Dallas Symphony Christmas Concert

Yesterday I continued my annual ritual of attending the Dallas Symphony Christmas concert. This year it was called Cheer. As usual, the performance showed exceptional quality and broad variety that included the orchestra, full chorus, children's choir, narration, guest artist and guest conductor.

The concert started with a mind-blowing arrangement and performance of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel". The chorus started out in the first level balcony level surrounding the concert hall and the children's choir processed down the aisles to their positions on stage. The composition was so rich and inspiring that I'd have been satisfied if the entire concert was that one performance. I was lucky to be sitting very close to the stage on the orchestra floor so that I had a very good view of the faces of the children in the choir.

Another notable performance was Hodie by Ralph Vaughan Williams. This piece opened the second half of the concert and, again, was on the level of the concert opener for satisfaction level.

Other memorable parts of the concert included Christmas Time is Here, which featured the children's choir. Also, a John Rutter choral piece was chilling and moving at the same time. Of course the usual rendition of The Christmas Song (Chestnuts) was great.

Even though a few of the principal players in the orchestra appeared to be missing, the level of professionalism of the orchestra and everything else was not compromised. I will definitely continue to make this an annual tradition and ritual for myself and any friends/family that want to participate.

Microtrends in Technology

Apparently two Microtrends in the technology are Social Geeks and New Luddites. A Microtrend is defined as something that shows a strong growth trend and has reached a participation level of at least 1% of the population (3 million people in the US population). This 1% infiltration is seen as a minor tipping point that may predict a major trend or Tipping Point in the future.

Social Geeks are a group that buck the old-school interpretation of the Geek definition. Rather than being anti-social or socially challenged, this group is very confident and proficient in the use of technology as well as being socially adept. Skill and proactive usage of technology combined with social participation has moved up to the microtrend level.

This change is enhanced by the proliferation of social networking tools and rich internet applications that have exploded over the last 5-10 years. From social communities like Facebook and MySpace to professional networking like LinkedIn to dating sites such as Match, Chemistry and eHarmony, proficiency in the use of technology has grown into a fundamental literacy for the social realm.

On the other hand, New Luddites are a group that purposely chooses to avoid technology to escape information overload. Many New Luddites have used the internet but chose to stop because they found it uninteresting, not useful, or a bad way to spend time. This group does not include a much larger group of people who do not use the internet or other technologies due to unfamiliarity or intimidation.

Interestingly enough, studies also show that this group of New Luddites tends to be less trusting, more isolated and anti-social than the population as a whole. While we might relate to someone wanting to minimize their use and dependence on the internet or other relevant technology such as cell phones, we may have trouble understanding how someone would be willing to give up the convenience that normal usage gives us.

Getting in, getting/doing what you need and getting out seems to be a reasonable way to use technology that most of us need to master to remain literate in today's world.

The Enneagram

The Enneagram is a psychological profiling system that characterizes 9 distinct primary personality types. Each primary personality type is modified to some degree by a secondary type that is one of the adjacent types to the primary.

For example, a type 2 could have either a 1-wing or a 3-wing. Depending on which of these wings is dominant, the type 2 would be known as a 2 with a 1 wing or a 2 with a 3 wing. The secondary type can be strong or weak. This creates the potential for a large number of variations even within one primary type when degree of influence of one or more wings can vary from 1 to 99 percent.

The nine primary types each have a name that characterizes the pure essence of the type. For example:

1. Reformer
2. Helper
3. Motivator
4. Individualist
5. Investigator
6. Loyalist
7. Enthusiast
8. Leader
9. Peacemaker

Each primary type has 9 different levels of development ranging from self-actualization (1) down to complete disintegration (9). When a person is moving toward growth and self-actualization they move in their direction of integration. When this happens the type begins to display some of the healthy characteristics of the type in the direction of integration. For example, when a type 9 is moving to growth, characteristics of a healthy type 3 may become apparent.

There is also a direction of disintegration. When a type is deteriorating and moving away from growth toward extreme neuroticism or psychosis, tendencies of an unhealthy type in the direction of disintegration may become apparent. For example, a type 9 will begin to show behavior of an unhealthy type 6 when moving toward disintegration and away from integration.

The Enneagram theory has a long, rich history of development extending back into ancient Greece and including Jewish mystics and Jesuits. The direction of integration corresponds to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in that the act of moving toward growth and integration is analogous to moving toward self-actualization.

First Week in December 2009

Since I didn't do anything particularly exciting this past week, but I want to maintain the discipline of writing a blog at least once a week, maybe a summary will be sufficient.

The week began with a return from visiting my family in Mississippi. The flight back Sunday morning was about as on-time, smooth and predictable as I can remember a flight being. No delays and no bumpiness along the way. After landing, I went home, spent some time unpacking, playing music and organizing for the week ahead. Sunday night I had a great dinner at the Reatta in Ft. Worth with my daughter and her boyfriend.

Monday was a little slow getting back into the work routine. Many folks were out of the office attending a healthcare technology trade show (RSNA), so the office was relatively quiet. We were mid-week of a two week iteration, so the Monday team meeting focused on what had been done the week before and what we expected to finish the coming week.

The rest of the week was more energetic at work as people slowly returned from the trade show and folks who normally work outside the Corepoint Plano office started dribbling into town. The week was capped off with an office Christmas party Friday night complete with catering by Blue Mesa, White Elephant gift exchange and probably 70 people or so in attendance.

During the week I managed to watch another installment of Planet Earth from my Netflix subscription and finish the book, Personality Types, which is an exploration of the Enneagram personality model. This model has roots in Maslow psychological theory and was a very stimulating read. I started a new book, Microtrends, by Mark Penn that looks like it will be a quick, practical read.

Saturday I managed to upgrade my cell phone from an aging Motorola Q (circa 2005) to the Motorola Droid, a Google Android-based phone. So far I am really enjoying the fast-forward in technology from what I had before along with the much improved web access and user experience.

My Christmas tree is up! I went for a small tree this year to minimize setup and teardown hassle. I gave away my full-size tree to a good friend. It looks great! While we were getting the tree up and going, we cooked a great meal consisting of Thai Salmon, rice and asparagus. Shrimp cocktail appetizers and a Flat Creek bottle of Pinot Grigio lubricated both the cooking and the tree trimming.

Today was pretty yucky outside with misty rain and fog all day long. However, we heard a great talk by Kurt Condra regarding the metaphysical interpretation of Christmas and enjoyed a great meal and conversation at Fish City Grill on Royal and Preston.

So, sortof a chilled, happy week. Looking forward to the last two weeks of the year for Christmas, family visits, Cotton Bowl and New Year's Eve.

Thomas Jefferson: High Priest of Deism

Thomas Jefferson is a brilliant, mis-understood and inconsistent historical figure. His eloquent writings formed the basis of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia constitution among others. He is mis-understood by many people today as he is lumped by many into a superficial bucket of founding fathers who "built our country on Christianity" as many Fundamentalists would tell it. His behavior was inconsistent in that he wrote documents that proclaimed equality but kept slaves for most of his life.

As the "High Priest of Deism", he represented a system of thought shared by many of the founding fathers. Deism, in the 18th century, could range from the concept of "God as disinterested creator" to that of "closet atheist".

Deism in the theistic sense can be described as a belief in a supreme being that, Newtonian style, designed a self-sustaining Universe, set it in motion and moved on to bigger and better things. An agnostic form for the supreme being might be common, but the concept still held to that of external being vs. integrated energy in the style of Star Wars or some New Thought theology.

It was very difficult to be an atheist in the 18th century. The Deist moniker perhaps allowed many who were to clothe their beliefs in something more acceptable, while privately maintaining a more humanistic philosophy that was also consistent with the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason.

Jefferson opposed any form of Platonic or NeoPlatonic philosophy. He was supremely rational and distrusted "government by the priesthood". His Natural Theology descended from Aristotelian thinking and proposed that God was to be found by experiencing the natural world and avoiding hyper-imagination that might be found in thought that evolved from Platonic roots. Jefferson created the famous Jefferson Bible, which was a treatment of the Gospels with all miracles, superstition and supernatural content removed.

Despite his lack of respect for weak-headed religion, he was known to give to all denominations in his city in equal measure. Jefferson was painted as a diabolical atheist by his political enemies who had no problem using slippery slope fallacious arguments to defame his character for political gain. At the time, many evangelicals (mostly Calvinists in those days), predicted that outbreaks of murder, rape, sex and violence would occur if Jefferson were elected president. Ironically, this same constituency was delighted with the separation of church and state that mad its way into the constitution.

