Walking to the market

I’ve just woken up after a great Day 2 of Peter’s Crafting {:} a Life unconference. Nominally the day was more about doing, where the first day was more about meeting and talking. We started with a walk from Peter Catherine and Oliver’s home to the Charlottetown Farmers Market. There I enjoyed a second breakfast of tasty crab cake, a lovely salmon bagel and good espresso. It was a beautiful sunny morning and we chatted both during the walk and outside the Farmers Market.

Peter, Oliver and Ethan holding court

One of the participants has access to a bus so he drove us back to the ‘campus’ where we all gathered again to build the program for the day together. A fantastic line-up of things ranging from ‘blood memories’ , the history of Peter’s home and surrounding houses (including daguerrotypes), drinking your first ever cup of coffee (and the life changing story behind it), to drawing fantasy maps.
I suggested doing a session on blogging, building on Day 1’s conversations about what happened to blogging, and the future of blogging. It ended up on the schedule for the afternoon.

Olle starting the fantasy cartography session

The rest of the morning I spent with a small group of people at the harbour location of Receiver Coffee, where two of us had their first ever cup of coffee (“I never deliberately put a bitter thing in my mouth with the intention to enjoy it”). Around the coffee we had a fascinating conversation of the seismic consequences of leaving a prescriptive strict organised religious community. The methods, tactics and tools I use in working with groups a lot, in order to create a space for collective change to happen, to build connections and community, essentially can be and are being used to introduce and maintain power differences, isolate groups etc. It’s as if a tool you see as fit for beautiful craftsmanship is deployed to stab someone.

a first coffee, and back yard conversation

After lunch I sat down with a handful of people in Peter’s back yard for a session on IndieWeb tools and how they can breathe life back into blogging by taking control over your own content and the tools to connect you to others. For lack of laptops and because of bright sunlight, we talked more than we did things. And because of a bit of confusion around the schedule a larger group joined us an hour later under the assumption that was the correct starting time. But those ‘glitches’ worked out fine, as whoever is here are the right people, and whatever we talk about is the right topic. At first we talked about the IndieWeb tools and underlying standards and intentions, and examples of how that works out in practice (or doesn’t). From there we looped through an enormous variety of topics, from filling moments with listening to podcasts, to lifehacks, to getting transcripts of YouTube videos to parenting, reading to elderly people to improve quality of life, to instagram posers, grooming and language, and much much more. The free flow of the conversation with people drifting in and out, went on for some 4 hours effortlessly. People were taking notes but not disengaging on their phones. For me this session was worth the entire trip on its own, I was in flow. There’s much I still need to tease out for myself, to go back into the conversation and pick on a few strands to explore further, but right now it’s enough for me to admire the shape of the ephemeral construct we put together in that back yard. I came out sun burned not having noticed it in the conversational flow.

Pre-dinner waiting time was filled with terrific oysters. It had been a long time since I had them, and the last time was of the ‘here’s a bit of salty watery snot’ variety. These were fresh, we’re on an island after all, delicate of taste and very meaty. A local chef then served a nice bbq burger meal, after singing an Irish dedication song to us. More music followed.

pre-dinner rush to finish the first draft

Elmine had been working on writing a story during the day, which she plotted together with Rob Paterson, and she read out the first finished draft in front of not just the 50 people who participated in the unconference, but also their partners, families and others who had joined us for dinner. It must be daunting to stand up and read aloud something you created just now, and of which the ink isn’t even dry yet. Leaving half the audience brushing away a tear, it was great. I also felt it completed the circle of our own participation. Elmine led us through the first exercise on Day 1 where we told each other stories, and now she rounded it off with reading us all a story inspired by the family who brought us together in and around their home. When Peter thanked Elmine and they embraced, that was the moment I felt myself release the space I opened up on Day 1 when I helped the group set the schedule. Where the soap bubble we blew collapsed again, no longer able to hold the surface tension. I felt a wave of emotions wash through me, which I recognise from our own events as well. The realisation of the beauty of the collective experience you created, the connections made, the vulnerability allowed, the fun had, the playfulness. We wound down from that rush chatting over drinks in the moon lit back yard.

Thank you Peter for bringing us all to PEI for a few days of, as you wrote earlier, the simple act of spending time together talking about life for a while. Crafting a life is in part about crafting shared experiences. This most definitely was one.