An Earth Voice movement based upon trans-partisan inclusiveness and the power of non-violent global communication could emerge rapidly from the initiative of local Community Voice organizations. However, rather than emerging in a controlled or contained fashion, it seems more likely that an Earth Voice movement will coalesce out of the unique events and grass-roots circumstances of life in different communities. Being uncontained and relatively spontaneous, it seems likely that many groups will seek in parallel to catalyze global conversations. This could develop into crowd-sourced global conversations with flash mobs of hundreds of millions -- or even billions -- of people joining in the dialogue. In this way, the collective intelligence of our global nervous system could take on a life of its own in a process that transcends artificial boundaries.

Religious and spiritual expression is always embedded in societal structures. If social structures are moving towards the form of distributed networks, what kind of evolution of spiritual expression can we expect? In this essay, we will first describe the general societal changes that we see emerging, and expect to become more prevalent in the future, then examine to what degree these changes will have an impact on individual and collective spiritual expression. The reader has to bear with us in the first general part, which explains the peer to peer dynamic, in order to understand its application to spirituality, which is the subject of the second part of the essay. Finally, in the third and final part, we will discuss a few concrete examples.

Opening up government: Tim O'Reilly and Code for America founder Jennifer Pahlka say it best when they talk about government as a platform that uses the principles of the Web and technology to reframe the function of government, to make it less of a service provider and more of a "platform for citizens to help themselves and help others," as Pahlka said. Code for America has made it part of its mission, and we are interested in other ideas to help make it happen.

Given before a small group from the German Pirate Party, their Meinungsfindungstool group (opinion-brainstorming-tool group) which is holding a series of international edemocracy talks. The notes for the talk are also available. 

The issue of the role of gender in the field of violent conflict and transition to peace has received growing attention in recent years, however it is most often addressed in broad academic frameworks such as gender studies or conflict studies. Thanks to a new generous contribution of Mr. Alan Davis, the Leonard Davis institute for International Relations (LDI) is now creating a research forum that will focus more specifically on the various links between gender, conflict and peace studies (for example, the role of women within conflicts and conflict resolution, in peace-making processes, and gender-based approaches to understanding conflicts and conflict resolution). 

Good talk on how to build a basis for global cooperation.  This is the kind of nonviolent global action that Voices of Humanity can underpin.  SimPol is an intelligent global initiative to bring global voter power to bear on social justice and sustainability issues. 

"Growing the Commons" is wide enough, ambiguous enough and positive enough to bring in a ton of people onto the same page for networking across disciplines.  Great idea.

Persons on the GCGI advisory or outreach team include Linda Groff, Tom Mahon, András László and Rabbi Michael Lerner.  Every year there is a GCGI conference - might be a good idea to present a paper on InterMix at the 2013 August conference in Paris.

Interesting academic paper on a point of vital interest to InterMix development. Dissecting the Critical Mass of Online Communities towards a Unified Theoretical Model. - Faculty of Science, Utrecht University Department of Information and Computing Sciences - Author: Eric Booij

"The Global Compact asks companies to embrace universal principles and to partner with the United Nations. It has grown to become a critical platform for the UN to engage effectively with enlightened global business.": -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.  8000 companies are signed on and an estimated 20,000 needed to gain critical mass to tip the planet. 

This new index uses five measures to calculate a more balanced index than is generally used to measure prosperity: productivity, infrastructure, quality of life, equity and sustainability.

Urban areas are more prosperous than rural areas. "The reason for this disparity is because urban regions are the only places that can combine the two most important elements for generating productivity and innovation, which is the main way that economies create value and compete in the global marketplace.  These two elements are specialization and diversity." 

"In order to create lasting solutions to social problems on a large-scale, organizations - including those in government, civil society, and the business sector - need to coordinate their efforts and work together around a clearly defined goal." - simple but it is carefully thought through and analyzed.  Here's another good article on the concept, this one from Stanford Social Innovation Review.  And here in October 2013 a good blog on the subject from the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation. 

Written for Friends of the Earth's 'Big Ideas' project by Professor Julian Agyeman, Duncan McLaren and Adrianne Schaefer-Borrego.  This is a map of how the concept of sharing intersects with the metropolis.  Perhaps as valuable as anything are the many nuggets, such as "In Portland, Oregon, a group called City Repair has led dozens of “intersection repair,” projects where streets are painted and sharing nodes, including mini-libraries, public seating or self-serve cafes are set-up for the public to enjoy. Residents within a 2 block radius report increased social interaction, improvements in mental health, a stronger sense of community and increased social capital (Semenza 2009)."