Friends Journal’s Student Voices Project is up to its eighth year. This year FGC is co-hosting an online writing workshop for Quaker students wanting to participate. This is a really cool opportunity. If you’re a Quaker high schooler or know one, you can sign up here.
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Tag Archives ⇒ workshop
Edward Tufte and classical intellectual inquiry
June 27, 2016
Near the beginning of Edward Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence, he writes “My books are self-exemplifying: the objects themselves embody the ideas written about.” The same could be true of his presentations.
On a recent Tuesday, Friends Journal sponsored me to attend one of Tufte’s one-day workshops. He’s most well-known for his beautiful books on data visualizations but his workshop touched on a number of fascinating topics. “The world is way too interesting to have disciplinary boundaries,” he said at one point as he took us from music to maps to space shuttles to magicians. The range was purposeful. He was teaching us how to think.
I estimated a crowd of maybe 450. A large percentage were low-level corporate types (I overheard one say “I was not expecting that he’d bash PowerPoint so much”; this slacker obviously hadn’t even taken five minutes to skim Tufte’s Wikipedia page). There were smaller mixes of techie, creatives, and design professionals, some of whom were there after fawning over his books for years. Bonus if you go: part of the workshop registration fee is gratis copies of his books!
I have 13 pages of notes. Some highlights for me:
- The heart of much of the workshop was critical thinking. Tufte dissected various news websites to take us through the ways they gave attribution and presented data. He also went through studies and gave various pointers to sniff out when verifying data was being withheld.
- “Producing a good presentation is a moral and ethical act.” (ditto for being an good audience member). There is a form of civic responsibility to inquiry.
- Tufte is a big believer in meetings that begin with reading. The highest-resolution device most of us have is paper. People can read 2 – 3 times faster than a presenter can talk. By letting people go at their own pace they can tailor the presentation to their own needs.
- Data presentation: A theme throughout the workshop was “documents not decks,” an emphasis on flat, web-like presentations that allow readers to control scrolling. He continually called out “flat surfaces” and material that is “adjacent in space” to give an almost theological argument for their superiority over deck-like presentations (think PowerPoint) that can obscure important data.
- He urged us not to pander to our audience: Consumer sites show that data can be popular: the New York Times’s website has 450 links; ESPN’s has tables atop tables and yet people read these sites every day. Why can’t we have the same level of data-rich accessibility in our work lives? “Have we suddenly becomes stupid just because we’ve comes to work?” He urged the mid-level execs in the audience to demand good presentations. We should push back against the low-expectations of their bosses to ask “Why can’t we live up to ESPN?”
- Data as beauty. From gorgeous maps to graphical music notation (below), Tufte loves design and data that come together in beauty. It is amazing.
One of my favorite parts of the workshop was an afternoon digression from strict data that he introduced by saying, “It’s time for a heart to heart.” It began with a sermonette on credibility: how to make yourself accountable and just other’s arguments.
Then he talked about how to respond when someone challenges your work. I could tell there must be a long list of personal stories informing this part of the workshop – lessons learned, yes, but surely opportunities lost too. Tufte told us it was only natural to respond in defensiveness and anger and counseled us to not be too quick to dismiss critique. You’ve got to do the hard work to see whether your challenger might be correct.
He reminded us that when we’re in a room full of peers, everyone present has been filtered and selected over the years. You should assume the room will be just as smart as you are. “How dare you think your motives are better than those of your colleagues!” he thundered at an emotional crescendo. He admitted that this self-doubt is a hard posture to adopt. He’s polled public figures he respects and even the thickest-skinned are stung by challenge.
He said he had learned to back off, go slow, and contemplate when he’s challenged. Just when I thought he had found some super-human ability to rationally consider things, he told us it could took him three to five years to really accept the validity of dissenting views.
This was a much-needed sermon for me and I nodded along along. As someone who professionally amplifies opinion, I’m often in the middle of people in debate (I’ve been an actor in these conflicts in the past, though these days I generally play a role somewhere between an agent and mediator). It’s good to see intellectual debate as a process and to remember that it can take years. “This concludes the therapeutic portion of today’s course”, he concluded, before going back to visualizations.
He ended by showing us timeless first-editions of beautiful scientific works by Galileo and Euclid. He felt a genuine appreciation of being part of an intellectual tradition. He was a master and for this day we in the audience were his apprentices. “In life we need tools that last forever and give us clear leverage in clear thinking.”
Update: apparently some number of data visualization people have disliked his workshops. What I found fascinatingly wide-ranging they found rambling. Perhaps Tufte has tightened his presentation or I caught him on a good day. More likely, I think they came looking for a more technical discussion of data visualization and was surprised that Tufte focused so much on critical thinking and communication skills. I have a particular soft spot for quirky and opinionated people who don’t follow scripts and Tufte’s detours all made a certain sense to me. But then I’m a philosophy major turned do-gooder writer/publisher. Your mileage may vary.
