I’m taking some much-needed time off with my family and won’t resume my regular posting schedule until August 15. In the meantime, here are some mediation-related links that you may enjoy while I’m away:

Bill Warters, who always has the coolest links at Campus ADR Tech Blog, has posted an article about Standpoint and Standpedia, two web sites which provide visual mapping tools to better understand conflict and controversy.

For some of the funniest and most honest writing on the ADR web, visit Geoff Sharp’s Mediator Blah…Blah… I particularly liked Geoff’s recent meditation (that’s meditation, not mediation) on trust.

If you haven’t visited Negotiating Tip of the Week lately, tune in to Josh Weiss’s podcast describing tactics for dealing with a negotiator who wants to compete, not collaborate.

Those of you who support efforts to keep the courthouse doors open to all who seek justice will want to read this article from Law.com’s Inside Opinions on “Blacklisting Medical Malpractice Plaintiffs“, which discusses the implications of a web site that publicizes the names of plaintiffs involved in med-mal litigation.

One of my favorite new blogs is the Law & Society Blog, offering “notes from the intersection of law, society, technology, economics, and culture”. You’ll find intelligently written articles like “He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn’t” about human behavior and the escalation of conflict, and “Virtual Property and Voluntarism“, which explores the blurring of lines between real and virtual worlds. If you are interested in other blogs that cover similar ground–the crossroads of law, society, and technology–visit Slaw, a cooperative Canadian law blog, and Human Law, a law blog published by English solicitor Justin Patten, who is also a committed supporter of alternative dispute resolution.

For mediators interested in the serious games movement–games created to promote social change and awareness, including the advancement of conflict resolution and peace–Collision Detection has an article on “Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time“.

You should also take time to check out the new look of one of Tammy Lenski’s blogs, I Can’t Say That! – How to talk things out in the relationships that matter. Formerly known as “Strategic Conversations”, this blog has an inviting, warm, and user-friendly feel. (For smart marketing advice for mediators, visit Tammy’s other blog, Mediator Tech.)

Finally, one destination that I always recommend is the ADR-friendly Blawg Review, the weekly review of the best in law blogging, hosted each week at a different law blog. There are plenty of reasons why busy mediators and mediating attorneys should make it a regular stop on their Internet travels–you can discover why in “Too busy to read law blogs? Why attorneys and mediators should read Blawg Review“.

In the meantime, until I get back, feel free to explore Online Guide to Mediation’s archives (over in the sidebar on the right). Or, visit my ongoing project, the World Directory of Alternative Dispute Resolution Blogs, for your passport to a whole world of ADR blogging.

Thanks as always for stopping by. I look forward to continuing our conversation when I return on August 15.

Regardless of one’s political views or on which side one stands in the terrible conflicts that have riven the Middle East, many of us are horrified and saddened by the death and destruction that have engulfed that part of the world.

Some have turned to the Internet to chart the geographic scale of the Israeli-Lebanese conflict, or to convey the reality of death toll figures along the Israeli-Lebanese border and in Iraq.

These are tragic events that unfold before us. Just when it seems that achieving peace is impossible, particularly between groups with a lengthy history of mutual hostility, hope arrives in the form of one remarkable community that has succeeded in transcending conflict.

A unique village in Israel bears two names, in Hebrew Neve Shalom and in Arabic Wahat al-Salam. In English the name means “Oasis of Peace“. Oasis of Peace is inhabited by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, who together “work for peace, equality and understanding between the two peoples”, according to its web site, exchanging culture, raising and educating their children, and co-governing.

More information about this remarkable community can be found on Neve Shalom ~ Wahat al-Salam’s page of frequently asked questions.

Welcome to Part 2 of a series of essays on blogging for the conflict resolution community. The series began several weeks ago with “Getting to yes with alternative dispute resolution blogs: time for ADR practitioners to join the conversation“.

It was launched with the hope of encouraging ADR practitioners everywhere to think about blogging’s power to share ideas, encourage inquiry, and to build connections among us.

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Mediators and conflict resolvers know that ours is not solitary work. It is rooted deeply in the matrix of human interaction.At first blush blogging seems to be a poor fit for those whose work is so intimately bound up in interpersonal dynamics and the give and take of relationships and dialogue.

Yet blogging is not the solitary practice one might think it is. When you blog, you do so knowing that you are reaching out to share your message, that others, somewhere in the world, are listening. Readers reach back, reacting and responding through comments or emails.

