Even Michael Skoler who leads Public Radio International’s interactive activities was surprised by the huge turnout for Ira Glass’ live version of his popular radio show, This American Life.

Wrote Gigaom’s Mathew Ingram, “More than 30,000 watched the first digital show at hundreds of theaters across the U.S. and Canada in the spring of 2008. The next year, 47,000 turned out. They came to be with other fans, experiencing something they all loved together.”

Hint: Host a road tour or gatherings where your online community members can meet face-to-face and collectively hear from their stars, their most valued members.  Unlike associations and civic clubs, many online communities haven’t provided an opportunity for in-person conversations and celebrations.

Conversely many of the traditional clubs aren’t maximizing their opportunity for members to socialize and to learn from members in other chapters – both online and in-person. As sister chapters and organizations get networked via the opportunity to see meet online and in-person, diverse ties deepen. Serendipitous friendships, breakthroughs and collaboration are more likely to happen.

What if, for example, Rotary International invited its members to create short video stories about their inspiring, first-hand experience in civic projects in their community and in other parts of the world? Next, what if Rotary, asked members to vote for their favorite video stories?

Then Rotary could host its own multi-city, simultaneous “film festival.” Invite members and their family and friends to gather locally in public auditoriums, homes and theatres to see and talk about those favorites.

Right afterwards it might host an online, vote-this-hour, People’s Choice contest so that worldwide audience could choose their Top Ten.

With Rotary’s squeaky clean, altruistic image, I’m thinking that many major companies would leap at the chance to underwrite the costs and/or provide the technical support to make this community-building dream come true.

Consider how instructive, heart-warming and member and media attracting that could be for a member-based organization with chapters.

Of course other diverse organizations with avid members, stories to tell and a strong sense of community could emulate their version of this approach.

Off the top of my head, those organizations  include the Westminister Kennel Club’s dog show, college and corporate alumnae organizations, Student Youth Tour Association in partnership with high schools, and the Cyclists’ Touring Club in the UK.

One of the smartest moves a company could make would be to launch and host an online community that becomes the most popular place for its kinds of customers to join, exchange ideas, co-create and otherwise collaborate.

To strengthen ties, understanding and value between members and between the company and members, that firm would, of course, host in-person events in formats that most serve that kind of community’s interests.  Those formats can be as varied as talent contests, mutual mentoring sessions, speed consulting, Pecha Kucha, Ignite or collectively viewing and voting on their favorite, member-created videos on the topics that brought them together.

A company-hosted online community that includes in-person events could be competition for some associations, accustomed to controlling the programs for their members, inviting “vendors” to pay to play yet often not giving them much of a say on how to participate for the greater good of members and vendors.

Have you heard of inventive ways that members of online communities are meeting in-person?

Do you belong to a club, association or other organization?  How could it bring members closer by enabling them to enjoy meeting both online and in face-to-face gatherings?

Dog lovers, civic-minded coders, Civil War buffs and cyclists have two things in common.

They are ardent about their special interest and thus they are more likely to be active in an online community.

They want to share their experiences and know-how with others who feel as passionate as they do about their special interest.

Some want more.  They’d like to lead like-mind folks or to team-up around shared experiences and/or accomplish something greater related to their interest.

Like hosting the hottest party everyone wants to attend, why not start the most popular online community that best serves the people who share your passionate interest? Like you, they are intrinsically motivated to meet, demonstrate expertise, learn from each other and belong to a tribe around their hot interest.  In hosting an online community you can accelerate your learning and friendships  — with others.

1.  Delight members in ways that attract funding from company sponsors

A. Such sponsors could, instead of providing traditional advertising, make special offers of free products “available to members-only” to those who are willing to give feedback on those products.

B. Company sponsors can also provide eCoupon-based prizes for winners of members-only contests.

For example, start an online community for kayakers where they vote, each month for their favorite, member-contributed tips related to themed contests such as best dinner-by-the-river meals. All members get a set number of votes. The top ten most popular contributors in each contest might get eCoupon prizes from REI, Trader Joe’s and others.

Providing eCoupons as prize providers is one of the most compelling, credible and cost-effective ways for companies to be visible in key niche markets and to pull winners through their doors, perhaps getting something else they see, as they redeem their coupons.