More coming in from this weekend’s workshop
February 24, 2009
Both of my workshop co-leaders Wess and Robin have now checked in with preliminary reports. More material is being collected on the QuakerQuaker event page.
Wess and I have both been uploading lots of photos to Flickr using the “quakerreclaiming2009″ tag. I’ve been uploading my video interviews both on Youtube and QuakerQuaker. You can see them at the reclaiming2009 tag (I have the feeling we’ve just doubled the Quaker content on Youtube but it’s not that extreme). Anyone present with more photos can either upload them to Flickr with the “quakerreclaiming2009” tag or send them directly up to QuakerQuaker. Same with videos.
First thoughts about convergent weekend
February 22, 2009
Hey all, the Reclaiming Primitive Quakerism workshop at California’s Ben Lomond Center wrapped up a few hours ago (I’m posting from the San Jose airport). I think it went well. There were about thirty participants. The makeup was very intergenerational and God and Christ were being named all over the place!
I myself felt stripped throughout the first half, a sense of vague but deep unease – not at how the workshop was going, but about who I am and where I am. Christ was hard at work pointing out the layers of pride that I’ve used to protect myself over the last few years. This morning’s agenda was mostly extended worship, begun with “Bible Reading in the Manner of Conservative Friends” (video below) and it really lifted the veil for me – I think God even joked around with me a bit.
As always, many of the high points came unexpectedly in small conversations, both planned and random. One piece that I’ll be returning to again and again is that we need to focus on the small acts and not build any sort of movement piece by piece and not worry about the Big Conference or the Big Website that will change everything that we know. That’s not how the Spirit works and our pushing it to work this way almost invariably leads to failure and wasted effort.
Another piece is that we need to start focusing on really building up the kind of habits that will work out our spiritual muscles. Chad of 27Wishes had a great analogy that had to do with the neo-traditionalist jazz musicians and I hoped to get an interview with him on that but time ran out. I’ll try to get a remote interview (an earlier interview with him is here, thanks Chad for being the first interview of the weekend!)
I conducted a bunch of video interviews that I’ll start uploading to my Youtube account and on the “reclaiming2009” tag on QuakerQuaker. When you watch them, be charitable. I’m still learning through my style. But it was exciting starting to do them and it confirmed my sense that we really need to be burning up Youtube with Quaker stuff.
I need to find my boarding gate but I do want to say that the other piece is putting together collections of practices that Friends can try in their location Friends community. Gathering in Light Wess led a really well-received session that took the Lord’s Prayer and turned it into an interactive small group even. We took photos and a bit of video and we’ll be putting it together as a how-to somewhere or other.
Pictures going up on Flickr, I’ll organize them soon. Also check out ConvergentFriends.org and the Reclaiming Primitive Quakerism workshop page on QuakerQuaker.
Convergent Friends, a long definition
July 25, 2007
Robin M posts this week about two Convergent Events happening in California in the next month or two. And she also tries out a simplified definition of Convergent Friends:
people who are engaged in the renewal movement within the Religious Society of Friends, across all the branches of Friends.
It sounds good but what does it mean? Specifically: who isn’t for renewal, at least on a theoretical level? There are lots of faithful, smart and loving Friends out there advocating renewal who don’t fit my definition of Convergent (which is fine, I don’t think the whole RSoF should be Convergent, it’s a movement in the river, not a dam).
When Robin coined the term at the start of 2006 it seemed to refer to general trends in the Religious Society of Friends and the larger Christian world, but it was also referring to a specific (online) community that had had a year or two of conversation to shape itself and model trust and accountability. Most importantly we each were going out of our way to engage with Friends from other Quaker traditions and were each called on our own cultural assumptions.
The coined term implied an experience of sort. “Convergent” explicitly references Conservative Friends (“Con-”) and the Emergent Church movement (“-vergent”). It seems to me like one needs to look at those two phenomenon and their relation to one’s own understanding and experience of Quaker life and community before really understanding what all the fuss has been about. That’s happening lots of places and it is not simply a blog phenomenon.
Nowadays I’m noticing a lot of Friends declaring themselves Convergent after reading a blog post or two or attending a workshop. It’s becoming the term du jour for Friends who want to differentiate themselves from business-as-usual, Quakerism-as-usual. This fits Robin’s simplified definition. But if that’s all it is and it becomes all-inclusive for inclusivity’s sake, then “Convergent” will drift away away from the roots of the conversation that spawned it and turn into another buzzword for “liberal Quaker.” This is starting to happen.