Jefferson, Adams and other prominent Revolutionary figures found their way to Deism in different ways. Jefferson and Adams were somewhat polar opposites. Jefferson had some history and ties to the Anglican church, but approached philosophy from a strictly rationalist viewpoint. Adams was something of a reformed Puritan, muddling his way through Congregationalist, then Unitarian church attendance during his lifetime.

Sadly, despite Jefferson's ideals and clear rationalism, his personal life was riddled with inconsistencies. It is difficult for us to understand the choice to keep slaves while espousing equality in his writings. However, it is also hard for us to understand the degree of prejudice that was woven into the consciousness of the time regarding the inferiority of people of color. We have to be careful judging historical figures through our modern perspectives and context.

John Adams and Founding Fathers Theology

This post comes from a lively and stimulating discussion I participated in recently. Many thanks to the insightful, intelligent, thoughtful and engaged individuals who shared that hour with me and helped push our consciousness forward.

John Adams was a seminal figure in American history. He was known for his quick temper. He was both a friend and enemy to Thomas Jefferson at different points in his life. He and Jefferson died within hours of each other precisely on July 4, 1826. He was perhaps more traditionally religious than many of the other founding fathers, although he favored the free thought variety as encapsulated in Congregationist and Unitarian traditions. However, he attended and respected other more conservative traditions as well.

Adams believed that any religion was better than no religion, but that none of them have all the truth. He did not believe in the divinity of Christ, nor many of the supernatural aspects of the bible, but was closer to the deist concepts that were gaining momentum during the time of the enlightenment period and in the environment of liberal reason in the colonies at that time. He was educated at Harvard, where deism was a strong undercurrent of theistic conception.

Many of the founding fathers were deists rather than traditional Christians. Their beliefs tended toward liberal free thought and were highly critical of the Catholic and perhaps conservative Protestant traditions. Adams was consistent in this regard. However, he showed a propensity to defend any form of religion when attacked by more extreme rationalists such as Thomas Paine.

Unitarians and Congregationalists were the dominant denonimations during the lifetime of Adams. Interestingly enough, the Baptists at one point came to the defense of Unitarians when they were being persecuted by other more Puritanical groups. This seems the reverse of what we'd expect in the modern United States.

Jefferson and Washington held similar beliefs to Adams. While Washington was extremely private regarding his theological concepts, he was known to quit going to a particular church once they wanted to require him to partake of communion. It is well-known that Jefferson rejected the Old Testament as well as the more supernatural and mythological aspects of the Bible. Jefferson even penned his own version of the New Testament, removing the miracles and retaining the core of Jesus's teachings.

Adams once remarked that the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes contained all of his religion. This lean and focused theological approach is similar to Lincoln's, who once remarked that "when I do good, I feel good, when I do bad, I feel bad, that's my religion". How close is this to a recent popular song that offers "My religion is a smile on a dog".

How far have we come away from the liberal, thoughtful, free-thinking, open-minded mentality of many of the prominent founders of the United States? How do modern mega-churches with their simplistic sound bites, superficial scriptural interpretations and narrow intellectual sources compare to the quiet space where the true source is found? Were Adams and other enlightenment thinkers positive models we should understand better or is their brand of liberal reason only part of the whole that must include intuition, instinct and emotion as well?

We narrowly escaped becoming a theocracy, as many other voices during the time of our country's founding wanted to include language more specific to particular theological positions in the governing documents. We should be thankful that separation of church and state prevailed and we can be truly free to think, do and grow intellectually and spiritually (or not) as we are individually led.

Unitarian Universalism compared to New Thought

I've finally had some time to explore the Unitarian church. I was curious about the difference between Unitarian and New Thought churches such as Unity and Religious Science. Since about March of this year, I have been exploring these three denominations to see if I can find a church I can tolerate for more than a few visits. New Thought and Unitarian Universalist brands definitely have a chance. I believe I know enough now to characterize the differences from my perspective.

I'll try to be succinct, as there is plenty of information elsewhere that compares these two approaches. Here are some ways they are the similar:

1. Both accept all religions as valid paths to the truth
2. Both believe in the quest for individual spiritual truth
3. Both support free thought
4. Both are tolerant of all races and sexual orientations
5. Both are metaphysically robust
6. Both share some overlap of thinkers in the 19th century (e.g. Emerson)

Here are some ways they are different:

1. Unitarians encourage no particular form of theistic belief - New Thought has a somewhat specific theistic concept
2. Unitarians draw from all theological, philosophical and other sources equally - New Thought emphasizes Christianity and the New Thought tradition while accepting and drawing from other sources as well
3. In particular, Religious Science draws from the Gospels, Eastern Religion, Ernest Holmes and Emerson somewhat equally while Unity tends to give a metaphysical interpretation of Christianity more emphasis
4. Unitarians have a more traditional form of worship service, drawing from many traditional hymns and using lots of classical music during worship services - New Thought is more contemporary with music
5. New Thought emphasizes meditation and affirmative prayer more than Unitarians
6. Unitarians are more intellectual, where Unity is more emotional
7. Unitarians appear to be somewhat equally represented by both genders - Unity/Religious Science appears to skew toward females
8. Unitarians are more intellectually broad in their sources - New Thought writing seems to have a more specific conceptual mentality

That's just a few. I wanted to get these down while I was thinking about them. My experiences recently in some of the discussion groups at the First Unitarian Church of Dallas have been extremely intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking.

Jeff Lorber in Dallas

Jeff Lorber was in Dallas last night at the Bishop Arts Theatre in the Oak Cliff neighborhood. This was an awesome concert, at least the second half. The first half was very smooth jazz with a couple of guest artists I did not recognize. They were great musicians but the music was that tedious style of smooth jazz that repeats the same chord progression over and over while solos are bogarted for the most part by the soprano sax.

Everything changed when Lorber took the stage. He sat down, got right down to business and started plucking out some of the funkiest rhythms on electric piano. The energy level was instantly pushed to a stratospheric level and stayed there for the rest of his set. Dr. Funk was in the house and the band instantly kicked into a precise groove with lots of intricate rhythms and melodic lines and plenty of surprises along the way.

One annoyance was that the bass player never seemed to clue in that his level was set too high and he constantly overshadowed the band. This was much less of a problem once Jeff Lorber took the stage as the keyboards were up a bit higher and the dynamic range of the group was much more broad. It was only a problem in the heavier and louder portions of the tunes.

The sound reinforcement was a little weak as well. Maybe this contributed to the overdrive of the bass, but it seemed that most of the problem was coming from the fact that he was amped as well as playing through the PA.

Bishop Arts Theatre is a very small venue and was about 80% full. Promoters must have followed the stealth marketing style for this concert as almost nobody knew about it. I talked to several local musicians later that night and none of them even knew Lorber was anywhere near Dallas, despite the fact that they were huge fans. I happened to run across it in a random "jazz events" search on the Dallas Observer web site a few weeks ago. Otherwise I'd have been ignorant as well.

The venue is a great place to hear live music in an intimate setting. All the people were extremely nice to us. The room is very small with limited seating. This was the last concert of the 2009 jazz series.

The Elephant Room on Halloween

Last weekend I was lucky to visit The Elephant Room in Austin. Double the fun was that it was Halloween night in downtown Austin. Triple the fun was that the band was awesome.

We started with a taxi ride from the Arboreteum area of Austin to downtown. We did this to avoid the traffic gridlock that was expected (and experienced in the past) for Halloween night in downtown Austin. This turned out to be a great idea. Getting there was no problem as we zipped into downtown 10-15 minutes after leaving the house.

After getting out of the car and while standing outside the club on the street corner waiting for a second taxi of friends to arrive, we saw quite a few interesting costumes and people walk by. Outside the door was a somewhat convincing small man with a moustache and a hat that turned out to be one of the waitresses in the club. The breasts should have been a dead giveaway, but somehow I overlooked that.

Inside the club was very comfortable, aided by the fact that all of Austin bars are non-smoking. How nice to go out to a great jazz club and not have to worry about the need to burn clothes the next day from the rank smell of stale tobacco. A few nights before I had wanted to go into the Balcony Club in Dallas after the Bruce Hornsby concert to hear a couple of tunes and have a drink, but we could not bring ourselves to walk into the joint due to the overwhelming stench of stale tobacco wisping out of the entry door. The Elephant Room was a pleasant surprise in that area.

