To start things off, I'm going to have a shot at listing my own top ten. Perhaps it might be done better in a workspace. I'm sure I'll need to make quite a few revisions, but I'll make a few notes and then return with a first draft.

http://www.omidyar.net/group/tra nsition/news/45/11/

Documenting our discoveries

My top ten, counting down

#10

By posting pictures of my grandchildren I have elicited a sharing of good feelings between O.net members and learnt to value more the gifts that family members bring us.

#9

By taking part in the Seeing Beyond Sight blind photography project (and by reading Tony Deifell’s inspiring book) I have discovered new ways of overcoming stereotypical thinking and new ways of understanding the reality of one’s own experience.

#8

Without Onet, I would not have taken part in World Service’s Outlook programme in a feature about Eric Wanjamah that I’m told was much enjoyed by many people. The programme enabled me to speak directly to Eric for the first time. We had been having an email exchange that began when Eric PM’d me to ask my advice about getting professional training as a probation officer - a job he’d been doing for six months without any real training. This enabled me to discover how I might use past probation service contacts to help Eric. As a result I was able to print off a detailed, but unpublished, training manual and send it to him to supplement our professional discussions. He then used it to organise some training sessions for his colleagues in Limuru, Kenya .

#7

Our ability to make good things happen often depends on what we have been able to learn and my two years at O.net have been quite an education. Prior to coming here I had no knowledge of Ravi’s ideas about Oneness (and thanks, Ravi, for your post here!); of sufficiency economics (thanks, Linda); of the ideas of Henry George (thanks, Jere); of RicHARD’s unique brand of muscular peacemaking; of the day by day impact of major flooding (courtesy of Rose’s heartfelt, sustained and inspired journal); of the potency of party hats (thanks to John Powers) and - I’m almost too embarrassed to admit - of the terms “social entrepreneur”, “the tipping point”, “the starfish story”, “Pierre Omidyar”, “Spiral Dynamics”, “Dropcash box”, “Paypal” and “uplift“ (let alone, “Uplift Academy”), to mention but a few.

#6

As part of Onet’s Q4 funding project, I was fortunate to be part of the WDI (Water-borne Diarrheal Illnesses) team that put together a detailed proposal to support five WDI charities, each of which focused on a different approach to reducing the impact of water-borne disease, the world’s second most frequent killer illness and one that disproportionately affects young children. Together we did much to raise awareness of this unfashionable cause and eventually we succeeded in raising over $32,700 in donations and matched funding by Omidyar Network. The experience of being part of such a hardworking and dedicated small group was very inspiring and helped me discover ways I might work for good causes in the future.

#5

Soon after arriving at O.net, I discovered via a PM from Ray Brosseuk in British Columbia that there was a way we might collaborate in a project to benefit Breadline Africa, one of my favourite small charities, based in Cape Town, that specialises in the conversion of shipping containers into community facilities like clinics, soup kitchens or pre-school centres. Our “Kids in Cans” project planned to provide a stream of containers for the use of Breadline Africa, while at the same time also sending them each shipment 20 tons of goods and equipment from Ray and Jackie’s Partners for Others making use of spare capacity in containers for which shipping costs had already been paid. It was a very elegant project design and one that was given a $4500 Community Favorites award in December 2005. Even though subsequent events meant that the full plan was never put into effect, I discovered that I could fund raise on a scale I had never previously achieved and eventually we were able to send Breadline Africa over $9,000. They used this money to help launch a new programme called Cans 4 Skills (our project even influenced their choice of title) that has seen a succession of containers converted into specialist vocational training units for young people. The impact that these training units can have was brought home to me when I received news that the first person to qualify (from a plumbing course housed in a container) was a impressive young woman, with few previous chances in life, now determined to break gender stereotypes and take control of her life.

#4

My online friendship with Richard Kananga developed from the respect I felt for his opinions, and the openness and facility of his self-expression and his wide range of skills. Despite this - and his good academic qualifications - like many Africans he has been unable to find permanent employment. Our friendship has enabled me to discover ways to supply him with a computer of his own to further his employment prospects and to try to set up a ongoing fund for people from developing countries to enable them to volunteer their skills for the service of others. As a result, I have been able to get others to join me in contributing to this HDC2 International Volunteers Fund (Helping developing countries help developing countries fund) so that the costs of Richard’s first three months’ volunteering at Life in Africa in Gulu will be met. I’ve also committed to finding follow-on volunteering opportunities for Richard, who was inspired by his experiences at the Gulu gathering organised via O.net in February 2007 to return to Uganda shortly afterwards and to devote a year of his life to volunteering in other African countries.

