I will be offline from Wednesday through Saturday due to a continuing legal education seminar I need to keep my license active. If I miss welcoming any new members because they are off the "new members" list by the time I get back, I apologize, and hope you find a way to introduce yourself anyway.

My sister has a place in Fraser, Colorado, which is next door to the Winter Park Ski Area. My wife an I are going up there Monday through Wednesday to enjoy the mountains and get away from the city. I will be back in touch on Thursday, June 30.

Well, I've been off line for three days. The computer was running a little slow so we decided to check for viruses. Two attempts and 72 hours later, the virus scan finally cleaned up all the 1700 netsky files. It will now take me a while to catch up - but - I'm back.

At Luke Martin's suggestion, I am putting my have/want list here.

Want:

People to give feedback on the proposal for the self help corporation

http://www.omidyar.net/group/showcase/news/139/

No one has read it? No one understands it? Everyone thinks its garbage?

The next step in implementation is find a group of people who could benefit from the proposal, explain to them how it works and why it would benefit them to participate. There are organizations that already have a relationship with such groups of people. Can anyone provide me an introduction?

Have:

I am a lawyer by profession. I have experience in business and non-profit corporate formation and governance (in both business and homeowners associations). I am not looking for paying work (and legal advice is worth what you pay for it) but I would be happy to help out where ever I can.

I have been working on relating productive elements into sustainable systems. I can see how we might rearrange things to move away from linear business plans that end up with waste to integrated business plans in which each element feeds on and supports other elements. I've been talking to the folks at ZERI, reading up on the Bioneers, etc. There is a lot of expertise out there but, apparently, little momentum for change.

You can see the same thing here on O.net. Sincere talented people in tens of discussions concerned with bits and pieces of what we might call an emerging vision of the future. Its just that there are so many pieces and the possible arrangements so numerous that it is hard to grasp a big picture.

It occurs to me that one could spend a lifetime designing a project and trying to attract the critical mass of interested people to make the project feasible. Perhaps a better way would be to try to integrate those project on which people are already working.

For example, Boulder and Aspen are currently developing plans to do their part to prevent global warming. There are designs that would take the sewage from those cities, use it to grow biomass, and prevent pollution of the mountain streams. That should interest people like Trout Unlimited and Ducks Unlimited and perhaps the nature conservancy. There is also a need to thin the local forests to prevent forest fires that can be combined with a program of wood gasification to produce renewable energy. This should involve the forest service and open space advocates. Additional energy can be saved if more food is produced and consumed locally. That should involve local food coops and organic gardening and farming groups.

So I think that is what I will explore next. How can I motivate existing activist organizations to look for ways to share resources with other activist organizations?

My father has had cancer and it has been my priviledge these past five months to transport him back and forth from the oncologist for chemotherapy. On Friday, his condition took a turn for the worst and he died on Monday, January 31, 2005. He made it to 80 almost 81 (something he never thought he would do as his Dad died of a heart condition when my Dad was 11). He lived a full and happy life surrounded by his family and travelling extensively. I will miss him.

This has been an interesting couple of months exploring O.Net. I will be out of touch, however, Wednesday 1/5 through Sunday 1/9. Taking the family to Winter Park and Glenwood Springs for our annual winter vacation. I'll check back in next Monday.

When I had finally earned enough money to put my kids through college, I started thinking about what I wanted to do with the next 30 years. What I would really like to do is explain to everyone how much could be accomplished through a re-design of how the world works. The existing set of relationships is merely the end result of the historical process of people fighting over limited resources.

It seems to me that there are potentially unlimited sets of relationships that do not require the destruction of any existing relationships. When you fight over a resource, you reduce the size of the pie. When you create new sets of relationships you increase the size of the pie.

The two areas where relationships have been most damaged and that therefore have the most potential are 1) the environment and 2) the people left out of the planetary economy (the poor). So that is where my interest is. Assisting the poor to forge new relationships among themselves and with their environment.

The problem comes from thinking through how everything is related to everything else. I don't want to re-invent the wheel and there are many fine organizations doing parts of what I see as possible. There are also political and business development approaches. Being interested in how all things are related certainly has its draw backs. Which brings me back to the original question. What to do - what to do?