When I first began blogging in January 2005, I had no expectations about where it would take me. I had no idea what kind of response this blog would even get.

Roughly 18 months and some 360+ posts later, this blog has attracted visitors from every continent but Antarctica (not known anyway as a hotbed of mediator activity) and from countries around the world.

Many of these visitors have taken the time to contact me and let me know what they’re thinking. Some have even written to me in languages other than English. Typically by email but on occasion even by phone, these readers have responded with positive feedback, with constructive criticism, with ideas they thought would be of interest to me and my readers. They have reached out to educate me, to share knowledge, and to pass along news, articles, links, information about upcoming events, and book recommendations. Some have asked for advice or help with their own blogs. Some have just wanted to say hello to a fellow mediator.

A number of these have turned into meaningful friendships–people whose work I admire, opinions I respect, and whose ongoing support and encouragement sustains me as a mediator, as a blogger, and as a fellow traveler on planet earth.

Those of us in the conflict resolution field appreciate the importance of relationships and communication. Blogging provides opportunity–plenty of it–for both.

Blogging has succeeded in putting me in touch with remarkable individuals I might never have met otherwise. It has, in effect, allowed me to network with the entire world.

It’s a trip I encourage every mediator to take.

Interested in learning more about blogging? Please visit the World Directory of Alternative Dispute Resolution Blogs for links to resources, advice, ideas, and ways to get started for beginning bloggers.

And by all means please get in touch to let me know that you’re blogging. Other ADR bloggers and blog readers can’t wait to find out.

“If you do it for money, then you’re cheapening something special and meaningful that should only be done for love, out of the caring in your heart.”

Does that statement refer to

1) Sex
2) Raising dairy cattle
3) Cultivating cymbidium orchids
4) None of the above

If you chose 4), None of the above, you’d be right.

Believe it or not, what that statement actually refers to is mediation.

It was precisely what a volunteer community mediator said to me one long ago day when I mentioned to them my plans to go forward with a full-time mediation practice. “How are you going to support yourself?” they asked. I was puzzled for a moment, and then I replied, “Well, I’m not providing mediation services for free. I’m charging for them.” This was greeted at first with an appalled silence, and then, moments later, by those words this post began with.

The work mediators do is undeniably valuable. Mediators boldly go where angels fear to tread–right into the very heart of conflict. And, like intrepid guides, we are able to lead disputants to level ground. We help people achieve resolution and overcome their differences, even in the face of seemingly intractable conflict. We give them tools to improve their critical relationships, be they personal or professional.

As incredible as it sounds, there are still those within the mediation community, as well as those outside it who benefit the most from mediation’s advantages, who devalue the work of mediators.

Two dispute resolution professionals have written passionately and eloquently on behalf of underpaid mediators everywhere. Begin with Charles Parselle’s article from the most recent Mediate.com newsletter , “L.A.’s Policy Of Free Mediation Benefits Everybody But Mediator“. Then visit Mediation Mensch, published by ADR entrepreneur Dina Beach Lynch, who has written several articles exploring this issue: “Pay for Mediators Threatens Status Quo,” “Pro Bono NOT Volunteering,” and “Pro Bono Strategies for Mediators“.

We all need to ask ourselves: how do we value ourselves and the services we provide as mediators? Are we inadvertently devaluing our own worth? And what are we individually and collectively doing to increase or depreciate the value of the work we do? Mediators, you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Blogs by their very nature are a form of conversation. Most blogs, this one included, allow for reader commenting and encourage the exchange of opinions and ideas. The interaction of bloggers and blog-readers gives rise to what one blogger, writing for the E-mediators blog, has dubbed “multivocality”, which

[...r]efers to the multitude of voices participating in the creation of a weblog. By way of hyperlinking, commenting and trackbacks weblog readers in effect become secondary authors, this is the progression that induce multivocality. Multivocality, apart from depicting “many voices” is therefore the process that complicates the distinction between author and reader - blogs and blogging. As author and reader is constantly changing roles, they are in effect adding to an ongoing process - the weblog.

Shortly after I began blogging over a year and a half ago, readers have posted their comments. Not with the frequency I had hoped–most readers seem to prefer the privacy of email–but still often enough to keep things interesting. Through their comments they have let me know when I get it right and when they think I’m wrong. They have shared ideas and their own expertise. Their contributions have meant a lot.