The term “Convergent Friends” is being picked up by Friends outside the dozen or two blogs that spawned it and moving into the wild – that’s great, but also means it’s definition is becoming a moving target. People are grabbing onto it to sum up their dreams, visions and frustrations but we’re almost certainly not meaning the same thing by it. “Convergent Friends” implies that we’ve all arrived somewhere together. I’ve often wondered whether we shouldn’t be talking about “Converging Friends,” a term that implies a parallel set of movements and puts the rather important elephant square on the table: converging toward what? What we mean by convergence depends on our starting point. My attempt at a label was the rather clunky conservative-leaning liberal Friend, which is probably what most of us in the liberal Quaker tradition are meaning by “Convergent.”
I started mapping out a liberal plan for Convergent Friends a couple of years before the term was coined and it still summarizes many of my hopes and concerns. The only thing I might add now is a paragraph about how we’ll have to work both inside and outside of normal Quaker channels to effect this change (Johan Maurer recently wrote an interesting post that included the wonderful description of “the lovely subversives who ignore structures and communicate on a purely personal basis between the camps via blogs, visitation, and other means” and compared us to SCUBA divers (“ScubaQuake.org” anyone?).
Robin’s inclusive definition of “renewal” definitely speaks to something. Informal renewal networks are springing up all over North America. Many branches of Friends are involved. There are themes I’m seeing in lots of these places: a strong youth or next-generation focus; a reliance on the internet; a curiosity about “other” Friends traditions; a desire to get back to roots in the simple ministry of Jesus. Whatever label or labels this new revival might take on is less important than the Spirit behind it.
But is every hope for renewal “Convergent”? I don’t think so. At the end of the day the path for us is narrow and is given, not chosen. At the end of day — and beginning and middle — the work is to follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance in “real time.” Definitions and carefully selected words slough away as mere notions. The newest message is just the oldest message repackaged. Let’s not get too caught up in our own hip verbage, lecture invitations and glorious attention that we forget that there there is one, even Christ Jesus who can speak to our condition, that He Himself has come to teach, and that our message is to share the good news he’s given us. The Tempter is ready to distract us, to puff us up so we think we are the message, that we own the message, or that the message depends on our flowery words delivered from podiums. We must stay on guard, humbled, low and praying to be kept from the temptations that surround even the most well-meaning renewal attempts. It is our faithfulness to the free gospel ministry that will ultimately determine the fate of our work.
Hey who am I to decide anything
April 9, 2007
Over on Nontheist Friends website, there’s an article looking back at ten years of FGC Gathering workshops on their concern. There was also a post somewhere on the blogosphere (sorry I don’t remember where) by a Pagan Friend excited that this year’s Gathering would have a workshop focused on their concerns.
It’s kind of interesting to look at the process by which new theologies are being added into Liberal Quakerism at an ever-increasing rate.
- Membership of individuals in meetings. There are hundreds of meetings in liberal Quakerism that range all over the theological map. Add to that the widespread agreement that theological unity with the meeting is not required and just about anyone believing anything could be admitted somewhere (or “grandfathered in” as a birthright member).
- A workshop at the Friends General Conference Gathering and especially a regular workshop at successive Gatherings. Yet as the very informed comments on a post a few years ago showed, theology is not something the planning workshop committee is allowed to look at and at least one proponent of a new theology has gotten themselves on the deciding committee. The Gathering is essentially built on the nondenominational Chautaqua model and FGC is perfectly happy to sponsor workshops that are in apparent conflict with its own mission statement.
- An article published in Friends Journal. When the the Quaker Sweat Lodge was struggling to claim legitimacy it all but changed its name to the “Quaker Sweat Lodge as featured in the February 2002 Friends Journal.” It’s a good magazine’s job to publish articles that make people think and a smart magazine will know that articles that provoke a little controversy is good for circulation. I very much doubt the editorial team at the Journal considers its agreement to publish to be an inoculation against critique.
- A website and listserv. Fifteen dollars at GoDaddy.com and you’ve got the web address of your dreams. Yahoo Group is free.
There are probably other mechanisms of legitimacy. My point is not to give comprehensive guidelines to would-be campaigners. I simply want to note that none of the actors in these decisions is consciously thinking “hey, I think I’ll expand the definition of liberal Quaker theology today.” In fact I expect they’re mostly passing the buck, thinking “hey, who am I to decide anything like that.”
None of these decision-making processes are meant to serve as tools to dismiss opposition. The organizations involved are not handing out Imprimaturs and would be quite horrified if they realized their agreements were being seen that way. Amy Clark, a commenter on my last post, on this summer’s reunion and camp for the once-young members of Young Friends North America, had a very interesting comment:
I agree that YFNA has become FGC: those previously involved in YFNA have taken leadership with FGC … with both positive and negative results. Well … now we have a chance to look at the legacy we are creating: do we like it?
