking in the background. What an amazing thing. A group of Social Entrepreneurs and big money who want to invest in Social Change got stuck in London after the Oxford Jam and Skoll World Forum last weekend. Their first thought, put together a spontaneous Ted event in 24 hours. Way cool. I'd managed to get home from the weekend's events with a previously booked train ticket, but it was enough to make me wish I could go back. Meanwhile, last week's overarching theme was collaboration, so my inbox is overflowing with emails from people I met last week, who are still stuck in London and organizing post conference meet-ups among the stranded. I have a feeling they are getting some amazing things done right now. I have to wonder when they actually will be able to leave, and can't help but marvel at how powerful this volcano will end up being historically, in both destructive and constructive w

Yay! My perpetual state of career transition over the past couple of years has ended. I am now firmly in the saddle at Evolutionize.It , a new social enterprise I have started in Belgium. I suddenly find that I need to talk about myself differently in social situations. Each time I do, I end up reinventing it just a bit. I guess it depends on my confidence level that day. That's normal, right? If you and I were face to face over a drink this week and you asked me what I'm up to these days, I might say something like this: Well... I am basically back at the beginning. I left Uganda after 10 years of community development work and now I'm starting something brand new. All I really have are some unproven wacky ideas for making an impact how our global development system works, and I am trying to develop a business around them that can actually pay people salaries. Hmmm... doesn't sound very positive does it? True as those statements may be, on most days I'm actually r

Over the past few months I've been working on development of a couple of blogs, each targeted at a different audience. I wanted to let folks know more about what and where those writings are, so you can choose which - if any of them - you'd like to follow. My party @ christinaswwworld blog feeds directly into my facebook notes. It is the most personal of my blogs, about my life as a global gypsy and some of the things I've learned. If you are following me on Facebook, what I post at the christinaswwworld blog will appear in your stream automatically. You don't need to leave facebook to read those new entries. I also share this blog with some friends in the entrecard.com blogger community, that I've made while learning about personal blogging from them over the past couple of years. New posts are additionally tweeted out to @ChristinasWorld followers at Twitter, and appear in the twitterfeed that's published at http://Evolutionize.It . Evolutionize It: chang

For the past 25 years or so I have gypsied my way around this wide world of ours, breathing in the experience of life, as it is known to all sorts and kinds of people who live it. My quest has never been to experience the world's diverse natural wonders and climates, nor to witness all of humankind's amazing inventions. What drives me is to understand people, and how they make life work in different kinds of contexts. Along the way, I have lived with European millionaires, who call the very best that the world has to offer "normal." I have lived among the poorest of Africa's poor, displaced from their homes by some of the worst ravages the world knows how to inflict upon itself. I have lived with Asian Buddhists, who embrace self-inflicted poverty as the wealthiest kind of life they could possibly live. I've been a mom, a daughter, a sister, a neighbor, an employee, a boss, a friend.... albeit sometimes from far away. If there is one thing I have learned,

Just a heads up to those of you who've been following my month long journey of connecting with new colleagues and old friends ~ looks like the whole country is getting stuck in snowstorms, so my planned landing back in Brussels Saturday morning could change. I am scheduled to spend tomorrow in Atlanta with my friend Cynthia G., visiting an amazing treehouse for a special summercamp that she has designed. But 1-2 inches of snow are expected in Atlanta tonight, so the chances are getting slimmer that I will land in Atlanta tomorrow morning. The flight from there to Brussels is scheduled for 12 hours later, so I may still be able to catch that. But if it keeps snowing then I might just have to sit tight in Southern California for a while longer and reschedule the whole thing... I will keep you posted