I haven’t bothered with a comment policy. I didn’t think I needed one. I did begin using Blogger.com’s comment moderation feature last fall when I noticed that spammers were posting as comments unsolicited advertisements for products and services. It became a frequent annoyance, and I was wasting far too much time deleting these spam comments from my blog. Now readers must choose a user name and password and complete word verification to submit a comment. An additional hoop to jump through, I know, and while I certainly hope that it doesn’t inconvenience readers too much, I also hope all of you understand why I needed to enable comment moderation. I don’t want to read Viagra ads on a mediation blog and neither do you.

Apart from the Viagra ads, I saw no need to censor comments and continued to think that I didn’t need a comment policy.

That changed a few weeks ago. Someone posted a comment that was nothing more than a personal attack on my character. Although I’ve certainly had readers disagree with me strongly, they have always done so in a well reasoned and respectful way. Clashes of ideas are highly stimulating, and I’ve welcomed these differences of opinion.

This, however, was very different. Instead of attacking my viewpoint, this reader went after me personally. Since I had comment moderation enabled, I was faced with the decision of whether to publish or reject this comment. After consulting with several of my blogging colleagues, I decided to publish the comment, together with my response. After all, this comment said way more about the person who wrote it than it did about me. But my colleagues and I agreed that perhaps it was time for all of us to think about implementing a comment policy to anticipate the unanticipated.

What follows is the comment guidelines I have since developed for this blog. It tries to do honor to the principles that mediators endeavor to abide by. (And, since I wouldn’t ask you to do something that I wouldn’t ask of myself, this is the policy that guides me when I post comments on other blogs.)

Of course, since your comments matter to me, please feel to comment on this new policy. Your feedback is welcome.

1. I love to hear from my readers. Comments are encouraged.

That’s my starting point. Therefore, this policy is intended to be as unrestrictive as possible to encourage you to join the conversation.

2. Sticks and stones.

I may be a mediator, but I’m not mediating here. I’m blogging. I have strong opinions and express them. That’s part of the fun of blogging. If you disagree with me, that’s great. Tell me why. Disagree with me on the merits. Reveal the flaws in my reasoning. I welcome that. I’ll learn something.

What I ask in return is for no comments that

• Are potentially libelous
• Promote violence, discrimination, or hate crimes
• Are personal attacks or contain threatening language
• Provide false or misleading information
• Contain plagiarized or unattributed material

3. Taking the scenic route.

Mediation, negotiation, law, and conflict resolution offer plenty to talk about. So, I reserve the right to publish only comments that are related to the subject matter of this blog. Comments on weasel herding, as fascinating as they may be, are better suited for blogs on weasel herding.

4. And now for a message from our sponsor (not).

By all means share your comments, particularly if you have subject matter expertise. All of us, my readers and I, will benefit from your knowledge.

However, this blog is a commercial-free zone. Comments should not be mistaken for free advertising. Please, no comments that promote your business or commercial goods or services.

If you have written a book or offer a service or product you think my readers would be interested in, email me and tell me about it. I may decide to post about it. I can’t commit to passing the information along, but let me make the final decision.

Some exceptions: I reserve the right to promote events sponsored by academic institutions or non-profit associations for ADR professionals. I provide that information as a public service. I may also use this blog to announce classes, trainings, or programs that I myself am teaching.

Final thoughts.

Those are my guidelines for commenting. My hope is to encourage readers to participate in the life of this blog, to become the secondary authors envisioned by E-mediators. You inspire and give meaning to the writing that takes shape here. Your voice can be heard here. And your comments will always be welcome.

The World Directory of Alternative Dispute Resolution Blogs adds three more titles to its growing catalogue:

1. Disputing: Conversations about Dispute Resolution provides updates and commentary on arbitration law, with a special focus on Texas. Disputing is published by Karl Bayer and Robert Hargrove, two attorneys from Austin.
2. TogetherResolve, an English language blog, is published by mediator Emmy Irobi, based in Biala Podlaska, Poland. TogetherResolve explores mediation and conflict resolution with the hope of discussing ideas and sharing experiences with mediators around the globe. This is the World Directory’s first Polish mediation blog.
3. Settle It Now Mediation Blarg was launched earlier this month by Victoria Pynchon, publisher of the negotiation blog Settle It Now Blog Spot. To create the title for her site, she combined the word “blog” with “ar” for “alternate resolution” without the “d” in dispute, to come up with the title for a blog that explores insights and encourages inquiry into the practice and principles of mediation.

If you publish a dispute resolution blog (or one that is ADR-friendly) and would like to be added to the World Directory of ADR Blogs, please let me know. It’s a completely commercial-free site, and there is no cost to be listed. The Directory has information on submitting your blog and submission guidelines.