Such contests serve you as community host because they:

•  Attract new members

• Keep members engaged

• Inspire members to contribute high-quality, relevant tips

• Attract bloggers and your kind of media coverage as contests announcements are inherent news hooks

• Increase the total prize value over time as more members participate, creating a virtuous circle of ever larger membership and prize value.

2. Make your community top-of-mind in your niche

Here’ are four ways to become the go-to place for the people you want to attract and involve in your community.

Make your community the:

1. Only group serving your kind of interest, and/or
2. Biggest
3. Most exclusive
4. Best at something such as hosting a conference, fair, tradeshow, speed consulting or other kind of event.

Alternatively your community might be designed to offer and attract the best content or unique and valued service.

Here’s two examples:

1. Some fractional ownership sites morph into communities as individuals become acquainted via sharing. People may share rarely-used tools or other objects at DIYFractional. The natural next step is for those local communities to get networked, creating, for example, NeighborhoodGoods.

Others meet online to share specific, big ticket items including second homes, luxury cars or motorcycles, and even jets. Common interests and conversation beget community. See how you can adapt one kind of community design or purpose to serve another?

2. SheSpeaks provides a community of women with free samples of products that interest them in exchange for providing candid, specific feedback to the makers of those products.

Of course it helps to be the best at several things – for the people in your community.  Be the best place to:

•  Get answers, referral and/or recommendations

•  Buy and sell

•  Collectively advocate

•  Start a smaller special group within the larger community

•  Collaborate in some specific way that is facilitated in the community:

-       Cross-consult

-        Co-create a tip sheet, fundraiser, for-members-only service, product to sell, etc.

-        Crowdsource your niche

Can you imagine hosting an online gathering place related to your interest? It could be pro bono work, as your service to that community. Alternatively it could be your self-organized moonlighting job, perhaps in partnership with others — or it might morph into a full-time calling or job.

If you’d like to explore these possibilities,  here’s some places to learn more about cultivating an active, online community. For interviews, tips and strategies about community management for all kinds of communities, visit The Community Roundtable hosted by Rachel Happe and Jim Storer. For pithy, practical tips see Rich Milligan at Feverbee, Managing Communities’ author Patrick O’Keefe and community strategist Angela Connor. If your interest relates to a cause or non-profit there’s  no better place to start than at Beth Kanter’s blog. If you want your online community boost your company ties to key stakeholders, see Connie Bensen.

And, since community-building is all about specific, apt ways to collaborate see this  collaboration daily paper curated from over 100 experts — and create your own community-centered paper.

Also peruse these lists of collaboration-related resources and books and tools, where you can add your own favorites — and create your own community-attracting list. For non-profit communities Beth Kanter’s blog is a great place to start. Connie Benson has insights about company-centered community management.

“I had a woman in Idaho tell me that her options for employment went from one job to hundreds because of her ability to work from home after receiving broadband,” said DigitalBridge founder, Kelley Dunne.

In partnership with others including Internet providers he offered online access to rural or otherwise “underserved areas of the country such as Native American reservations, rural communities and inner-city low-income housing.”

Dunne ‘s lifelong work path provides us with step-by-step insights on how to accomplish greater things with others and savor the friendships along the way.

Here are his steps that we can adapt to our work in our own way, even at a later stage in life:

1. Continuously deepen expertise in one single area that matters to you and matches your talents.

2. Practice working in teams, as a leader and a team player – especially self-organized teams – those not required by a “boss.” More important than leading in this increasingly connected and complex world, see how to become the Most Valuable (kind of) Player most needed in each situation.

Then you’ll stay sought-after for future opportunities on other teams. Morten Hansen calls this T-shaped management yet anyone – even non-managers – can practice it.

3. Learn how to scale and/or replicate the projects on which you work.

4. Keep an eye out for problems to solve and opportunities to seize, where you can employ your deep expertise and befriend apt partners along the way, before you need them.

5. When that irresistible problem or opportunity presents itself be ready. To tackle it find the right partners who complement your talents (and no extra people) and who share a sweet spot of mutual interest with you to tackle that task.

Together get specific on your actionable goal to create a different service, product or organization and/or to serve a different niche better together than you could on your own.

In keeping with those steps, Dunne described what he has done, in a recent interview:

1.“As I started my career, I decided that if I was going to participate in society, I wanted to first do something to serve others. I joined the Army, where I was involved in rolling out some of the first digital wireless communication systems.”