The band instrumentation was guitar, trombone, organ/piano, bass and drums. All of the musicians were great, but the guitarist was especially exciting. He played a very John Scofield sound and style. The drummer was also outstanding and his stylings reminded me of Ed Soph. The trombonist alternated between bass and trombone and sounded great on both. The organist provided the soul vaccination for the band with the rich B3 sound coming out of the organ. They started with a couple of standards, then played mostly a jazz-rock and fusion style for the rest of the night.

Some dork (who seemed to be an owner or manager of the place) insisted on standing in front of the mike on some tunes and providing poetic or narrative during vamp periods of the tune being played. Happily we were spared from most of the content as the mike was mysteriously turned off whenever he started talking or, um, singing. Thank you Mr. Sound Man. Other than this disturbing side show, the band was exceptionally professional and fun to hear.

Afterward, we had trouble getting a taxi back to the house. The streets were gridlocked and tons of people were walking around all the streets in the Congress area as well as the 4th to 6th street areas. Finally we were able to hail a couple of cabs and start the journey home. Once we got out of the inner city, traffic returned to normal and we were home in not time.

Great fun!

Bruce Hornsby at Lakewood Theatre

It was great to hear Bruce Hornsby at the Lakewood in Dallas last Tuesday night. I had not been to the Lakewood Theatre in a long time. The venue has a great old movie house vibe and the chairs are comfy.

I was expecting a warm-up band, so it was a pleasant surprise when Hornsby came walking out a few minutes after 8pm. He was accompanied by 4 other excellent muscians including sax, guitar, keyboards and drums. The second keyboardist played lots of organ and synth pads for the most part.

Hornsby wasted no time in taking a seat at the grand piano and immediately dropping hands onto some of his signature voicings. The first tune was solo piano and singing with lots of rich harmonic color and spontaneity.

The first set was good, but the second set was much better. My complaints about the first set were mostly around the overall live mix and the fact that the guitarist only took one solo. Most of the first set he played rhythm guitar while Hornsby and the saxophonist handled the solos.

In the second set, the guitarist had several solo opportunities, all of which hit the spot. At one point the second keyboardist was able to solo a bit on organ. Overall thought, the improvisation was restrained compared to a jazz group.

Hornsby's style, while incorporating improvisation, is much more eclectic and idiosyncratic than a jazz performance. His piano harmonizations are unique and his melodic style is very angular. Elements of jazz, folk, R&B and rock can be found in his music. His later music leans much more toward a hard rock folk sound than his earlier music that I remember. Of course, the only recording of his I know to some degree is Harbor Lights, which to me is the Bruce Hornsby music I really like.

Buddhism: The Eightfold Path

I participated in a discussion recently about this topic. It became obvious pretty soon that the topic was too broad to really cover in an hour. Many of the comments and mini-discussions referenced parts of more general Buddhist principles rather than the Eightfold Path directly. Even so, many of the insights and perspectives were stimulating and thought-provoking. The main points of the discussion centered around:

• Inheritance and re-packaging of many Buddhist or Eightfold principles into many other philosophical, theological and psychological frameworks including Christianity
• Tendency of organized religion toward complicating and splintering principles from the founders
• What did the notion of suffering mean in the original context of the time period when Buddhist concepts came of age? What, if anything, does it mean for us in today's global and/or American culture
• Do desires really cause suffering, or is it the way we view and manage our desires that are the problem?
• Relationship of Buddhism to Stoicism

Buddhism and Stoicism were created during very similar times in history in very different parts of the world: India and Greece. Originally, Buddhism was a non-theistic philosophy. Later on as it splintered and became adopted by the masses, it morphed into more theistic clothing. As with other religions, the splintering, adopting and changing created the usual monster of organized religion, which has a tendency to distort or pervert the meaning of the ideas of the early founders and disciples into a complex, confusing and stifling expression.

Do we really suffer in our modern affluent American society? Certainly there are many people who suffer economically, physically and emotionally. However, what most of us consider suffering is hardly worth mentioning in the same breath as real suffering. Most of our suffering is caused by inadequate thinking. We think ourselves into a problem too quickly. We do not take the higher consciousness perspective regarding situations in our lives. Our perspective is too limited and focused. We are in the trees, not the forest.

Is suffering, whatever the manifestation, really caused by desire? Desire is fundamentally a very healthy force in our lives. Of course, unexamined desires can always be a problem, but at its root, desire is an expression of an important internal disturbance that may be a connection with a deeper spiritual purpose. Expressing that desire in positive ways through creativity and action is critical for healthy mental states. The separation between our desires and current reality can cause suffering. In this case we either need to 1) change our desire, 2) change our reality or 3) break our desires up into mini-desires that can be accomplished at a steady pace.

Analyzing the cause of the "suffering" and the relationship of our desires to it is a fundamental life skill that we must develop in order to move toward self-actualization. Otherwise we waste hours, days, weeks, months, even years in dysfunctional thought patterns that limit our development. The first tenet of the Eightfold Path is "Right View". This references clarity of thought as the first step toward the "good life", which has been called varous things throughout history including self-actualization, following your bliss, the middle way and more by such luminaries as Abraham Maslow, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Aristotle and Confucius.

Maynard Ferguson Tribute

I made a last minute decision Thursday (10/15/2009) to attend a UNT 1:00 Lab Band concert at McDavid Studio in Ft. Worth. The concert was a tribute to Maynard Ferguson, a legendary jazz trumpeter and band leader active for several decades from the 1950s on. I always enjoy live big band concerts and this one had a few other reinforcing motivators to spur my attendance.

First, I am a graduate of the UNT jazz studies program (MM 1983) with a concentration in Jazz Piano and Education. So, I always enjoy hearing any of the various excellent musical groups every year when the opportunity arises. Especially the 1:00 Lab Band. The variety of musical color, energy levels and melodic variety that comes from a highly skilled big band with top notch arrangements can be an exhilarating experience.

Second, an old college musical cohort is now Director of the 1:00, Lab Band, Steve Wiest. Steve and I knew each other back in USM (University of Southern Mississippi) days where we played together in such infamous groups as "The Essence of Jazz" and sometimes in USM's Lab Band. Steve went on to become an outstanding composer/arranger and trombonist for the Maynard Ferguson Band very soon after graduating from USM in the late 1970s. I usually run into him once or twice a year around the area at 1:00 concerts or other performances in which he participates.

Third, relatively recently, the Maynard Ferguson Library of Charts was donated to the UNT Jazz program. This is in addition to the donation of the Stan Kenton library a couple of decades ago. The group is currently cultivating music from the Maynard library that dates from the late 1950s to early 1960s. Another unexpected surprise for the evening was a guest saxophonist from the Ferguson band, also a friend/colleague of Steve's, who contributed lively solo performances throughout the evening.

The concert was very enjoyable, especially the second half where the group performed more contemporary arrangements than in the first half. The pianist was especially notable and there were several outstanding solos from members of the saxophone, trombone and trumpet sections as well. Steve broke out his trombone and played on one of the numbers with the guest saxophonist.

McDavid Studio is a good medium-sized venue for enjoying live music. It was spacious and accomodative for the volume and power of a modern Big Band. Even though I had almost an hour drive from Plano to Ft. Worth at the end of the workday, it was well worth the effort for 2 hours or more of delicious and inspirational music provided by various Maynard Ferguson Band composers and excellent UNT jazz musicians.

Knowing before Doing

When we are planning toward a goal, it is important to visualize the goal and create the steps it takes to get there. The smaller the granularity of the steps toward reaching a goal, the better. This allows us to get continuous positive feedback as we accomplish each step, no matter how small. It keeps us moving forward. A lot can be accomplished by having a goal broken down into daily increments so that we move forward at a steady pace. 365 steps toward a goal in a year will get us much farther than just vaguely lurching in the general direction of a myst on the horizon.

So, action is extremely important. But the mental component of achieving a goal is even more important. First, we do need to crisply and precisely define the objective. Then we should divide the acheivement of the goal into as many parts as possible, or into a daily repetitive practice that leads to the accomplishment. But, perhaps the most important part is that we know that the outcome will happen.

