{"id":271,"date":"2013-12-02T06:36:02","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T14:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/?p=271"},"modified":"2015-05-20T17:04:19","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T00:04:19","slug":"introducing-faster-than-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/2013\/12\/introducing-faster-than-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Faster Than 20"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hi! I’m Eugene<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I care a lot about the state of the world and about the craft of collaboration. I’ve been playing and practicing in this space for over ten years now. I have a lot of stories I’d like to share and a lot more to learn. I started this website to help me do both.<\/p>\n

I was a social change consultant for more than a decade, focusing specifically on collaboration. That meant helping all kinds of groups \u2014 from Fortune 500 companies to global movements \u2014 on important, impactful challenges that required deeply collaborative approaches to solving them.\u00a0Some of my higher profile work included designing and leading Wikimedia’s<\/a> completely open, movement-wide strategic planning process<\/a> in 2009-2010 and co-designing and leading the Delta Dialogues<\/a>\u00a0in 2012, a multistakeholder process for rebuilding trust and shared understanding in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta around California’s thorny, wicked water issues.<\/p>\n

I got good enough at my craft to build a nice, little reputation, which led to a steady stream of challenging, meaningful work. I was extremely fortunate to be in this position, but something was missing for me. I felt like I had the potential to make a much greater impact on the world. I just wasn’t entirely sure how.<\/p>\n

One thing I knew was that story would play an important role. When I first got started in this field, part of my strategy to make a broad impact was to share what I learned openly. If I was doing anything worthwhile, I wanted other people learning from it, copying it, and sharing what they learned.<\/p>\n

I did an okay job of this. I did not take on work that I was not allowed to talk about. (This led to some interesting negotiations over the years, and I’ve had to turn away my share of projects as a result of this principle.) I started several blogs and wikis, including my personal one<\/a>, which is over ten years old. I wrote reports and gave talks. I shared my slides<\/a>, and I tweeted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I did okay, but I knew I could do better. I wasn’t as committed to storytelling as much as I knew I could be. In particular, I didn’t try very hard to support an audience. My attitude with my personal blog, for example, was to dump whatever happened to be on my mind onto my site. If people happened to read it, great.<\/p>\n

I’m going to stick with that approach on my personal blog. It’s a great outlet, and it’s worked for me. However, I also want a place where I can be more intentional about storytelling. I know there are lots of people out there who are hungering for practical wisdom that is grounded in real-life experiences, and who are not necessarily interested in hearing my ramblings about food, photography, sports, or other interests.<\/p>\n

I’m going to try to provide a place for those people here on this website. I’m going to tell meaningful, actionable stories \u2014 both mine and those of my friends \u2014 as well as I can. I’m going to make it as easy as possible to follow what I write. (For example, if you’d like to get these posts over email, you can\u00a0subscribe to them here<\/a>. If you’d rather follow this site over Twitter, you can do that too<\/a>.) I’m going to aggressively (but not overwhelmingly) share what I’m working on and what I’m learning.<\/p>\n

I’ve called this website “Faster Than 20.” You can read the full story of why on my\u00a0home page<\/a>. The brief story is best encapsulated by this\u00a0xkcd comic<\/a>, which my\u00a0friend, Kate Wing<\/a>\u00a0shared after hearing my explanation of the name.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think it explains things quite nicely.<\/p>\n

What kinds of stories would you like me to share? Please leave a comment with your ideas and questions below. Looking forward to engaging with you!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi! I’m Eugene. I care a lot about the state of the world and about the craft of collaboration. I’ve been playing and practicing in this space for over ten years now. I have a lot of stories I’d like to share and a lot more to learn. I started this website to help me… [Read more …]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/7274773684_65f6431187_b.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4bvrk-4n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fasterthan20.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}