Today I went to a day long workshop on Conscious Bookkeeping (they pointed out at the work shop that the word bookkeeping has two o’s two k’s and two e’s all in a row).

We were invited to reflect on the story and patterns of our parents way of dealing with money; To consider our shadow with money and interpret it in a new way; to consider what next steps we would take around our relationship to money.

It was a little bit intense to touch the pool of emotions that comes up.

One of the thins it got me thinking about was the larger system wide conversation about what money is and th emotional unpacking and processing that we need on a wide scale. I hope we can talk about this at the unMoney Convergence.

I also talked to a young woman from Ashland who was thinking about coming to the conference with several people from her city/region - they are hoping to connect with others who know about and are thinking about starting local/community currencies. I encouraged her to post on the wiki Propsed Topics page about this. I encourage you to contribute to that page if you can articulate what you hope to learn about at the conference. Please keep in mind you don’t have to be an expert to talk about a topic - you can just have a question and seek input from the community gathered.

Open Money Intensive
Mexico March 3rd to 9th

As you already know, money is about to undergo a fundamental evolutionary step into community currencies. Conventional money as we know it has a built in architecture that leads to scarcity and centralization, and is not appropriate for dealing with today’s global systemic challenges. Just as there are now millions of media outlets today, currencies will follow this same evolution by shifting from centralized authoritative models to distributed ones that generate sustainability, and can handle to complexity of the modern world. Communities of all types will then be able to create their own currencies for their own marketplace and thereby liberate their wealth potential. This will become the most important evolution for society in the coming years.

The open money project aims to create the global infrastructure, tools, governance mechanisms and platforms that will give communities this capacity. With just a few clicks, they will be able to create currencies. The project has been developed by its original pioneers for over 20 years, and it is now taking off. The vision, architecture, technological choices, and strategy are clear. What remains is for the emergence of a larger sustained open money development group that will carry the work forward and make it a global reality.

Through our conversations we know that you understand the need for open money and have expressed your personal interest in this project. We are deeply excited to offer an event where that interest can be transformed into action. We would like to invite you to join the core open money development group by participating with us in a week long working intensive on March 3rd-9th 2008 in the mountains of Tepoztlán near Mexico City (see logistics & costs below).

This event is not for everybody, however. It is not a conference to consume information about open money, nor is it a workshop or a retreat. It is truly a working intensive for those who are called to actively participate in the open money project.

Please come if:
1) you feel a call to be part of the open money project
2) you are ready to be accountable for making it a reality
3) you are willing to prepare for the intensive by participating in some pre-event online workshops

The intensive itself will begin with times for bringing everyone up to speed, providing orientation, community cohesion, declarations of intention and accountabilities. Working sessions are expected to self-organize quite quickly thereafter. They will certainly include coding & software development, user interface, game, communication and marketing tools, currency design,fundraising, strategic planning, collective intelligence tools, as well as whatever you bring as a your own commitment to work in this project. At the intensive we will be using our own tools, practices, and platform to measure, guide, and generate our own wealth. A software design and a demonstration version are ready for us to jump in. Our intention and expectation is that this bootstrapping will create the cohesion for ongoing action and collective play.

If this opportunity tugs at your soul, please get back to us.

This conference is inspired for several reasons. I first met Chris Lindstrom at the Art of Leadership two summers ago. He talked about the work he was doing launching Berkshares with the E.F. Schumacher Society. He also had produced a conference on community currency two years before. I ran into the Open Money guy, Mike Linton at Gnomedex. I have been doing quite successful unconferences and really getting communities to work well together. I felt that it was time for Planetwork to host an event about money and currency and the movements that have been emerging to think about how things could be different. The timing is also connected with the fact that digital identity systems are now ‘happening’ and could be used for value tracking that are outside FIAT currency.

We are collaborating to put this event on in Seattle after the Green Festival, April 14-16. This is the conference wiki that also has an invitation and description of the conference.

-Kalia