2. “Being a lieutenant in the Army taught me accountability, leadership and teamwork.

I eventually joined a very small company that was delivering DSL technology to apartment communities across the country. We grew rapidly.”

3. “I brought vision, leadership and execution and the ability to build a scalable business. In 2000, when we sold it to Verizon, it became Verizon Avenue.”

4. “I began to see that as the world evolved more into a wireless one, we could create different business models toserve areas that were harder to reach.”

5. “I came up with a plan to do this and pitched it to Verizon. We applied new technologies for underserved areas of the country such as Native American reservations, rural communities and inner-city low-income housing.”

We worked in cooperation with other partners in the industry to help figure out how to serve different parts of the country.”

“I’ve always been an admirer of One Economy. I love the way they ran it like a business, created very collaborative public-private partnerships and focused on the holistic solution – not just access but content training and sustainability.

Here was an opportunity to bring wireless to underserved communities on a bigger scale with a very well-respected organization that has a long track record and is poised to do some fantastic things both domestically and globally.”

Next step for Dunne? He is now the excited new ceo of One Economy, eager to train and mentor more “Digital Connectors” to help low income people improve their lives, including by gaining access to computers and online resources.

Hint: Collaborating around a sweet spot of mutual interest often leads to dreaming bigger and opens new doors of opportunity and friendship.

What makes a community abundant in this new new normal world? In this uncertain economy where budgets of local governments and non-profit budgets will continue to get slashed, it is especially heartening to read the mutual-reliance message inherent in this book.

How Communities Can Run Leaner and Better

Rather than rely solely on outsiders and related funding and services, the authors suggest we band together with other locals to come up with our own solutions to problems – and ways to leverage the resources we each have in support of “our” community.

While the authors advocate “no more relying on institutions or systems to provide us with the good life”the community-building they intend should lead to wider adoption. Hopefully some of the ideas that evolve, from the grassroots up, will be honed (with ongoing public input) into systems and sometimes even institutions then adopted in other communities.

That’s part of the ebb and flow of community design.

Mutual Reliance Sparks Innovation

Another reviewer at Amazon notes that the authors advocate our striving toward greater compassion for each other rather than greater systems of efficiency. I believe however that, like natural systems and user-friendly design, collective useage inevitably leads to innovation and thus efficiency.  Yet isn’t that co-innovation an apt way for neighbors to care for each other in their community?

Not only do I feel compassion but usually genuine liking for those in my community who suggest a way to make our community better run and/or close-knit.

That’s compassion in action.

As a long admirer of Block’s ideas who believes that the U.S. economy will be bumpy at best for the decade I am heartened by the several specific ways that bottom-up community-building is happening – and that the models for such local efforts are spreading so leaders in different communities can learn from each other’s local experience.

The more specific and immediately useful the  ideas is  the more “spreadable” it becomes. Often community-building methods are, in fact, more efficient ways to be mutually supportive.

Own Less.  Share More. Get Closer.

Some examples are as seemingly mundane as Freecycle – which is elegantly moderated in my Marin County by “Nicole,” co-working spaces, and The Village Movement, started in Beacon Hill, to enable more people to age in place among tight-knit neighbors.  Shareable is doing a vivid job of covering the evolving ways we are working and playing better together and stretching resources.

When people do discover concrete ways they can be mutually-supportive they tend to adopt them, then modify them and to tell others.

Word naturally spreads.

From my work in forging partnerships to generate more value and visibility for individuals and organizations I’ve found that identifying the sweet spot of mutual interest between individuals and/or organizations is a crucial first step to exploring how to accomplish greater things together than one can alone.

Accomplish Greater Things Locally Together Than You Can Alone

When people collaborate around an explicit shared purpose they tend to bring out the better sides in each other so they inevitably get closer.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the co-authors use their influence to advocate the creation of an online community where we could exchange ideas about what is working to create “abundant communities”?

Some books that I’ve found helpful around the notion of helping each other and learn from each other include What’s Mine is Yours,  The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, Consequential Strangers: Turning Everyday Encounters Into Life-Changing Moments.

It is also gratifying to see the neighborhood-strengthening start-ups that are springing up like Patch and the community and town-wide businesses such as Steven Johnson’s outside.in and the smart phone apps like mycityway that will enable locals to share with other locals and visitors their knowledge of local history, architecture, food, sight seeing places, crafts and more.