Knowing that an outcome will happen is an extreme form of belief. Not hoping, not beseeching, not wanting, not guessing, not doubting, but knowing. How do we know that it will happen? We believe and behave as if the result is already happened. We continue doing and feeling the result of the outcome through our daily steps or practices, but we know that it has happened. In fact, we are very thankful that is has occurred. This is our mental state. Any compromise less than that allows doubt and fear to sew the roots of failure.

This is not easy. It requires focused attention to the objective in the face of discouraging input along the way. We won't always feel like taking the next step. Some days we will be bored with repeating a particular practice. In these moments it is extremely important that we stop, take a breath and internalize the feeling that we have what we are shooting for already in hand. This will give us the faith, strength and motivation to do the minimally small step that is needed for that particular day.

Know, Do, Have. Repeat until done.

History of Unity

As I have mentioned before in this blog, I have been exploring New Thought quite a bit over the last several months in particular. Lately I have been focusing on the Unity part of that movement that also includes Religious Science (Science of Mind) and Divine Science. I was fortunate several evenings ago to hear a presentation of the history of the Unity movement in particular.

The roots of Unity extend most recently back into the New Thought movements of the 19th century. Unity was eventually created out of the life and writings of Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. One strand of that line of thought comes from the background of Christian Science through Emma Curtis Hopkins and Mary Baker Eddy. Another strand comes from the American Transcendentalist philosophers including Emerson and Thoreau. A third strand comes out of a more Gnostic or "secret" strand of thought.

Unity itself is enclosed in the larger New Thought container. New Thought includes Unity as well as Religious Science and Divine Science. Religious Science (originally Science of Mind) was founded and inspired primarily by the writings of Ernest Holmes, who was a very active metaphysical writer and teacher in the early 20th century. The metaphysical underpinnings of New Thought go back to Hinduism through Plato, Neo-Platonism and many other steps up through the 19th century philosophies mentioned above.

All New Thought supports all paths to spirituality and accepts all religious orientations. I don't know much about Divine Science, but I can compare Religious Science to Unity to some degree. Where Religious Science appears to be more focused on the metaphysical, Unity includes that focus but also includes a relatively strong component of spiritual and physical healing, perhaps due to the influence of Christian Science. Unity also provides a clear articulation of Five Principles in order to give some abstract support to a common body of belief. These are not dogmatic commandments, but instead have much more breathing room for incorporation into a variety of lifestyles and situations.

Dr. Om Prakash

I recently attended a presentation by Dr. Prakash in North Dallas. He was born in Delhi, India and worked with Ghandi in the mid-20th century. His main theme is meditation and the benefits that regular practice can give to anyone disciplined enough to practice it. He has been a practicing psychologist most of his life, and at 85 still works 11 hours a day. He attributes his longevity and productivity in large part to his disciplined meditation practice.

Much of his presentation provided scientific, medical and metaphysical explanations and support for the benefits of meditation. One point he made is that we tend to over-use our left brain, which is heavily required for functioning in our busy, technological lives. We are constantly using logic and language to get through the day. Meditation relaxes the left brain and helps the right brain, the creative brain, to wake up and take up more of the load. This shift occurs almost immediately when you begin meditation but shows the most long term and daily benefit if meditation is adopted as a daily practice at regular times.

Prakash meditates in 20 minute sessions, 3 times a day. His reasoning is that our days are divided into three parts: work, leisure, sleep. So he meditates before starting each different section of the day. In the morning, the best time to meditate is right after a morning shower. This allows the mind to be fully awake and alert rather than groggy from sleep. After work, when we tend to be stressed and off-center, a session can relax our mind before we begin our leisure activities. One last session can be done just before bedtime to ensure a good night's sleep.

3 times a day for 20 minutes might be too much for a beginner. It takes practice to allow ourselves to slow down and actually relax. Starting with twice a day for 10 minutes each might be a good way to begin. The first time you meditate, 10 minutes might seem like a long time. Also, some instruction in a particular technique can help.

Prakash recommends a breath control technique. In this you close your eyes, focus on the front of your forehead just above your eyebrows in the center. Breath in slowly, wait a second or two, then exhale. Clear your mind, focus on your breathing and continue keeping your mind clear of anything else. Relaxing music can also help.

It was inspiring to see someone of his age so engaged and energetic.

Three Themes from Social Artistry

I mentioned that I attended a Jean Houston lecture. Most of that entry was a summary of her background and the experience. I did not say much about the content of the evening. Here I will pick three of the main themes and summarize. These themes and more are elaborated in detail in an online interview.

• We are in a time when something big is trying to happen


• We have lost touch with our senses, both externally and internally


• We have the potential to push through the current transition but we have to learn to fire on more burners

These are three of the themes that have been a part of her work over many years. They are elaborated even more in this interview. Much of her social artistry work is intended to help people find ways to add and express personas in order to get more in touch with the multiple dimensions that help us grow into change.

One way to move consciousness and being forward and upward is to remove negative patterns of thought, which in turn remove negative patterns of behavior. Houston agrees this is a valid approach, but prefers something that Jung also preferred that can be called "active imagination". In this approach, positive thoughts become personas and are added as dimensions to our being. As new things are added, old patterns wither and die due to lack of fertilization.

We are in a time window in the last quarter century that is the beginning of a momentous change in human history. Sadly, our brains, educational systems and culture is much better suited for the world as it was 150 years ago. The increase in speed of information transfer, cultural change and financial-political upheaval are building toward a new paradigm that has not been adequately articulated with a story that can carry the weight of the change.

We have become too uni-dimensional as humans. We allow our technology to run us rather than the other way around. We lose things that are valueable that have a much higher sensory value and is replaced by more cerebrally-focused activities to the exclusion of the senses. We do not have the inclination or the power to go within and explore an expansion of inner sensory experience that can grow us in the external world.

All of this is involved in "firing on more burners". As mentioned before expanding our awareness into new areas including artistic, scientific, physical, technological and emotional realms feeds new thought patterns and personas that turn on more and more existential burners. As thought produces action, the world is changed and created by opening the tap of infinite thought to express itself to the quantity and degree of open lines to each burner. Stopping up a burner produces a weak flame. Open the tap wide and the fire will blaze.

I am not a Jean Houston fan, follower or disciple but I have come to respect many of her ideas. Being able to have the live experience certainly added extra color and dimension to my concepts of human potential and expression that I can further synthesize into my continued search for truth.

Bringing New Mind to Bear on Social Change

I was fortunate to attend a lecture by Jean Houston tonight. It was a very inspiring and productive experience. She is an awesome speaker and has an incredible biography of accomplishment and purpose. She has trained, worked with and known a who's who of great people from the 20th century including Albert Einstein, Margaret Mead, Linus Pauling, Bill Clinton, Jonas Salk, Dalai Llama, Tielhard de Chardin and many others. She had numerous stories about many of these people and others. But that was not the focus of the communication.

She has created and works in a medium known as social artistry. This is essentially the use of ritual to enhance knowing in individuals in order that they might a more creative participant in the world. She impels us to claim the joys and responsibilities of being full world citizens as we live through the intense changes unfolding on the planet today. She uses and develops these techniques in training the very top leaders in industry, government, education, health and spirituality in numerous countries and cultures.

One of her current projects is training leaders at the United Nations. She has counseled and taught leadership to presidents and other world leaders. She believes that we are in a period of profound change unlike anything humanity has ever experienced and we need the tools of higher consciousness and creativity to move forward through the changes to co-create the future.

I was also fortunate enough to help her out. At one point before starting the experiential portion of the program, she asked if anyone in the audience could play piano. Several folks raised their hands. Then she asked how many could play spontaneously. All hands went down except mine. So, I volunteered myself to improvise accompaniment to two of the exercises she did with the attendees. It was a blast as I had not done anything like that in a long time. Plus, it was great to participate with a person of her enlightenment and caliber.

Great fun on a stormy night....

Mambo Cafe Review

Earlier this year I spent several weeks taking Salsa dance lessons at Sandega Dance Studio, getting to a low intermediate level (according to their class organizations). During those weeks I went to several Saturday night "socials" that were presented by the studio. These were very enjoyable BYOB affairs for $10 per person. Typically, we'd bring a bottle of wine, find a table and dance for a couple of hours to good quality salsa, meringue and mambo music provided by the DJ. A wide age range of people attended ranging from early teens to 60-ish. The socials provided a very wholesome smoke-free environment for practicing Latin dance styles, meeting new people and getting experience with a variety of dance partners.

