Getting Inspired - Let's All Do Something!

Just finished our morning session - I am loving this more than you can imagine.    It is filling me with even greater inspiration to do as the great man Ghandi said...Be the change you want to see in the world.  I hope through this blog I will be giving you some of my inspiration, so that even more people feel the desire to be a force for good in the world, in whatever way that is....it doesn't have to be big - for instance every time we are kind, it makes a difference.

Richard Branson started the morning with thanking everyone for coming and the power of collaboration, of discussion and of action.  He is great fun - he was hamming it up for my picture of him this morning before the session.

Ian Goldin - director of Oxford Martin School and former VP of the World Bank and former advisor to Nelson Mandela (see picture of us below) spoke first.  His talk was on the New Renaissance. 

Similar to the original Renaissance period which was sparked by the printing press which allowed more connectivity of information among people, is our New Renaissance sparked by the advent of the Internet and its global, instant connectivity.  Similar to the original Renaissance, we need to put together fragments of genius around the globe, and learn from each other to accelerate our development.  But also like the original Renaissance, we need to avoid the cascading risks that happen with that development.  The original Renaissance ended with the Inquisition, religious intolerance, slavery...terrible outcomes for society.  I was inspired by his talk that we need to as individuals, small groups, societies, collective consciousness, more urgently focus on the positive uses of our technology, our ideas, our interactions, and our potential.  We cannot wait for governments which seem paralyzed by inaction, lobbyists, fear of not getting re-elected to mandate what needs to be done - we can as individual amazing people recognize what we can do and then have the courage to do it.

Here is the Temple House where we had our morning session.  This beautiful setting and the energy here is very condusive for great thinking and inspiration!

 

 

We now have a lunch break - we are supposed to be in our swimsuits as we are eating sushi in the Beach pool.  I gotta believe that going to be a cool way to get to know each other...LOL!