If a hotel can become famous for leading ducks across their lobby at 11:00 then certainly your business can become more well-known for some simple ritual that customers like to photograph and tell others about and reporters love to cover.

In fact it’s surprising that so few businesses and other organizations see the power of memory-making rituals that we keep talking about the few that do. And instead of creating a new ritual a sister hotel simply imitated the duck walk. You can do better.

1. Think quirky

As all actors know, a cute kid or animal almost always steals the show.  For example the annual ritual that raised $120,000 this year in a town of just 2,404 is the weiner dog race.  That’s right. Long, cute dogs. People and their pets came from all over the country for the chance to compete.

2. Create community around your ritual

The race is a great example of what the beneficiary of the race, the Lions Club calls a “core belief – community is what we make it.” It has been an annual tradition around which dog owners (and their families and friends) meet to compare notes and catch-up. Hint: the more fervent the community the more valuable your participation can be for your organization.

3. Offer the unexpected

Instead of “just” offering a loaner car like the one you are getting serviced a British Volvo dealership also offers bikes as loaners. The dealership enjoys two benefits  – deepening the loyalty of its eco-minded customers and attracting worldwide media coverage.

4. Reduce your cost of providing that ritual by partnering

Volvo’s ritual was then topped by Fiat in Spain. By partnering with electric bicycle maker Trek it could make the same offer yet without the cost of buying and maintaining the bikes. Trek benefits by getting a warmed-up introduction to possible customers.

The bonus benefits are that many of the people who saw the cyclists heard also saw the message on the bike and many of the cyclists told their friends about their experience.

5. Give a souvenir sample whenever people have to wait – or even pause

For a client years ago I set up an experiment in which those waiting in a movie theater line were greeted by smiling, good-looking college students and offered a free ice cream bon bon on a silver tray. One each. The students simply walked down the line, saying, “Like a tasty bon bon while you’re waiting? If you like it there are more inside.”

The results of that study were so positive the theater chain intermittently continued the practice. (Intermittent rewards create more happiness, perhaps because of the hedonic treadmill effect yet we crave the certainty of constancy – “the ducks will walk across at 11″). When bon bons are offered movie theatre snacks go up an average of 26 percent.

For the owner of seven upscale restaurants in London we did a similar experiment with wine.  Per customer sales went up as average of 23 percent.

Then we suggested that the restauranteur approach his wine distributers to offer them the opportunity to provide their wine, at cost.  Several agreed so he could rotate the kinds of wine he gave waiting guests.

For this sampling ritual, the wait staff, while offering the tray with the glasses of wine, showed the bottle and said the vinter’s name.   That was so successful that wine makers now vie for the opportunity to give their wine for such samplings. They also began offering samplings to delighted diners during their meal.

That way more customers get free wine and often wind up ordering more wine.

The participating vintners get their wines introduced in a relaxed, convivial atmosphere.

Cost-saving Hint: Make your ritual so popular that you can attract partners that want to participate in it.  That way you can offer your customers that ritual more often yet at a lower cost to you.

Conclusion

Most any consumer-serving place can create a small, simple-to-execute ritual that:

• Gives an unexpected experience to customers, one they can brag about – and others can see them enjoying.

• Increases sales.

• Attracts media coverage.

• Demonstrates the value of partners participating so the cost of offering that ritual go down.

See more ways to profitably partner and then create your own, unique, customer-attracting ritual – with the right partners.

Become an opportunity-maker for the member organization that most matters to you. Imagine that your association or special interest group kept innovating to create more value and meaning for members.

That’s what TED has done and we can too by taking three collaborative steps over time:

1. Offer a single major conference  – as most associations already do, of course. Involve the members in choosing topics, speakers and formats, base on core guidelines, chosen by member vote. Create a format that enables members to participate in reach a single – and singular goal.

2. Encourage the launch of local conferences yet don’t try to control them. Instead create ground rules for local leaders to succeed while maintaining the quality of the “brand.”

3. Co-brand a fresh version of your national conference with another respected organization on vital topic that matters to the members of both organizations. Allow the founders of your local conferences to co-sponsor that new conference by enabling their members to view it together in their area.