Last night we tried the Mambo Cafe in downtown Dallas. We expected a similar kind of experience except in a nightclub setting. The Mambo also features a live Latin band for two sets, alternated with DJ. The attraction of dancing to live music was a big selling point.

We arrived around 9 pm to an almost empty house. We found a great seat and enjoyed the spacious, semi-luxurious surroundings for a few minutes. Shortly after the teacher for the 9-10pm salsa lessons asked if we wanted to partipate in the lessons. We declined since we already know enough to be dangerous.

It didn't take long for people to start trickling in. By 10pm the entire place was packed. The DJ started around 10 with a couple of salsa tunes that we danced. After that the remainder of the set was long-running meringue tunes that were very repetitious and loud coupled with the music videos that accompanied the selections. However, these songs definitely attracted the most people to the dance floor.

When the live set started at 11pm, the energy level jumped up for me. First, the selections were shorter than the DJ had been playing, which allows you to dance for a while and alternate dancing on every other tune. Also, most of the selections were salsa rather than meringue. I find salsa infinitely more interesting and fun to dance due to the rich complexity of rhythm and variation in harmonic and melodic structure. So, this was a very fun dance set.

Unfortunately, once the live set was over the DJ set began with extremely loud (distorted bass) mind-numbing music that sounded like a cross between trance music, latin and the worst in repetitious club music complete with distorted, blurry and fast-moving video. There was a huge surge of younger people to the dance floor. Then, for the next hour, shoulder to shoulder, they bounced up and down to noise that seems to be put together strictly for the purpose of blotting out all possible consciousness. I guess combing large amounts of alcohol with this kind of production produces some sort of narcotic effect.

We considered leaving, but kept our stamina trying to hold out for the next live Latin set. Unfortunately by the time the live set came around, our brains were so numb from the incessant cell-killing noise from the past hour that we only danced a couple of salsas before departing.

So, if you want several hours of constructive Latin dance, Mambo Cafe is not the place to go. There is too much other extra baggage to tolerate. IMO, this was a net negative experience coming from the perspective of someone who wanted to practice Salsa skills for 2-3 hours.

Core Values

I read an article on The Art of Manliness web site a couple of weeks ago that got me thinking about this. As we all do, from time to time I do a little introspection about what is really important in life. This helps us decide if we are living the life we should be living. If not, some course corrections need to happen. For the parts that seem to be working, how can we do it more and better.

At any rate, this article was "How to be a Better Man in 30 days". I have not embarked on a 30 day boot camp or anything, but there are lots of good suggestions in that list. The only one I took any action on was the first one, Define your Core Values. All I had to do was write down 5 core values, no more, no less. There was even a list of 40 or so to choose from. I liked choosing from the list because it included a wide range and helped constrain the exercise. The rule was to choose exactly 5, so some hard decisions were necessary. Most or all of the ones on the list are important to me.

So, I finally whittled it down to these 5:

• Health - maintaining a strong mind and body
• Wisdom - pursuing knowledge, experience and introspecting/synthesizing into wisdom
• Financial Stability - maintaining independence
• Integrity - consistency and wholeness of belief and actions
• Personal Relationships - includes family, friends, professional and spiritual

These are not listed in order of priority as choosing only 5 was hard enough. I plan to keep these values and the others on the list as a backlog of things to blog about when I draw a blank. Who knows, further thought and writing might change my list of 5 even though just living up to each one of those is more than a full time job.

Up Early

One of my recent projects has been to get up earlier than usual. My desire to do this was first motivated by my frustration that I was not able to maintain a daily consistency of gym workouts if I waited until the evening. I also remembered from many years ago that when I do workout early in the morning before work, I have much more energy, focus, motivation and engagement throughout the day. Not to mention higher confidence and a more positive mood. So, I started by getting up a half hour to 1 hour earlier than needed to simply get out of bed, shower and head to work.

The result of this change was significant. The benefits mentioned above were immediately noticeable. But I was still frustrated that by the time I get home in the evening, do dinner and catch up on the day's news and events, I did not have enough time or concentration to pursue some things. This realization, coupled with a strong desire to "get centered and focused" before starting the day led to moving my goal of getting up early to 5:00 am.

I've been working on this for about 3 weeks now and have been successful at getting up between 5:30 and 6:00 about 3 mornings per week. On the days I do this, I am much more productive. By the time I get to work, I am fully energized and focused for the day. My goal now is to increase the number of days that I get up earlier and continue moving the time back to as early as 5:00 am. The challenge here is getting enough sleep, but I have confidence this will happen.

The routine that seems to be jelling is:

1. Get up
2. Make coffee
3. Meditate
4. Journal
5. Read
6. Write
7. Workout
8. Breakfast
9. Get ready for work
10. Play a couple of jazz tunes on piano

All this is done by 8:00, when I head to work, so you can see why I need the 3 hours. I can definitely say it is making a positive impact on my productivity, effectiveness and life in general. I recommend quality morning time for anyone who can do it. Well, gotta go, time to workout :-)

Beatles at CSL

In my last post, I explored ideas about music inspired by a recent book. Pretty soon after I finished the book and the blog, I went to a concert at the Center for Spiritual Living that was a Beatles tribute. Michael Gott has been the musical director there for 17 years and is an excellent singer/songwriter/pianist in his own right. He was joined by Robin Hackett on vocals and a guitar player to create a unique interpretation of Beatles songs for a 2 hour concert.

One testament to the Universal appeal of the songs is the power they embody in so many different interpretations. This was especially true at the Sunday evening concert where many of the songs were slowed down, allowing the essence to become appreciated. One example was "Help" which was played as a duet with piano accompaniment at a moderately slow tempo rather than the fast rock-n-roll version recorded by the Beatles. Other memorable songs from that evening include Imagine, Yesterday, With a Little Help from my Friends, Because, Across the Universe and I Want to Hold Your Hand.

Since I grew up with this music, lots of memories that had long been split up in the various bit buckets of my mind came together to create a heighted sense of enjoyment and sensitivity to the music. Time stopped for a couple of hours as I enjoyed the classic melodies, harmonies and rhythms that spoke to the era of their composition as well as "across the universe" of time to September of 2009.

For the record, my favorite Beatles albums are: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Abbey Road, Magical Mystery Tour.

Music

Why is music so important to us? Why does it move us so deeply? Why do we spend a lot of money to buy it, hear it live and on instruments to play it? Why can some particular types of music lift our spirits and intellect, while other types leave us cold, disgusted or numb? And how can the same type of music have one effect on one culture or individual, while on another it has the direct opposite effect?

These are all interesting questions. Combining neuroscience with music research has unlocked some of the secrets of how the brain reacts and perceives music. Study of evolutionary history and psychology gives clues to how and why it developed in the first place.

Music appears to stimulate many separate portions of the brain all at once. Some neuroscience studies have shown that accomplished musicians have a much larger number of connections in the cerebullum. Rhythm appears to stimulate more primitive and ancient portions of the brain whereas melody and tonality tend to stimulate more cognitive portions of the brain.

In the musical performer even more areas are stimulated to account for the manual dexterity needed to play an instrument. Of course, the performer is also listening to the music being played as well as anticipating upcoming phrases at mostly a subconscious level. Improvisational music adds yet another generative dimension as music is being composed on the spot. So, the anticipation is of that which has not yet been conceived, perhaps other than a general target of where the current phrase is going or some kind of loose connection to what was recently played.

One theory of how music came to be proposes that it was a parasite on the development of language. From this perspective, language was an evolutionary adaptation and music shared some of the same characteristics of language development including the ability to vocalize complex sounds and variations. Another common characteristic between language and music is the creation of a mental framework that facilitates understanding of a particular culture's language or music. Foreign musical traditions are more difficult to understand beyond an intellectual level because of the lack of framework that is missing from early childhood development. Language is similar and broad exposure to language or music at an early age increases the likelihood of fluency in a broader range of either.

Hearing music can stimulate past memories long dormant or create new abstract destinations in the mind. Stimulation of past memories is intriguing from the perspective of how memories are stored. Oversimplified, memories are broken into many different bits throughout the brain's neural network. When a memory is stimulated, the memory is generated by an "immediate" construction of the memory in its entirety.