. #3

As a total non-expert, I have nevertheless discovered my power to make other good things happen in Northern Uganda where talks are due to take place this week about a comprehensive land survey at Opok Farms. As a result of that, all kinds of powerfully good things may happen for the local children, wildlife, farmers, tourists and all kinds of associated others. My role has simply been to be a diligent catalyst, talking to people, researching online, emailing all kinds of important people I didn’t think would deign to reply and finally effecting a link up in Gulu. And this then holds out the promise that if there is to be some kind of wildlife conservation project in he area, I may then be able to develop a mutually beneficial link with my local nature reserve in the UK, where I already work as a volunteer and where I have already had preliminary talks about possibly staging an annual Africa Week at my local reserve to raise funds and aid awareness of global issues that affect us all.

#2

Very importantly, O.net has given me a platform to expound and develop my ideas of a World Connectory, with the potential for linking more than half the world’s people together by randomly generated partnerships founded on the idea of mutual respect, shared learning and the appreciation of both our distinctivenesses and our similarities. During the time I’ve been on O.net, I have apportioned more than 100 countries containing over 1.5 billion people. I have stayed on track for launching the project in 2008/9. Half a dozen Onetters have been of particular support to me in making progress with this together with more general support from a total of 60+ members of the Apportionment and the Worldwide Connectory group here. The constant flow of questions, ideas and encouragement have epitomised for me the essence of the specialness that has been the Omidyar.net community.

#1

At Omidyar, I have found role models quite unlike any I have ever experienced elsewhere. These were people who you could be speaking with online one day and marvelling at the next as they showed up in critical spots across the world doing the kinds of things you would want to do yourself if only you had the guts. And yet, merely by rubbing virtual shoulders with them, you feel inspired to witness in your own way to the values and issues that are important to you. And as you talk about these things with your real life friends, you find that they too become inspired. It’s the “viral effect” - yet another term that I’d not come to terms with in my pre-Onet life. And who are these role models? Gabriel Stauring, Christina Jordan, Linda Nowakowski, Meron Moroz, and - above all - the whole Brosseuk family, though especially Ray, whose Stories from the Bright Side I have found the single most inspiring set of jewels in the whole wonderful Aladdin’s cave full of treasures, that is Omidyar.net - but sadly, will soon be no more.

PS - I nearly cheated by sneaking in an 11th item, but even then there would still be so much I’d left out ($50K funding round, Eric’s airfare, donations to South Asia Earthquake where Omidyar provided matched funding, my honours lists, the inspiration of the Okanagan Gleaners etc, etc)

edit for typo and to change "million" to "billion"

I am marking this here for 2 reasons:

• This thread needs to be visible (personal opinion)
• I will come back in a couple of days and add an episode.

My time at O.net was spent mostly in conversation with some brilliant people about some ideas I have on how the world really works. Those conversations have been fun and productive. I am almost through reorganizing the results of that at:

http://www.aboutus.org/Three_Dim ensional_Networking

I hope we can find a place where the meeting brilliant people part can continue.

David, what a wonderful collection of discoveries! Thank you for starting this discussion...

Well, too numerous to really catalogue, here are 10 "gems" that stand out as discoveries for me in no particular order:

1:	Tom Munnecke's "snowflakes, cats and toasters" discussion, which led me to Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.
2:	Valdis Krebs and the world of social network mapping, which is a fascinating way to collect, visualize and study the connections between nodes in a network of people.
3:	Darlene Charneco and her network-informed form of beautifully obsessive art that embeds archetypes, narrative and meditations on relationships.
4:	Cameron Sinclair and his passion for transforming architecture into a responsive vocation that address specific needs in the developing world.
5:	The powerful combination of Dropcash, Paypal, and Moneygram and today's capacity to raise money and send it across the world (as I am doing with Dennis Kimambo now!).
6:	The wonderful artists Kasia Oszga and Evonne Heyning and their inspired trips to India and Thailand to run Peace Tiles workshops around global HIV/AIDS.
7:	Mark Grimes and his knack for tying together big ideas about change into social enterprise mumbojumbo and get others excited about it, somehow advancing the whole entire cause aka ned.com
8:	Invisible Children and their inspiring efforts to raise awareness about the conflict in Northern Uganda and raise funds to support needs of child soldiers there.
9:	Christina Jordan and Life in Africa Foundation colleagues who produced lovely lanyards for three meetings that I have organized over the last two years.
10:	My own capacity to contribute in some way to the work and ideas of each person and project above, through meetings as well as online discussion and collaboration here on O.net - and in turn their capacity to contribute efforts like Peace Tiles which have grown only because of the financial support and peoplepower of networks like O.net.

So long, and thanks deeply for all the fish!

I went a little overboard in my writing on this. Please forgive me, I am bursting with gratitude.

Wow, great idea David! It is so fantastic to be reading these and discovering things I didn't know about people, and seeing the connections here bring forth good things.

Let me try...