The team at the TED conference announced this third step today.  See how you could adapt these steps to the member group that most matters to you.

Step One

The national TED conference has grown increasingly popular throughout the past 22 years, with the biggest community of members becoming those who avidly watch the videos of speakers.

Step Two

Building on the strength of that largely online community, TED launched, just last April, local events dubbed TEDx. Rather, in true collaborative fashion, they announced guidelines for these local events and invited people to co-host, design and run them. In just one year local leaders stepped up and hosted over 600 such events around the globe.

Hint: To encourage local events, the guidelines start with the benefits for the local organizers and provides an easy-to-follow toolkit: “In the spirit of ‘Ideas Worth Spreading,’ TEDx is a program that enables schools, businesses, libraries or just groups of friends to enjoy a TED-like experience through events they themselves organize, design and host.

We’re supporting approved organizers by offering a free toolkit that includes detailed advice, the right to use recorded TEDTalks, promotion on our site, connection to other organizers, and a little piece of our brand in the form of the TEDx label.”

In so doing, local communities bonded, learning together and created other local collaborations.  Imagine! In over 25 languages were spoken at these talks with opportunities for translation to spread the messages farther – and make speakers more well-known, thus spurring participation by great speakers.

Hint: the more popular your events become the more people you attract to donate their services.

This is the path to peace – and savoring your life with others. Diverse individuals meeting to learn and share best ideas with each other – and, in conversations during the event and afterwards, to find ways they can accomplish greater things together, than they can alone.

Step Three

Today the third step was announced. A new event is linking local groups to the mother ship of the national group – around a new topic area, yet connected to the underlying TED brand of innovation, new ideas – and solving a problem together.  Local groups will get to meet and share this new event live – with other local chapters around the world.  The announcement was that “On September 20, 2010, more than 150 of the world’s leading thinkers and doers will come together in New York for TEDxChange, convened by Melinda French Gates … and hosted by TED founder Chris Anderson.”

With such member loyalty, interest and clout accumulated by TED it can attract a big-time partner – the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Also together they share a Sweet Spot of mutual interest – bringing bright minds together to address a big problem: how to improve health around the world.

Plus smart partners tie their collaboration to as many meaning goals and events as they credibly can.  For example, this conference is tied to the 10th anniversary of the famous Millennium Development Goals.

This is a three- stage template that you could use to grow the value and visibility of your profession association – and make it more meaningful for your members.

In fact any member-based club or special interest group could adapt it to their needs to grow its capacity to make powerful changes while imbuing its members with a sense of meaning in their participation.

Think what the Rotary Clubs have accomplished over 20 years with their single goal, bottom-up approach to wiping out polio.  Imagine local Rotary clubs have rallied around this single cause and have raised about $127.4 million for this cause – plus personally worked on projects to make it happen. That gives their lives meaning and builds extraordinary bonds between members and with those they selflessly serve. That dedication and progress towards a singular goal (key to great collaboration) attracted the Gates foundation as a partner.

Tip: When people bring out each other’s best talents in collaboration around a sweet spot of mutual interest they accomplish greater things together than they ever could on their own – and they savor the experience along the way.

To make your member-based organization a member-attracting tool for major change and a source of meaning in the life of your members what singular goal would you suggest they achieve?  For your organization, how would you adapt this three-step approach that has been wildly successful for TED?

If you see people sneaking around a neglected lot, digging in the dirt, they may be guerrilla gardeners. Like using your cell phone to send city officials photos of potholes in the street, it’s another sign of the new wave of community-building and sharing.

Other fresh signs of sharing are sliver time volunteering, co-housing, book swaps, the Village Movement, free samples, car and ride sharing, co-creating house plans and local exchanges of free stuff.

Now there’s a whole online magazine dedicated to delights of the shareable life.

Trading is another approach to sharing. On your next vacation, save money and get to know another community when you trade homes with someone who lives there– and introduce each other to your neighbors and friends.

Relatedly, make extra money while helping others save it by renting what you already have. Think of your tools, office, parking or storage space, or even your couch.  And when you want something new, see if you can get it for less by getting others to buy one too.

Janelle Orsi and Emily Doskow describe other “sharing solutions” and Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers dub this trend “collaborative consumption” in their book What’s Mine is Yours.

How have you saved or made money, forged friendships or helped your community by sharing, swapping, renting or otherwise acting collaboratively?