Using a computer analogy, suppose a memory consists of 100 bytes of data. This data is broken into 800 bits and "held" as neural energy in various parts of the brain. The memory stimulation results in the 800 bits being immediately reconstructed into the "original". The recollection must allowing for the usual time distortion. IOW every time a memory is recalled, it is changed to some degree. The act of recalling it changes it in some way. This is eerily similar to the way Quantum Physics shows that observation of a physical "event" changes that event - we create our Reality every nanosecond. But, I digress.

Music has always been a significant part of my life and will always continue to be so. There is so much more to say about the historical, neurological, psychological and spiritual realms. Maybe in future posts.

Check out the book, "This is your Brain on Music" by Daniel J. Levithin for much more detail.

Agile Update and New Blog Discoveries

Another second Friday, another completed Iteration. This particular Iteration had a lot of carryover from the last one. Many stories were code complete but were not accepted by stakeholders due to lack of availabilty. A lot of those were accepted. Most of the stories that are required for the upcoming release are accepted or will be early Monday.

Next Iteration will be a "Qualification Iteration". This means that there will be little or no new features added during the next 2 weeks while we submit release candidate builds to Customer Support to run real-world tests. The goal is to have a real RC1 by Wednesday. We may also do a late night Wednesday or Thursday night and provide dinner to the Support group and Development to encourage a focused testing window of 2-3 hours so we can try to flush out regression defects sooner rather than later.

Our plan is to do Qual Iterations at the end of each release. A typical release cycle will be some number of normal scrum cycles where we accept a set of stories and defects. After all the feature-adding cycles we will have 1 or 2 Qual Iterations at the end of the cycle for a short Release Candidate period. External customer participation will be welcome as well to increase real-world testing.

On another topic, I have discovered 2 or 3 new blog sites that I am now following. These are great personal development blog sites that provide lots of positive thought-provoking inspiration to "be" better. We all want to "be" better, right? The better we "be" the better we "do". Take care of the "being" and the "doing" will follow.

First up is The Art of Manliness. This blog is an entertaining and informative resource with articles, blogs, and advice on how to be a better man. Even though it's primarily for men, there is a lot of good general advice for better "being". Man up!

Next is, Change Your Life. This is a more general recording of someone's personal journey toward self improvement. Again, lots of great thoughts and insights.

Finally, although I was not too impressed with the entire site, the Fifty Habits of Successful People was a good read. How many of these do you do? How many of them do you need to think about doing? Read them often.

I thought these sites were very good uses for blog sites. Spreading positive thinking is always good. We have enough negativity and fear already. We need more positivity, faith, courage and confidence.

Fear

Fear has been the topic of many books and essays. It is viewed in most enlightened theological viewpoints as being in direct contrast to Faith. Fear is an ingrained emotion and instinct that we have inherited from our pre-historic ancestors. It is necessary to survival. Without it we'd always take unnecessary risks and have no caution when we should be. However, fear can sometimes control our lives in conscious as well as unconscious ways. It can cause us to behave very irrationally and create a life that is limited and paranoid.

Fear can be focused on many different targets. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the unfamiliar. Fear of death. Fear of life. Fear of authority. Fear of losing. Fear of winning. The list goes on and on. Fear controls us when we are not aware it is doing so. We control Fear when we are aware of it and then let our reason enter the arena to rationally check and analyze the source of the Fear. The book "The Science of Fear" refers to Gut and Head to describe how fear arises as an emotional reaction and reason is need to check Gut lest the Fear turn into a mushroom cloud overshadowing more balanced actions.

One response to Fear is to step back and look at what is actually known about the situation. Here, statistics can be very beneficial. Getting and knowing good statistical information can be difficult in our culture where selling Fear is more profitable than selling Faith. Saturation with media is a big problem when statements are made without being backed up or compared to relative statistics or information. Many times, once something is stated by a public figure, it takes on the stature of a fact, no matter how weak the support for the position might be.

Once whatever is responsible for the Fear is recognized and understood as some level of risk, Faith can drive through the Fear with strong belief in a positive outcome. We should move forward in Faith and Confidence, knowing that the outcome we desire will prevail and take actions that support progress toward positive ends that move forward.

Agile Update

We completed our third Agile iteration last week. Each iteration we've done has been a bit different from the other. Our first goal is to simply learn to iterate. It sounds so simple, right? Just agree on a set of work to try to complete within a 2 week span and get on with it. For the most part, we have been successful at a basic level. Each iteration has started on a Monday and ended the following Friday. However, some observations are worth mentioning.

First, the background of the team was minimally controlled anarchy. It was an approach that has taken them very far. For most of the past history the team has been very small. We have grown the team by 2 or 3 new members over the last several months. The total is 9 developers, 2 test engineers and 1 technical writer. It is a good-size team for experimenting with Agile.

Before starting the first iteration we had trialed and adopted Rally as an Agile project management tool. Having this tool in place made it easier in many respects to be more successful that if we had not done that. For one thing, it allows us to be a "little" Agile in that we actually work more like an iterative development team with very short iterations than a true Scrum or XP approach. Adopting one or both of those approaches would have been a pretty radical culture shift for the team.

The first iteration felt a little frazzled. Some team members were stressed about getting everything done in 2 weeks, even though we had carefully scoped the work to fit. The additional urgency around actually committing to being done at the end of two weeks added energy to the team. Also, there were lots of questions about how to handle process-related things that came up. We learned a lot about Rally and how to use it to enable more efficient communication paths.

The second iteration felt a little more natural. We accepted a very high percentage of the work we had set out to accomplish. There were many less questions along the way and we adapted some of the practices we tried in the first iteration to be more natural in the second.

The third iteration was completely different. First, we started with much more committed work. We ended up only accepting about 45% of the work by the end of the iteration. That was good in that we learned that we can push work if it is not done and not feel too badly about it. Our average productivity over the 3 iterations was respectable. Pushing so much work into the next iteration renewed a commitment toward really being "done" with a story and not just chopping it up to make it fit within an iteration.

We had our first retrospective this past Monday at the beginning of the fourth iteration. The comments from the team were focused on how we get better at doing iterations. One common theme was the desire to do better at transtioning from one iteration to the next. Suggestions for a demo/planning day at the end of the iteration and more time discussing the stories at the start of an iteration were voiced. This will probably be the one thing we work on in this current iteration.

At this point our focus is on using iterations as a synchronization mechanism. We are not having daily standups (although we do send daily email status reports to the entire team with the same format as Agile standups). We do not do a good job of grooming the backlog and having stories fleshed out before we start the iteration. We are using an adjustment in "points estimation" that couples us a little too closely to concrete ideal time estimates. We also have to react to changes mid-iteration due to customer demands or whims within the company.

These are all things that need to be addressed over time if we are successful at getting real buy-in from other departments in the company.

Spiritual Liberation

Growing up in a small Baptist church, I was bored on a regular basis during church, and especially during the sermon. Sermons typically went on forever and there was very little of practical value contained in them, especially the longer ones which were usually exercises in ego-mania by the self-absorbed preacher who was delivering them. How many countless minutes and hours did I spend waiting, waiting, doing anything to take my mind off the ridiculous rhetoric and mind-numbing interpretations of the Bible or other social commentary.

This boredom and disgust caused me to avoid church for most of my adult life. While I did spend some time in United Methodism raising my family there, sermons were still rarely thought -provoking beyond an occasional shallow reminder that perhaps we were not living as well as we could. Most of my life I avoided the church and found spiritual enlightenment through the study of philosophy and science.

I have to admit that today I heard the best "sermon" that I have ever heard. It was given by Karen Epps, who is the Senior Minister at Unity Church of Dallas. Her lectures recently have been based on the book, Spiritual Liberation by Michael Beckwith. The talk was stuffed full of profound insights, inspiritional statements, connections with other religious traditions and challenging, cerebral metaphysics that definitely raised my consciousness.

"Intention to attention to intention" was one of the core concepts. Basically, we need to live with intention. We need to do things for a reason and purpose. What is our purpose? In order to know that, we have to intend to give attention to living with intention. The foundation of realizing this as reality is meditation. We can't over-meditate. Meditation allows us to go to the inner place where we find the source of our spiritual power and puts us in tune with the Universal Mind so that it is expressed through us as an authentic self-expression within the constructs of time and space that we live.

She also tied together the components of Unity and Religious Science from ancient Hindu and Buddhist focus on the God within, transported through Western classical philosophical frameworks, extended by scientific and 19th/early 20th century transcendentalist and spiritual thought, and connected with the true thread of Christ-conscious thought in the Gospels. This metaphysical package has been refined throughout the 20th century to become the foundation for a practical and effective and realistic expression of Christianity for the 21st century.