Technorati tags: alternative dispute resolution, blogging, mediation, mediation blogs

Last week my fellow blogger Stephanie West Allen forwarded to me a link to a provocative article recounting “Arbitration’s Fall From Grace“. It seems that companies which had been inserting mandatory arbitration clauses into contracts with their customers in an effort to avoid costly court battles are now finding themselves spending inordinate amounts of time and money fighting for the enforceability of these clauses in, ironically, court.

None of this should come as surprising news.

Many of us have long recognized that mandatory arbitration clauses are bad for business. They are bad for consumers and definitely bad for customer relations. Typically they form part of a contract of adhesion—a take-it-or-leave-it, one-sided agreement consisting of terms that the customer has no power to bargain for, usually printed in a microscopic font barely visible to the naked eye written in language that even lawyers have trouble understanding. This agreement is never directly brought to the attention of the customer, since it typically arrives in an envelope packed with advertising material and other irrelevancies–most customers are blissfully unaware that such an agreement exists at all.

Think about the message a mandatory arbitration clause conveys to the customer. Basically the message is this:

• If you have a legal beef with us, you can’t go to court.
• You have to use arbitration, and you will have to share with us the costs for the arbitrator’s services (of course if you could go to court, which you can’t, you’d be getting the judge’s time for free, courtesy of taxpayers).
• We, not you, get to pick the dispute resolution services company which will provide the arbitrator.
• If lots of you have a beef with us, you can’t join forces in a class action law suit to enforce your legal rights collectively and publicly. That would level the playing field between us, a mega-corporation, and you, an insignificant flyspeck of a customer. We can’t allow that.
• This dispute will be resolved according to the laws of a state far, far away from where you live and work–laws which favor us, not you.
• In short, we are going to stack the deck so thoroughly against you that you have little hope of achieving justice.
• Thanks, and have a nice day.

Mandatory arbitration clauses, in my own experience, seem to be favored by large corporations with poor customer service records and a history of unfair or deceptive business practices. Mandatory arbitration clauses are a way to limit corporate accountability to customers.

Mandatory arbitration clauses of course fail to address the underlying causes of customer dissatisfaction. They’re lousy conflict resolution tools.

So, instead of focusing on ways to limit liability, companies should be taking a preventative approach to managing problems with customers. This could include:

• Conduct an honest assessment of corporate policies regarding customer service–are they fair, consistently applied, and favor communication and clarity?
• Ensure adequate training of sales and customer service representatives
• Provide incentives to employees to serve customers better, not just increase sales
• Don’t hide contact information from customers–make it as easy as possible for them to get in touch with the right department and the right person to resolve their issue
• Acknowledge and take responsibility for mistakes–apologies are not optional
• Return customer phone calls and emails within hours, not days
• If an issue requires investigation, provide customers with frequent updates–even if the investigation is ongoing and no new data is yet available
• Create a customer service ombuds who can assist in the resolution of difficult disputes

Interestingly enough, “Arbitration’s Fall from Grace” drew attention to mediation’s far more positive track record:

As arbitration has fallen out of favor, mediation, a less frequently discussed alternate dispute resolution method, seemingly is gaining traction among corporations. Though the same issues that plague arbitration — a lack of discovery rights and enforceability — remain in mediation, the less-structured environment tends to be cheaper, less adversarial and quicker than an arbitration hearing.

At a recent continuing legal education event for corporate counsel in Atlanta, speaker David C. Vigilante, associate general counsel and chief litigation counsel at Turner Broadcasting, told the audience that he’s not a fan of arbitration because the process requires companies to give up some legal rights — and it’s binding. He called mediation “the worthwhile companion to its less worthwhile exercise, arbitration.”

In an interview after the event, he added that “most lawyers will tell you today that mediation is one of the most fantastic things to come along.”

Not surprising when mediation encourages communication, addresses misunderstandings, and levels the playing field for all parties at the table.

Shakespeare long ago penned these classic lines about reputation:

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.

Othello III.iii

These immortal words today carry special meaning for attorneys, no thanks to the recent launch of LawyerRatingz.com, a web site that allows visitors to anonymously (and seemingly indiscriminately) rate and post comments about attorneys.

The web site will undoubtedly leave most lawyers, as it did me, with a nasty taste in their mouths. On the home page a photo depicts three attorneys, all middle-aged white guys in suits, who smirk knowingly into the camera. In the web site’s forum, someone gloats, “For the first time in history, crummy lawyers are going to be held accountable for their misdeeds! I hope you can keep them from closing this site!” (Posted by a sadly misinformed soul who has evidently never heard of disbarment proceedings.)

