The Dynamic Planetary Context

(This piece follows Five Working Hypotheses in the FS Main Thread.)

The video on this page combines live video with high-quality slide images from my keynote presentation for the International Communal Studies Association 2013 Conference. At its heart is the following:

“I’ve never been more encouraged about the future than I am today.”

If you would like to understand why someone who has been immersed in sustainability issues for over 30 years feels this way, I invite you to watch the video (best at full screen).

The full video is 95 minutes so you will want to find a good time to watch it. I’ve created a 3-minute trailer to give you a quick feel for the full program. (If the videos don’t appear after a few moments, please try reloading the page.)

If you prefer reading to watching, here is the text with illustrations. You can also get a quick overview from this PDF of the slides.

Three-minute trailer

Full video

The presentation was well received. Many participants cited it as the highlight of the conference in their end-of-conference feedback. Comments from participants included: “breathtaking”; “such an inspiring talk, thank you!”; “moved me to tears”; and from one of the videographers, “I found this one of the most inspiring 95 minutes I have yet experienced, to the point that I missed a couple of the directing cues while I was operating camera 2.”

This video is a major milestone in the emergence of the Foundation Stones project. It will give you my best current overview of What Time Is It? (Stone 1) and a glimpse of what we will get into with “Systems Literacy” (part of Stone 2: Tools for the Journey). Given its audience, it has an understandable special focus on intentional communities, yet most of the talk has a much wider application.

If the video prompts you with comments or questions, please let me know.

The story behind the video

The Findhorn Foundation has recently established a program, called Findhorn Live, for web-streaming video from their conferences, including the ICSA conference. The team includes:

  • Producer – Jacqueline Buckingham
  • Director – Keith Armstrong
  • Livestream – Iain Davidson & Alex Wright
  • Cameras – Eian Smith & Ianto Moore
  • Sound – Ian McIvor

The Findhorn Live team was kind enough to save the files from the two cameras and allow me to use them for this video. I also had a separate mic and recorder for my audio, so the video you see here is a combination of:

  • video from the two cameras whose work was prioritized for the live stream
  • the audio recorded on those cameras
  • the audio from my mic
  • the original slides with their transitions and builds.

Edited in Final Cut Pro X.

Robert Gilman, July 24, 2013 (with revisions through Aug 5, 2013)

(The next piece in the FS Main Thread is Culture As Interface.)