We can now pay less for some services and products we want. Venture capitalists are betting millions that we will love this approach.

It’s a fresh take on group buying. Several online start-ups negotiate for their members deep discounts for products/services – provided that enough would-be buyers sign up within a limited time frame.

They offer daily online deals that you can get delivered via Twitter or to your email in-box.

Today, for example, those of us in the San Francisco area can buy sailing lessons for $185 rather than $375 because the deal “tipped” when 50 bought and 52 now have. Or your family can visit the Oakland Zoo for $40 rather than $85 – if enough people say they want this offer.  

A side benefit of such sites is seeing what people in your area think it worth buying or not – even at a discount.

These start-ups encourage members to urge friends (via Facebook and mobile phone app) to also sign up to buy so that they can capture the opportunity to get what they want for that low, low price. 

To sweeten the deal for these encouragers, buyers can get freebies if enough of their friends buy too. (You can also buy something for a friend.)

Two such startups, LivingSocial and Groupon have each raised a whopping $30 million. Both are user-friendly. Groupon is bigger, starting first.  Just last month it attracted two million U.S. visitors.

There are several others.

Which one will break away from the pack and become our “go-to” service of this kind? I’ve enjoyed the savings and the ease of buying two deals at Groupon but LivingSocial will give them a good run for their money (and they both have buckets of it).  Tell me what you think.

If villagers living in the midst of poverty and war can be nudged to work better together with just three simple rules (honed via a parental competition study) and a reward (money, in this case) then maybe your group (team, board, committee, etc.) could too:

1. The village leaders (or your project leader) are elected by secret ballot.

2. The village (or your group) holds communal meetings – meaning open to all participants and no secret side confabs.

3. The results of all meetings are covered completely and accurately and that coverage is made available, quickly, to all participants. Here are two other posts you may find helpful:

How We Help Each Other Do the Right Thing…Sometimes

Disagree? How to Keep Talking Instead of Arguing

You don’t have to be religious to have a deep faith in the power of compassion. With it people who act and believe differently can not only work and live together in harmony they can enjoy a richer, more adventuresome life.

They can collaborate. They can accomplish greater things together than they could if they just share time with people like them. And they’d be much less likely to kill each other.

“It doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as it leads you to practical compassion.”  ~ Karen Armstrong

In fact, the more diverse a community, group or team the greater the likelihood that misunderstanding and conflict will happen. 

“We are living cheek by jowl with people of other faiths, our world has shrunk to a global village…for a long time and in a most unsung way people have been spontaneously  reaching out to other faiths. More Christians read Martin Buber than Jews. Jews read Paul Tillich and Harvey Cox. And Jesuits have long been learning meditation from Buddhist monks.” ~ Karen Armstrong

Yet, when friction happens, if individuals look to each other’s positive intent, listen fully and speak candidly, they are most likely to experience breakthroughs – both personally and collectively. That shared experience enables everyone to feel safer in the group. 

We spiral up to greater trust, bring out the best in each other, creating a mutually-reinforcing behavioral loop that enables us to become happier and higher-performing together. That’s when the Golden Rule happens naturally.

Yet that rarely happens.  Even more difficult than defending oneself or attacking others, facing another with compassion takes “stepping into their shoes” practice. 

“The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I’d say that compassion begins with attention.” ~ Daniel Goleman

That’s why TED talk speaker, Karen Armstrong asked, as her wish, for support in spreading the idea of the Charter for Compassion, and the collective practice of its central tenet.  That is “the core shared value of every world religion and moral code, the Golden Rule.”

After all, “TED is about ideas worth spreading — please help us spread compassion, ‘the best idea humanity has ever had.’”

My version of the Golden Rule is to do unto others as they would have done to them.

Would you join us in this global conversation and in sharing the charter with others? I’ve started by:

•  Watching six people share their insights on compassion – an inman, a rabbi, a tenzin, a swami, a reverend and some with a secular voice of compassion.

• Learning about the activities funded by the Fetzer Institute, a partner in this campaign.

Imagine my delight in discovering that Fetzer is sponsoring a conference next spring at which Daniel Siegel will be speaking on From Me to We: A New Look at Resilience and Well-Being.

“The Golden Rule is of no use to you whatever unless you realize it is your move.” ~ Frank Crane