Meanwhile, the cover of anonymity which the web site gives visitors has resulted in some cases in comments which border on the libelous. Dip in anywhere at random and click on the names of lawyers who have received negative ratings to see what I mean.

Since the raters do not identify themselves, attorneys have no way to shield themselves from or refute false accusations of unethical or illegal conduct. The ratings are there for all the world to see (and search engines to find). Gladys McKie, a lecturer at the Northeastern University School of Journalism, points out in an article in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly today (sorry, no free online version available) that “anyone can rate a lawyer regardless of whether the rater was a client or not. The rater could be a colleague who has an axe to grind, a neighbor who thinks you’re too noisy, or a friend of a disgruntled client.” Exactly.

What is unfortunate, too, is that while a forum like this may have limited usefulness for allowing dissatisfied clients to let off some steam, it does nothing constructive to address genuine issues that can and do arise between attorneys and their clients. Nor does the web site offer links to bar associations and boards of bar overseers where clients may far more productively address concerns about an attorney’s professionalism.

ADR professionals should take note of this as well. Although LawyerRatingz.com lists only 1,151 attorneys as of today, it is entirely possible that mediators and arbitrators may be counted among them. And, as ADR gains in popularity and public acceptance, it’s only a matter of time before someone thinks to launch MediatorRatingz.com–unless someone has gotten there already.

The Wall Street Journal on its CareerJournal.com web site reports on the results of its recent survey “2006 Best Careers“.

CareerJournal.com lists 14 attributes that make a career choice an excellent one:

• Advancement
• Autonomy
• Contribution to Society
• Creativity
• Customer Contact
• Friendly Co-workers
• Impressive to Others
• Income
• Intellectual Stimulation
• Job Security
• Lower Stress
• Predictable Hours
• Work-Life Balance
• Benefits

Although mediation doesn’t seem to have made CareerJournal.com’s list of most satisfying careers, mediation does meet many of these criteria. Plenty of intellectual stimulation, low stress, no indentured servitude to the Almighty Billable Hour, with lots of emphasis on contribution to society and work/life balance. (The only areas that a mediation career may come up short in are income and job security, which can prove illusive although not unobtainable. One of the jokes that mediators like to tell mediation trainees illustrates this all too well: What’s the difference between a mediator and a large cheese pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four.)

This special feature of CareerJournal.com comes with advice for anyone contemplating a career change. Articles to consider include “How to Switch Careers in Midlife” and “Five Almost Painless Ways To Make a Career Change“, which recommend one step in particular that make especially good sense for anyone who wants to transition to mediation from another career: Start a parallel career. (I would not recommend Step No. 5: Go cold turkey. Quitting your day job is rarely a wise move.)

For my thoughts on mediation training and careers, please read “How to become a mediator: five frequently asked questions about training and careers in mediation“.

For a list of blogs (good resources since they offer regularly updated content) that focus specifically on marketing for mediators, visit the World Directory of Alternative Dispute Resolution Blogs.

(Via the excellent George’s Employment Blawg.)

Technorati tags: mediation, mediation quotes

Grasping the devastating impact of violent conflict can be difficult, particularly for Americans who have not experienced ongoing full-out war on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. It is hard as well to imagine the land where missiles and mortar fly or to understand the distances between the cities and towns named in this morning’s headlines.

One blogger, Andy Carvin, determined to map out the geography of conflict between Israel and Lebanon and to measure it against the contours of more familiar terrains, has created a short video which overlaps a map of the Middle East with a map of New England to understand better the scale of the distances between the regions. Andy observes,

For Americans who are used to countries being thousands of miles wide, it’s quite astonishing to realize what a compact area of land is affected by the fighting. For example, the distance between Haifa and Beirut isn’t much difference than the distance between Providence, Rhode Island and Lowell, Massachusetts.

You can view Andy’s video at his blog.

Technorati tag: conflict resolution

Those of you who track representations of lawyers in popular culture will want to check out “A Coloring Book for Lawyers” (in PDF), which my son, a Legal Studies and Philosophy major at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, just sent me a link to (hey, thanks, Adamo). (A gold star for everyone who can color inside the lines.)