Holacracy

I was introduced to this concept a couple of weeks ago. It is a different way of viewing organizational structures. Traditionally we view things hierarchically with single lines of command and control and rigidity. Holacracy builds on Agile approaches to team process and scales the fundamental underlying concepts across the entire organization. The fundamental underpinnings are trust, communication, focus and urgency. Several of the higher conceptual layers are interesting.

At the highest level, holacracy views the organization as a collection of overlapping team circles of increasing scope. Each team circle is a complete cell with its own governance and processes. Each team circle is not self-directing, but takes flowdown from the next scoping level for direction. Each team circle elects a representative to link up to the next higher scope team circle. Each higher level team circle elects a representative to link down into the next lower scope team circle.

Another interesting concept is that of rhythm, the temporal heartbeat of an organization. Rhythm granularity is consistent for the overall organization as well as in the microcosm of each individual team. There are daily, weekly, monthly and larger scale rhythmic pulses for meeting frequency and structure. Daily standups are for quick fast-firing communication of what is to be accomplished that particular day. Weekly tactical meetings are for dealing with the necessary things to be done on a particular week.

Iterative tactical meetings organize execution for multiple week sprints that break projects down into manageable chunks. Monthly governance meetings are for discussing how the team/organization will work together and what changes need to be considered. Strategic meetings can occur quarterly or 1-2 times per year to look forward across a longer time horizon to adjust direction at a more macro level of control.

Holacracy is positioned as a new operating system for the organization. It embraces short bursts of activity toward a long term goal with frequent feedback loops and adaptive mechanisms for quick fine-grained steering. It draws from successful processes that have been pioneered at the team level and embraces, extends and scales these concepts up to the level of the organization.

Retrospect: First Agile Iteration

Friday marked the end of the first iteration for the team. We finished respectfully, completing about 84 points of work with 82% story acceptance. These metrics will likely be adjusted Monday morning as we evaluate the status of the last few items to see what might actually be finished in the Monday morning build. The Monday build is the official Iteration 2009.2 build and should be archived for posterity.

Now that we have the first one out of the way, we have a start toward measurement. We can use the points completed in the iteration as a first estimate of how much work the team can finish in a 2 week period. We will get data for about 3 iterations and start averaging the number of points completed to get a baseline team velocity.

There were several learning moments in the first iteration. First, we did not do a great job of defining stories and acceptance criteria. While stories were created for bags of work, and some acceptance criteria was included, we did not create precise expectations around the format or the granularity of stories. Several team members are still struggling with the concept, since there is no such thing as a story template that is universally accepted. Stories are varied and customizable to the particular circumstances.

We also had questions around when the actual finish date for the iteration should be. Since the iteration ends at COB on Friday, many developers talked about needing to be done coding by COB Thursday of the last iteration week. This allows a day to fix any defects found by the test group on the last day of the iteration. Then, the official iteration build is the one created on the following Monday morning.

This week we do it all over again making incremental improvements on what we learned the last two weeks. We will have the team planning meeting tomorrow morning and cover the standard format for story description in Rally. This will include more precise information about what the story should do. We'll do a better job of having acceptance criteria meetings with sub-groups. Here we will refine the description of the story and add test cases as we discuss it. We will also do a better job of hourly estimates and individual capacity so that more of our tracking views will be accurate this time around.

Differences in Accomplishments

What are the reasons for such a wide disparity in levels of accomplishment among individuals? Some of us achieve to an almost supernatural level, while others of us wallow in dysfunction. Most of us settle in to a comfortable mediocrity, content with limited imagination and experience. Some of us tolerate an uncomfortable mediocrity, feeling, knowing and wanting more, but unable to execute with enough consistency or purpose to rise above the banality of everyday life.

Certainly, raw Intelligence plays a significant role. That's not all, of course, as much has been written about the importance of Emotional Intelligence. A strong Will certainly helps drive us to success. Confidence also plays an important role. Without Imagination or Vision, nothing is possible. When we lack any of these qualities, the chance of outsize accomplishment and contribution is significantly diminished.

Success in this context does not necessarily refer to the financial variety, although that comes as a tangential byproduct much of the time. A successful life is one of fundamental joy. If joy is present internally, the external fruits display the result.

As discussed in the book, Outliers, mega-accomplishment also has much to do with fortunate circumstances or environment coupled with the opportunity to focus on a particular skillset for a significant length of time. 10,000 hours seems to be the magic number that roughly corresponds to about 10 years of doing something almost every day for several hours. Even assenting to the Outlier theory, I do not believe the outsize accomplishment is possible without most or all of the qualities mentioned above.

I believe accomplishment and contribution is Vision teamed with Intent lubricated with Confidence grounded by Intuition and powered by Intelligence. The more we have of these qualities and the more we strive to increase our levels of these qualities the more accomplishment, contribution and abundance we experience in our lives. The more we allow these qualities to wither, the less robust and engaging our lives will become.

Church Comparisons

Over the last year or so, off and on, I have been considering getting involved in a church again. I spent many years being more and less active in a Methodist church while my children were growing up. During that time my theological and philosophical beliefs and understanding underwent massive changes.

At the start of that period that began in my late twenties and ended in my late forties, I had not done much introspective or external research into what I actually believed. My beliefs were a muddled mix of what I had "learned" growing up in a rural Baptist church and other random secular tidbits of ideas from social science classes in college.

By the end of that time, I had read widely in areas that included philosophy, psychology, theology, science as well as pursued a couple of graduate degrees in Computer Science and Philosophy. I had also undergone 20+ years of life experience that included a first marriage, a long career in software development and raising two daughters. Given that, if my spiritual maturity and philosophical concepts had not changed, something would not have been working in my mind.

After settling into a comfortable agnosticism for many years, a couple of years ago I became newly interested in a spiritual conception based on metaphysics. This led me to the study and light participation in Religious Science. The catalyst for spending serious introspective time going down this path was the book, I and Thou, by Martin Buber. Following this I became aware of Science of Mind magazine and began reading books about Religious Science, New Thought and the writing of Ernest Holmes.

While all this may be well and good, finding a church that supports this line of thought that also supports a non-corny church experience has been challenging. More on that in a minute.

Today I tried going back to a Methodist church because I missed some aspects of a more traditional church experience such as singing traditional hymns, a good choir etc. Unfortunately, after being separated from a traditional protestant church for a few years, the separatist and dualistic theology that is woven into the languaging is more off-putting than before. It will be almost impossible for me to return to a church that has deep traditional and historical roots, even though I do enjoy singing the traditional hymns and I found the people very nice as usual.

So, it should be easy to go back to one of the New Thought churches (or spiritual centers as some like to be called), right? The first problem is that the one I like the best, a Religious Science variant, is about 12 miles north of where I live. The music is great, the theology is rich and the sermons are good. The people are awesome as well and there are a plethora of classes and outreach programs in which to participate.

The other two are Unity churches, a somewhat minor variant from Religious Science, perhaps a bit more directly rooted in Christianity. One is a medium sized church where the music is good, sermons are thought provoking and also includes many classes and opportunities. Another is a very small church, very close to my home with more limited class offerings, but is a good place to be if I want to participate in helping to build the church.

The downside of the first is, again, location, probably 9 miles or so from where I live. The second is almost too friendly, where hugs seem to be the order of the day :(. Both suffer from a lack of tradition in that the songs sung by the congregation are very singy-songy and seem shallow compared to the depth of tradition hymns. At least they do not suffer from the dated theological language contained in some of the old hymns.

Decision will be forthcoming. I have eliminated Methodist or any other traditional Protestant church, so that is progress at least.

Scaling Agile Out

Even though we are just starting to incorporate some Agile techniques into our team's approach to building great products, I am keenly interested in the notion of scaling out across the company. I believe that Agile thinking is a head-on approach to embracing change and a natural way of increasing discipline at a number of levels. However, it requires flexibility and customization to the specific company culture and environment. Starting at the conceptual level and following principle is more important than mechanical adherence to recommended practices.