1. Phil Cubeta brought me and here and encouraged me to attend the 05 Chicago gathering where I met Theresa Williamson. I coached Theresa, pro bono, for 10 sessions. And we developed a new fundraising strategy that brought in the majority of her budget for the following year. In 06, we had a development advisory meeting where I got to meet several amazing people and learn from them...including Patrick Donahue of Brinq. And again, we tried a modified version of the previous strategy and gathered a big chunk of the funding for the year. So many onet members contributed money to CatComm! It was very encouraging! I discovered my ability to contribute to make funding happen.
2. I really resonated with some of what Tom Munnecke was talking about re: uplift, positive discourse, etc. He brought me to the Uplift Academy gathering in Boston where I met a slew of really top-notch amazing people including Darlene Charneco[1] and Lars[1]. My dear friend Anne Marie[1] was there too, as was Arthur Brock. I also met several people who amaze and inspire me: Lenore Cowan, Eric Harris Braun (open money), Valdis Krebs[1], Jeff Ashe (savings led microfinance), David Isenberg[2], Doc Searls[2], David P. Reed[2], Ken Hamilton (Hope Healing), etc. This was career changing for me...I had been working on writing about philanthropy and offering coaching. Both Tom telling me that I was a good facilitator, and Valdis telling me I was a Network Weaver strongly impacted my current path. I discovered my ability to make connections happen between ideas and between people. [1—saw this month] [2—seeing next month]
3. Michael Maranda. Wow. Michael helped me discover how to invite community. He championed me, as he did so many others. He modeled how to stand up for others and for principles. I discovered my ability to nurture community as a whole.
4. Anne Marie Bellavance. I met her in Chicago 05 too. I gave her coaching pro bono for 10 sessions because I felt she was onto something. I have discovered the strength of positivity in the midst of complex and sometimes troubling dynamics with her steady and persistent holding of gratitude. I learned about asset-based community development from her, which together with my philanthropic study, has me feeling very powerful about seeing resources of all kinds (more than money). I discovered my ability to make gratitude and sparkle come alive in everyday life. I discovered my ability to be resourceful and catalyze other people being resourceful.
5. Bernard Brock. I met him here, and I was so amazed at his skill. He taught me a lot about how to post with respect. He touched me deeply and built my confidence. I noticed an absence of him, googled, and found out he had passed away. Strange to be so deeply touched by the death of someone you had never met. Now, when I sense something is going on...I make contact right away! I discovered my ability to make conversations happen. I discovered the power of online connections.
6. Arthur Brock. The son. Where to begin? Arthur taught me all about currencies, incentives, relationships, communication. He catalyzed many of my changes in the last year. He talked to me until my brain melted about so many things. And I would not be fascinated, as I am now, with field-building and flows, if it were not for the conversations Arthur and I had in December 06 strategizing how to build the field of currencies...and what strengths I had to offer. I discovered my ability to listen very deeply. I discovered my ability to see the world through flows and to look for incentives.

7. Seeing Beyond Sight and WDYDWYD. I did SBS Challenge in Budapest, Virginia, and California. Opened my mind, brought out my passion, and deeply inspired me. I am developing a workshop process that uses these to help people open up, connect, and discover. I learned a lot about viral spreading by watching Tony. Wow. I know this will reverberate through my life for a long time and in unexpected ways. I find Peace Tiles to resonate with many of the same qualities, which I call Network Art. I have participated in Peace Tiles making in Chicago, Canton (OH), and Vermont. It always opens me up to the world and to myself. I discovered my ability to contribute to making viral network transformation happen.
8. Thomas Kriese. Nurture. Thomas taught me about the complexity involved in managing community, as I watched him navigate between his own ideas and that of the organization he represented. The seriousness with which he held our conversations and the respect he showed for my nurturing opened my eyes to seeing myself in a new way. I discovered my ability to feel and then describe the dynamics of community.
9. Clare Mulvany. I met her through Greg Murray when she was fresh on her journey. I listened to her stories as she traveled, both of the people she met and her experience of the world and herself. Through Clare I saw new places in the world. When she came back I wrote a recommendation for her, and she was awarded some funds and recognition from Ireland Social Entrepreneurs. Clare taught me about really being bold and committing and following through on a vision with passionate conviction—despite so many unknowns.

[With Greg and Nathan Cryder, we worked on Adaptive Blueprinting, fleshing out the methods for scaling social enterprises out rather than up. Global Gain is focused on this activity now.]

10. Julie Peterson. I hardly interacted with her on onet. However, I did meet her through onet connections, and she blew me away with what she was doing in her local community. She showed me what local community can be—green dinners, activist coordination, music nights, community gardens, multi-generational collaboration. Through Julie I tapped into my deep desire for on the ground community, and I look forward to being in Chicago with her, working to create a collaborative working space and co-op living space, partially inspired by her work.

