Bring together tech geeks and people focused on living mindfully and what do you get?
An amazing discussion about the future of communication technology and how we can use it to enhance our quality of life rather than have it lead to distracted, fragmented attention and social connections.
The panels consisted of tech heavy weights like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and eBay alongside mindfulness teachers like Jack Kornfield and Jon Kabat-Zinn. This year’s conference even included a civic representative with Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio, discussing the benefits of bringing mindfulness into public schools. With a sold-out conference and over 288,000 views from all over the world on the online live video feed, it was evident this discussion about intelligent and mindful use of technology is timely and strikes a chord across professions and industries.
What does it mean that the next generation will grow up with continual connectivity? A toddler who knows their uncle by skype only. Teenagers with early onset repetitive motion injuries from texting continuously. Youth whose sense of self is closely connected with their ability to update their status to their social networks.
Technology is intimately twined in every area of our lives and it both super charges our effectiveness and creates the opportunity for endless distraction.
How can we use technology to make our work, connections and lives richer?
A few excerpts:
“Most internet companies have a five year life span of strong popularity. Knowing that everything will pass, being mindful is a meaningful long range goal.” – Kevin Rose, Founder, Digg
“We have adopted the practice of requiring meetings to have someone who has ownership over the proceedings. If they are not fully prepared and the meeting is not useful, then attendees can walk out regardless of position or status. It has led to much more effective meetings.” – Bradley Horowitz, Vice President of Google
“Twitter allows for internal values to be externalized, which an external audience can hold you to.”
– Chris Sacca, Strategic Advisor, Twitter
“Meditation has three parts: 1) attention (calmness & clarity), 2) insight (self reflection) and 3) creating mindset (wanting best for all creatures), the only state that requires space alone is attention.
– Meng Tan, Jolly Good Fellow (Head of Personal Growth), Google
“Use traffic lights as an opportunity to breath mindfully.”
– Gopi Kalliyil, Group Marketing Manager, Google
“We function on an Ultradian rhythm, which means we have 90 min waves of concentration. We override this rhythm with stress hormones, sugar, and continuous connectivity, but we are less effective.”
– Tony Schwartz, Author, “The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working”
The conference also included two case studies of mindfulness practices brought into a corporate setting with outstanding results.
Todd Pierce, Vice President, Genentech and mindfulness teacher Pamela Weiss created a year long Personal Excellence course at Genentech, which led to increased resiliency of staff in face of a later merger and overwhelming positive feedback from participants. Rich Fernandez, Head of Learning and OD, eBay, organized lecture series and ongoing programs on mindfulness at eBay (inspired by last year’s Wisdom 2.0 conference), which continue to grow in popularity and attendance.
Using technology to increase mindful living can seem like a paradox (like tweeting about future plans to not tweet), but it’s helpful to remember that communication technology was created in service of our needs and not the other way around.
Videos from the conference will be available in the near future on the Wisdom 2.0 website.
In service,
Salem Kimble & The BetterWorld Team
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