For additional posts that describe or deconstruct pop culture depictions of attorneys, please visit the following articles from this blog:

• The eyes have it: gauging public opinion of attorneys
• Bad reception: new television program distorts image of attorneys
• Hold the anchovies: law firm spoof seeks clients wronged by mediocre pizza
• All bets are off: should mediators and negotiators learn lessons from poker players?

Technorati tags: Culture and Society, Lawyers, popular culture

Settle It Now, a web-based dispute resolution journal which launched earlier this year, has issued a call for articles for an upcoming issue. Settle It Now, published quarterly, was founded by Victoria Pynchon, a California-based attorney-mediator and author of a negotiation blog, Settle It Now Blog Spot. The submission deadline is September 15, 2006.

Vickie Pynchon has asked me to share with my readers the following information about Settle It Now and its inaugural issue:

We have a distinguished Advisory Editorial Board and intend to become one of the five top academic journals of note in the fields of alternate dispute resolution and restorative justice practices, as well as the social, cultural, psychological and political study of conflict. We are looking for articles in the fields of mediation, arbitration, restorative justice, international relations, consensus building and peace activism.

Our first volume (see http://www.settlenow.org) is eclectic in subject matter and international in scope. Robert M. Nelson of the Canadian Gowlings law firm contributed an article on the use of alternate dispute resolution programs in post-Communist societies. Robert Dobbins provided an incisive essay on best practices in drafting mediation and arbitration agreements — the commercial litigation “pre-nup.” Kenneth Cloke graciously allowed us to publish a chapter from his new book, The Crossroads of Conflict. The chapter published, “Mediating Evil, War and Terrorism — the Politics of Conflict”, is an unflinching look at the evil we suffer and the evil we do. Troy Anthony Thomas provided us with a fascinating study of the conflict resolution style and substance of Jesus of Nazareth — a much needed investigation given our nation’s present religious polarization on nearly every critical issue from religious study and practice in the schools, to “intelligent design,” gay marriage, and abortion. How would Jesus have resolved these conflicts in modern society? Finally, Editor-in-Chief Victoria Pynchon included her own article on restorative justice practices in the criminal justice system. She reviews the ways in which former offenders can find peace and purpose in post-offender communities in much the same way that recovering alcoholics have pursued healthy and productive lives through the principles and practices of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Upcoming issues will feature other original articles, essays, book reviews, practice updates and transcripts of programs that are of interest to all those involved in conflict resolution, be they students, volunteers, working mediators, arbitrators, ombuds, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists or artists.

For further information, you can contact Vickie at vpynchon [at] settlenow.com, or view Settle It Now’s submission guidelines.

I am continually astonished and delighted by the capacity of the Internet for creating conversations.

Another experiment in building community and conversation online is underway at Virtual Chautauqua, a web site offering an interactive community learning experience.

What is Virtual Chautauqua? This description from the web site explains:

Before Monday Night Football, before talk radio, before web surfing and chat rooms, there was Chautauqua.

At the turn of the century, there were more than 10,000 Chautauqua venues in small towns and rural areas across the United States. People gathered to enjoy the famous authors of the day, the best musical ensembles, and art exhibits usually available only in major cities. After a stimulating presentation, participants wandered back to their porches and living rooms to discuss, debate, and reflect on what they had experienced together. The Chautauqua movement was all about learning in community.

Today, there are only a handful of Chautauqua sites left to provide this unique opportunity to share a rich menu of cultural and educational activities. We can never replace the pleasure of sitting together on the grass and talking long into a summer night. But we can make a time and place for learning in community - even in lives lived on Internet time.

In The Virtual Chautauqua we’re bringing some of the best of this learning tradition online.

July’s program features Carol Metzker, author of Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn. Appreciative Intelligence, discussed on this blog back in May, is the ability to see the potential hidden inside of challenges and to reframe problems into possibilities.

To participate in this Chautaqua, which begins on July 15 and runs until the end of this month, you can register for free online. I’m planning on attending as much of the conversation as my schedule will permit, so I hope to see some of you there. For more information on how Virtual Chautauqua works, please visit the Virtual Chautauqua web site.

This morning a friend, knowing my interest in the use of digital technology to foster human interaction, forwarded to me a link to the Yellow Chair Stories, one postgraduate art student’s experiment in using a wifi connection and one yellow wooden chair to create some community and conversation in the London neighborhood she lived in.

Anab Jain, as a project for the Royal College of Art, placed a brightly painted wooden chair together with a welcoming sign outside her flat which read, “My Wifi network is open for neighbours and passersby – FREE ACCESS FROM THIS CHAIR!”