There are so many people who have touched my life here, inspired me, motivated me, challenged me, and given me purpose. Some whose names are only known in little pockets and some whose names are writ large upon onet: Salvador Carlucci, Sebastian Herrara, Michael Bauwans, Chinarut, Zoe Sullivan, David Evan Harris, Greg Murray, Alastair Wolfe, Jethro Heiko, Daniel Hunter, Gregoire Jaipot, Debra Hayes, Lenore Cowan, Jessica M., Gina del Vecchio, Gerry Gleason, Ted Ernst, Michael Herman, CM, Dav from Pheonix, Brian Lewis, Linda Nowakowski, Rory Turner, Christina Jordan, Jim Fussell, Liz, Luke Martin, Martín Rizzi, Michele, Lars, Mark, Peter Rees, John Berger, Jeff Morwatt, David Bale, Susan Megy, Liz, Ashis Brahma, Norbert, David Braden, RicHie, Julie C. and all the people listed above. I have met in person and been moved by over a hundred onet members, and I am so grateful for how they have changed my life forever.

I know some people like laundry list of I did x and some concrete, measurable good happened. I tend to work at a meta level on support. So my listening, championing, conversation facilitation, some say, enabled them to do tangible things in the world. Nurturing is not about taking credit, it is about supporting people you believe in to make THEIR good things happen. And, sometimes, just believing in someone makes a world of difference. I know it has for me. I am deeply grateful for the people who have believed in me. Thank you.

When I say I "met" someone, I mean online, unless otherwise specified

These aren't in any order.

1. Meeting Jere Hough and all the people who participated in the old Poverty threads, including of course Mark Grimes who gave me my own soapbox, Vaccine for Poverty. Speaking of Mark, I find it so amazing that he is hosting ned.com.
2. Meeting CM Magowan, and all his insights about retailing which shaped my tree free TP activities and inspired me to post pictures about that.
3. Meeting Christina Jordan, who, among others, inspired me to experiment with proxy tree planting, and all the people who sent me $1-100 in exchange for me planting trees.
4. Meeting Samuel Musyoka, Richard, Daniel, and the other Kenyans I met in Nairobi. A trip I will never forget, and one I hope to repeat in some fashion soon.
5. Meeting nmw in Frankfurt, and learning so much esoteric stuff from him.
6. Meeting Ted Ernst, Julie Peterson, Michael Maranda, Gerry Gleason in Chicago. Ted was an amazing host, and is an amazing guy. I am honored to walk on the same planet with him.
7. Getting coached by Jean Russell. She also allowed me to coach her some. One of the most generous people I know.
8. Meeting Ravi and David Braden and David Bale and Arthur Brock and the others who are willing to talk about new paradigms.
9. The Daily Appreciations project. And James Davis and his UCSC students all posting weighty discussions and thinking outside the box.
10. Doing the research to figure out whether Jan Vincent was a boy or a girl. Playing online with Jan was also a high point for me.
11. Julie Caldwell, the first o/netter who actually called me and talked to me! That blew my mind.

I just called in to fetch a few things for the new home, and wow! Jean and Dav have been back in the old place doing some decorating! Medieval decoration, I believe, is often referred to as Illumination.

Thanks for the illuminating additions!

:)

Sorry, Dav. Those points were meant for Pierre.

When I came to Thailand in 1998 I liked what I was doing here. I like the people and the culture but my life felt empty. I had been an activist in the US and all of that ended when I got here. I couldn't find my place.

When I tripped over and discovered ONet about a year and a half ago, it was like a light shining in darkness. At first, I just loved the great online community that I gained. I had people to talk to about more meaningful things than the weather. Very early on Evonne Henning introduced me to Chinarut (an onet member here in Bangkok that she had met real life) and then I stumbled on a posting by another onet member Paola DM who had posted a notice for a bloggers convention in Bangkok. Chin and I went and then we met all the rest of the Thailand ONet members. What a change in my life. My real life not my online life.

That meeting led me to Buddhist Economics, a new job, all new friends, a new intentional community, a new career, going back to school. Intertwined with Onet my real life has been reshaped in bold new ways. At 60 I am a new graduate student. I am doing a research project that will take me and 5 other Thai students to Gulu for 3 months in the spring. I am working with Buddhist Economics Scholars from 8 nations to define sustainable business in terms of Buddhist Economics. I am actively working with UNESCO in redefining Higher Education to recognize Participatory Development. I a part of establishing an international network on Buddhist Economics.

On top of all of that, I have met over 100 Onet members face to face and been even more inspired by each of them there than on here.

For me, onet was no failure anymore than my friends and relatives who have died were failures. Life has beginnings and middles and endings. I was not here for the beginning of onet but I was so fortunate to find it in the middle and be able to benefit from it (and I hope benefit it a bit as well) and am now saying good bye to it. But, I am not saying goodbye to all of the good people and things in my life that have resulted from my time here.

We are just moving on in our own lives to new places and new challenges.