Airlie Meeting
A Time for Action
The meeting was held at Airlie Center, a pleasant stroll past a bridge. The glimpse of fractals reflected in a creek provided some inspiration for the days' activities.
The meeting was attended by a large group of people in the health care field. Seated at one table were Pat Rowell, Mary Ann Morreale, John Porretto, and Geoff Strawbridge. Another table held Rita Moya, Kermit Smith, Rob Kolodner, and Curt Lindberg. The next table held Anne Klein, Ames Early, David Albinson, and Pam Johnson. Further around the circle sat Tom Weatherup, Deb O'Neill, and Frank Titus. At the next table sat Don Lindberg, Dee Hock, and Dexter Coolidge. Further around sat Robert Levine, Tom Garthwaite, Joyce Essien, and Nicki Lurie. To their left sat David Stevens, David Cochran, and Tom Munnecke. And to close the circle sat Ginger Price, Jim Bentley, and David Cooperrider.
Dee Hock presented many of his ideas about Chaordic Thinking. David Cooperrider facilitated the meeting.
As usual, many of the most interesting things happened outside the formal meeting. Rob Kolodner and Robert Levine invented a sign language called RobRob consisting of symmetrical hand motions. It appears to have been influenced heavily by watching Star Trek reruns. David Stevens, Ken Kizer, and Tom Garthwaite reacted positively to the sight of the new language. Fast thinking Rita Moya picked up the language and taught the double clutch cup hold to Don Lindberg. Ames Early looked on pensively, wondering how long until RobRob would succumb to Zipf's law and eliminate its bilateral symmetry. Tom Garthwaite and Pam Johnson demonstrated two evolutionary versions of RobRob; Tom retaining the older bilaterally symmetric double clutch while Pam evolved to the single cup hold. Don Lindberg straddled the two dialects in an asymetrical double clutch cup hold, and was later heard to mutter something about ontologies and the need to unify RobRob with the rest of medical nomenclatures. Rob Kolodner continued his symmetrical syntax at lunch even after Mary Ann Morreale and Daniel Waldo had moved on to asymmetry. Later, Ames Early, Dee Hock, Curt Lindberg, and David Cochran evolved the language to include the single clutch, hand-in-pocket sign. Later, Dee Hock had a few words with Robert Levine, who stiffly surpressed his urge to speak RobRob. As usual, the younger generation picked up on the trend quickly, as Geoff Strawbridge tried to introduce the signs to Anne Klein and Ginger Price, who did a wonderful job supporting the conference attendees.
This meeting was a follow on meeting to one held December 16, 1998 in Seattle.
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