Jain explains her experiment in art and social interaction this way:

By placing this sign and a yellow chair outside my house, I conducted a live service design intervention and extended the boundaries of my home to encompass the boundaries of my wireless network.

This ‘grass roots’ design approach illustrates how wireless technologies could become interfaces to recreate transient spaces for conversations at the threshold of the public and the private, the physical and the electronic.

Jain is bringing her work to California to ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge & the Thirteenth International Symposium of Electronic Art beginning on August 7.

(Thanks, Connie, for the link!)

The International Trademark Association (INTA) has announced that it is sponsoring an Alternative Dispute Resolution Online Competition to be held in April 2007. Registration is open to law students in the European Union.

According to INTA’s web site:

This online competition is designed to increase the student’s use and understanding of ADR. Law students representing schools throughout the EU will exercise their negotiation, mediation and advocacy skills to resolve hypothetical trademark law disputes. Prizes will be awarded to the most effective advocate teams and the most effective mediator, based on evaluations by distinguished professionals from INTA’s ADR Committee.

The deadline for registering is October 1, 2006, and the competition gets underway in April 2007. Details may be found on INTA’s web site.

(Via the IPKat blog, reporting on intellectual property law developments.)

The World Cup, which, alas, comes only once every four years, is a glorious example of international cooperation. During that time football-loving countries around the world put aside their differences and focus their energy and attention on what is described everywhere (except for the U.S., which in large part remains bafflingly hostile to soccer) as “the beautiful game“.

The World Cup, simultaneously a celebration of national pride and a model for international diplomacy, shows us what is possible when we come together in a common cause.

Dan Hull, host of this week’s edition of Blawg Review, the weekly review of the best in legal blogging, celebrates international relations and the law in what the anonymous editor of Blawg Review has called “The World Cup Blawg Review“.

No passport is necessary for this world tour of the legal blogosphere (which incidentally includes a stop in New Zealand to my friend Geoff Sharp and his blog, Mediator Blah…Blah…).

World Cup soccer fans and mediators alike will also appreciate the link to Why the FIFA World Cup Is and Should Be a Big Deal, an article published at the Harvard International Review, which celebrates the World Cup as a “great social, economic and political leveler”.

This post is the first in a series of essays on blogging for alternative dispute resolution professionals that will unfold over the course of the summer.

Blogging, after all, is an ideal medium for sharing ideas, transmitting knowledge, engaging in dialogue, and connecting with others in our field. My hope is that blogging will fire the imagination of conflict resolvers to the degree it has for other professions and endeavors.

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One of the benefits of membership in the Association for Conflict Resolution is the subscription to its quarterly magazine, ACResolution. I had eagerly awaited the Spring 2006 issue since its theme was “Marketing Your ADR Practice: How to Make Conflict Resolution Your Day Job.” I figured that somewhere in there there’d definitely be something on blogging, maybe even an entire article devoted to blogs.As it turned out, I was wrong. There wasn’t a single mention of the word “blog” anywhere in the entire issue.

Not even, to my utter amazement, in an article on “Marketing Your Mediation Practice on the Internet”. How could a national publication with a sizeable circulation fail to include blogs in a whole issue devoted to marketing? And how could blogs have been omitted entirely from an article specifically on marketing on the internet?

This seemed symptomatic to me of blogging’s overall invisibility to the ADR community–something I am determined to change.

The influence of blogging cannot be denied: blogs have shaped our political processes, transformed the way we conduct and market our businesses, revolutionized the dissemination of knowledge and information, and redefined journalism.

For ADR practitioners and scholars to understand the significance of blogs, it may be helpful to consider its impact on an allied field: the law.

Students, scholars, and practitioners of law have seized upon blogging as a medium for debating, transmitting, and developing ideas and theories about law and its practice. Law blogs (known as “blawgs”) have radically changed dialogue and scholarship on legal issues, leading Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor of Slate, to recently observe:

The most compelling, cutting-edge, honest legal writing being produced in this country today is happening on the Internet, and the crop improves daily. From the fistful of judges (including Richard Posner) who maintain regular blogs, to the vast and growing number of law professors and law students who find the time to post daily, it’s clear that the real bones and guts and sinew of the national conversation is happening online, and not in print.

Law blogs have become such an integral and influential part of the legal landscape that no less a bastion of legal scholarship than Harvard Law School recently held a symposium on “Bloggership: How Blogs are Transforming Legal Scholarship” at its Berkman Center for Internet & Society. (Papers presented at this symposium may be downloaded at the Social Science Research Network.)