I have the feeling that the current generation of liberal Quaker leadership doesn’t quite believe it’s leading liberal Quakerism. By “leadership” I don’t mean the small skim of the professional Quaker bureaucracy (whose members can get _too_ self-inflated on the leadership issue) but the committees, clerks and volunteers that get most of the work done from the local to national levels. We are the inheritors of a proud and sometimes foolish tradition and our actions are shaping its future but I don’t think we really know that. I have no clever solution to the issues I’ve outlined here but I think becoming conscious that we’re creating our own legacy is an important first step.
Visiting a Quaker School
April 18, 2006
I had an interesting opportunity last Thursday. I skipped work to be talk with two Quakerism classes at Philadelphia’s William Penn Charter School (thanks for the invite Michael and Thomas!). I was asked to talk about Quaker blogs, of all things. Simple, right? Well, on the previous Tuesday I happened upon this passage from Brian Drayton’s new book, On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry:
I think that your work will have the greatest good effect if you wait to find whether and where the springs of love and divine life connect with this opening before you appear in the work. This is even true when you have had an invitation to come and speak on a topic to a workshop or some other forum. It is wise to be suspicious of what is very easy, draws on your practiced strengths and accomplishments, and can be treated as an everyday transaction. (p. 149).
Good advice. Of course the role of ministry is even more complicated in that I wasn’t addressing a Quaker audience: like the majority of Friends schools, few Penn Charter students actually are Quaker. I’m a public school kid, but it from the outside it seems like Friends schools stress the ethos of Quakerism (“here’s Penn Charter’s statement”). Again Drayton helped me think beyond normal ideas of proselytizing and outreach when he talked about “public meetings”:
We are also called, I feel to invite others to share Christ directly, not primarily in order to introduce them to Quakerism and bring them into our meetings, but to encourage them to turn to the light and follow it” (p. 147).
What I shared with the students was some of the ways my interaction with the Spirit and my faith community shapes my life. When we keep it real, this is a profoundly universalist and welcoming message.
I talked about the personal aspect of blogging: in my opinion we’re at our best when we weave our theology with with personal stories and testimonies of specific spiritual experiences. The students reminded me that this is also real world lesson: their greatest excitement and questioning came when we started talking about my father (I used to tell the story of my completely messed-up childhood family life a lot but have been out of the habit lately as it’s receded into the past). The students really wanted to understand not just my story but how it’s shaped my Quakerism and influenced my coming to Friends. They asked some hard questions and I was stuck having to give them hard answers (in that they were non-sentimental). When we share of ourselves, we present a witness that can reach out to others.
Later on, one of the teachers projected my blogroll on a screen and asked me about the people on it. I started telling stories, relating cool blog posts that had stuck out in my mind. Wow: this is a pretty amazing group, with diversity of ages and Quakerism. Reviewing the list really reminded me of the amazing community that’s come together over the last few years.
One interesting little snippet for the Quaker cultural historians out there: Penn Charter was the Gurneyite school back in the day. When I got Michael’s email I was initially surprised they even had classes on Quakerism as it’s often thought of as one of the least Quaker of the Philadelphia-area Quaker schools. But thinking on it, it made perfect sense: the Gurneyites loved education; they brought Sunday School (sorry, First Day School) into Quakerism, along with Bible study and higher education. Of course the school that bears their legacy would teach Quakerism. Interestingly enough, the historical Orthodox school down the road aways recently approached Penn Charter asking about their Quaker classes; in true Wilburite fashion, they’ve never bothered trying to teach Quakerism. The official Philadelphia Quaker story is that branches were all fixed up nice and tidy back in 1955 but scratch the surface just about anywhere and you’ll find Nineteenth Century attitudes still shaping our institutional culture. It’s pretty fascinating really.
Live Web Coverage from FGC (not)
July 3, 2005
Over on Beppeblog Joe dreams of daily web coverage of the FGC Gathering [Update: link long dead]. Well, FGC’s not paying its webmaster (me, for now) for such service but I’ll try to sneak in a few posts between bookstore customers. The bookstore set-up was remarkably easy. There was no truck crisis, no computer crisis, no getting lost on highways.
As regular readers will know, I’m leading a workshop called “Strangers to the Covenant” with Zachary Moon and this morning was the first workshop. Although it was billed as a workshop for high school students and adult young Friend (so 15 – 35 years old), though almost all of the participants are high schoolers (what does that mean?). It seems like a great bunch. I arrived about fifteen minutes early to center in worship; two of the attenders came in the room and sat with me and one by one everyone came in and joined the worship. I had to wonder if a group of older Friends would have been able to resist the temptation to ask about each other’s jewelry, complain about the air conditioning, etc.
Julie reports that the cafeteria food is good. We’ve also been happy patrons of Gillie’s and Bollo’s Cafe.