That said, some things are not negotiable. Two principles that fall into this category are rhythm and planning. These two principles are directly related and influence each other. Rhythm levels include daily, weekly, iteration(sprint), release, roadmap(see dissenting opinion) and strategic vision. Planning categories should include the same time spans. What are we doing today, this week, this iteration, this release, this year and the next 3-5 years? What are the mechanisms we use to synchronize and retrospect for each temporal category? Without this rhythm sequence supported by planning that overlays the same time spans, progress can wander aimlessly or at least in a less than optimum undisciplined path.

My plan is to focus on the bottom-most level and move up on two different planes. The first plane is local to the team. Implementing practices that support these levels of awareness within the team, then inspecting, adapting and refining will allow me to build a platform of experience that can be fanned out across the organization. My goal is to move the organization away from reactionary fire-fighting as much as possible and encourage a further refinement of sync and plan that energizes and increases urgency.

The second plane of bottom to top movement is within the temporal domains listed above. We already use daily status reports to communicate what was accomplished yesterday, what we expect to accomplish today, and what obstacles or concerns may exist. We sync up at least once a week to roll up the daily communication into a weekly assessment of progress. With our first sprint, we are beginning to add the iteration level. Releases, roadmap and strategic levels are less well defined at this point. My plan is to move bottom-up, mastering the iteration (sprint) first, then attacking rhythm and predictability at the other higher levels.

So far, the iteration rhythm seems to be the following:

• Team scoping and commitment the morning of the first day of the iteration
• Team scope adjustment the morning of the second day of the iteration
• Daily ongoing individual status reports (email)
• End of week checkpoint to gauge progress and concerns with iteration progress
• Middle of the second week checkpoint to gauge confidence level of iteration progress
• Morning of the last day of the iteration - 15 minute standup to sync on what must get done that day to meet the iteration commitments
• End of day demo of accepted features for the iteration and pushing of incomplete work into the following iteration

Most of the meetings listed here are 15-30 minutes. The team scoping and demo meeting are more in the range of 45 minutes to 2 hours depending on the content. An alteration of this schedule might be to move to more traditional daily 15 minute "scrums" that might replace one or more of the other short meetings.

If we can master this rhythm, something like this might be scalable across the organization. Most of the time the organization tends to move at a more lumbering rhythm. Much has been written about the benefits of scaling Agile across the entire organization. Pulling decisions and actions forward and executing on a specific number of small tasks that are framed within larger goals is the motivation for adopting Agile principles across a larger scope of functional groups within the company.

Raising the Urgency Level

I just started using Agile methods in my job of running a software development team. We started our first sprint (iteration) Monday. We are not "both feet in" and only a few days have elapsed, but I already see a difference in the team's sense of urgency and energy level. We are using Rally, an Agile project management tool, to help us run the project. Our first iteration size is 2 weeks. The team was already a reasonably high-productivity team since, in general, everyone on the team is committed to getting things done the right way. What was missing was a little more structure and focus.

We met Monday morning to agree on the list of Stories (collections of tasks) for the iteration and make general estimates of the size of each. By the end of the day most team members had broken down the stories into multiple tasks with concrete estimates in hours for each one. Rally rolls up all hours estimated in tasks into the Story level and provides various views including full iteration and team member allocation. We met the next morning to make any adjustments, agree that the amount of work to accomplish in the 2 weeks seems to fit and clarify any other concepts that were fuzzy.

The team is new to Agile thinking for the most part. As manager of the team I mostly cover the role of ScrumMaster (to use a Scrum term). Scrum is a specific methodology of Agile. When I say that we are not "all in" I mean that we do not do everything recommended in the Agile literature. For example, we use email for daily status instead of daily face-to-face standups. This was a practice already in place when I arrived on the scene late last year. It seems to work well, and we have tweaked it a bit and critiqued it recently to try to make it better.

I subscribe to the method of gradually going Agile. I believe that if you have a team that is already flexible and productive, moving to Agile is a natural evolution. Not being burdened with a heavy Waterfall culture is a real benefit. A small-company environment where there is already fundamental trust and a little bit of development anarchy is much more of a blank slate in which to imprint a particular process, and Agile methods are a natural step.

There is a lot of information that preaches that Agile will fail unless undertaken under the watchful care of expert consultants and training programs. A lot of this information is produced by companies who make their living creating Agile development tools. I am not heeding that advice, and instead trusting that I know what I am doing from reading and leveraging over 25 years of experience developing and managing software teams in a variety of business circumstances and processes.

I may continue to post as the experience unfolds to record the pros, cons and results of this experiment.

Unity and Religious Science

The two religious movements seem to have come out of a similar motivation and time. Both movements have roots in the 19th century and accept all spiritual paths, Christianity and otherwise. Both movements have a connection to Eastern religious principles, but to differing degrees. Both movements appear to be motivated toward a metaphysical interpretation of the Bible, the New Testament Gospels in particular. Both movements emphasize the oneness of the Universe and our ability to get in touch with the One Presence.

I was surprised when I visited a Unity Church bookstore recently that I found no books about Religious Science. From my limited exposure to both approaches, I thought they share fundamental concepts. The differences seem to be in style and emphasis.

Religious Science appears to be a bit more theologically broad and to emphasize philosophy, metaphysics and concepts from Emerson, Science and Eastern religions a bit more. Bible acceptance is focused on the Gospels, although Ernest Holmes Science of Mind writings reference Bible scripture across the board. Unity appears to be a bit more rooted in traditional Christianity, with much more use of Christian scripture during services.

Both movements are a very refreshing approach to spiritual progress. Accepting all paths and pulling concepts from Science, Philosophy, Eastern Theology as well as New Testament Christianity is a recipe for enlightenment and practical application to modern life.

Fast-forward and Drive-by Dating

Electronic dating has created an environment that allows fast-forward or drive-by dating. It has been a long time since I participated in online dating, but recently I paused to reflect on the past experience and decided to record my impressions here.

Drive-by dating happens because it becomes easy to browse a lot of people once hooked up to a dating site. Even if you try to meet only the ones where there is a shred of interest, the numbers can be high. This can lead to many one or two time dates where you repeat the same story line over and over, listening to what the other says for possible elimination cues.

Even before that, the person may be eliminated mentally just from the first face to face impression, not necessarily because of physical characteristics, but because of the multiple dimensions of communication that occur in a first time meeting compared with email and phone conversations. You can know a whole lot more about a person within the first 2 minutes of a f2f meeting than a week of emails and phone calls. Sometimes this first impression can be over-ruled by a good conversation or unexpected common interests or interaction, but the first impression is very important.

On the other hand, fast-forward dating occurs when you actually meet someone you like. Back in the stone ages before the Internet, we'd usually meet people through mutual friends, at parties, at work etc. Lots of face to face time and personal and/or professional interaction may have occurred before a mutual attraction blossomed. Sometimes a romantic relationship was preceded by a long friendship. Lots of things might have been in place even before the first date including having mutual friends, knowledge about the other person's family, and day to day demeanor.

Not so with online dating. Since the question of "are they attracted to me" is already old news (remember we are talking about the online candidate you met and really liked), you can skip right to the affection. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Love at first site can get instant gratification. You don't have to do a lot of social activities you may not want to do just for the purpose of trying to figure out if the person is attracted to you or not.

The downside is that it can almost instantly propel what could be a good start into a committed relationship. You may feel like you know the person and like the person a lot but hasty actions or an implicit underlying soundtrack for a committed relationship might be overwhelming. In the olden days we might progress from casual conversation to acquaintanceship to friendship to dating (while dating other people) to exclusive dating. No need for such quaint customs these days :-). If the relationship doesn't work out right away, you may not even get the chance to meet the other person's friends and family, which might have weakened or strengthened the attraction in more grounded ways.

This speediness probably results in at least three outcomes.

One is where the commitment happens, then the relationship goes on for a while, but still has the attribute of fast-forwardness and burns out quickly, since on Internet Time, a month is like a year.

Another is where the desire to commit comes quickly but one person may have an existing relationship in some vague stage of progress or happiness. Making a quick decision is not possible (out of respect for the other person involved and the infancy of the new interaction), so the new relationship dies as quickly as it started due to impatience and the potential for dishonesty.

Then, I guess we have to allow for the success case, where there is love at first site, quick commitment, great compatibility and long term relationship.

Oh, well. It's great to have more ways to meet, communicate and get to know other human beings. The more connected we are to each other the better. We just need to be careful and respectful of everyone's feelings of course. It can be easy to unintentionally hurt someone or get hurt because of confusion, mis-communication or mis-understandings.