Although law blogs emerged only as recently as 2002, today there are over 1,500, according to “Blog 2.0: The Next Stage of Lawyer Blogging“, a recent article published on the American Bar Association web site by influential law blogger Tom Mighell. Law blogs, which launched a revolution in communication for the legal community, have gained such momentum that they are now rapidly moving toward a “next stage” as the title of Mighell’s article reflects.

It seems surprising then that the popularity and success of law blogging have not been duplicated among ADR practitioners and scholars, given how many parallels lie between our field and the law.

Alternative dispute resolution, like the law, has produced dazzling scholarship, influential texts, and numerous symposia, conferences, and initiatives. Despite its relatively short history as a modern movement, it enjoys a rich tradition of intellectual endeavor and advancement, produced through collaboration and communication among its adherents. It is a field by virtue of its very nature that promotes and pursues the exchange of philosophies, beliefs, and ideas. It is all about conversation.

So, too, is blogging which provides an ideal medium for mutual discovery, exchange of knowledge, and fostering connection. And all you need is a computer, an Internet connection, and an idea to share.

Despite the slow initial growth of ADR blogs, both momentum and awareness are building.

The National Institute for Advanced Conflict Resolution (NIACR) recently made history in announcing the winners of its first Annual Mediation Blog Roundup. This award, the very first of its kind, goes far to legitimize and gain recognition for blogging in the conflict resolution field. My deepest appreciation to NIACR for raising the public profile of conflict resolution bloggers.

In addition, the editors at ACResolution contacted me in the spring to ask me to write a 500-word article on blogging which will appear in the Summer 2006 issue. That’s exciting, too, since this is the first time (to the best of my knowledge) that ACResolution has ever published a piece on blogging. The issue comes out this month (although unfortunately it won’t be available online).

Meanwhile, the number of ADR bloggers is growing. Since I launched the World Directory of ADR Blogs just a few weeks ago, I’ve already added more than a dozen new titles, and others will be coming soon.

Interested? There are ways that you can contribute to the conversation:

• Begin to read ADR blogs–see my blogroll (over on the right or here at Bloglines.com) for a list of ones I regularly follow, or visit the World Directory of ADR Blogs to find more. Some of the best include: Mediator Blah…Blah…, Mediator Tech, Campus ADR, ICT for Peacebuilding, Mediation Mensch, and Negotiating Tip of the Week.
• Post comments on ADR blogs as a way to get a feel for the medium (something you can do even if you don’t blog) and to take part in blogging discourse.
• Start an ADR blog (click here for information and resources on blogging).
• Support other ADR bloggers by linking to them or posting about them in your blog.
• Introduce yourself to established bloggers–send them an email and say hello. And if a blogger emails you, be sure to write back–it’s a great way to build your online network.
• Introduce yourself to new bloggers and make them welcome.
• Contact me to get your ADR or ADR-friendly blog added to the World Directory of Alternative Dispute Resolution Blogs.

If you need help or have questions about blogging, count on me as your resource. Get in touch with me or the other ADR bloggers who are out there. And please check back here at Online Guide to Mediation for more articles in this series on blogging as I share with you the benefits that publishing a blog can bring.

Technorati tags: alternative dispute resolution, blogging, mediation, mediation blogs

A newly published study by researchers at the McGill University Pain Genetics Lab show that mice are capable of empathy. This study provides evidence that the capacity for empathy is not limited to humans and higher mammals and that empathy in fact may be hardwired into all mammals as a mechanism to ensure that species survive.

“Emotional contagion“, the name given by scientists to describe the mouse’s automatic empathetic response to witnessing a fellow mouse in pain, also explains why yawning is contagious.

Victoria Pynchon, an attorney-mediator whose impressive credentials include 25 years of experience in commercial litigation coupled with an LL.M. in dispute resolution from the Straus Institute, Pepperdine Law School, has just launched a negotiation blog, Settle It Now Blog Spot.

Vickie describes her blog this way:

My blog is a negotiation blog, covering distributive and integrative negotiation techniques, interspersed with short articles about the social psychology of conflict, transformational mediation and mindfulness in commercial mediation and litigation…I find that most litigators and trial attorneys HATE to negotiate because they have never been educated or trained to do so. The blog is meant to convey the nuts and bolts essentials of mediation and to do so in a lively and entertaining manner. I hope attorneys will be able to skim my entries in the 5 minutes they have every other day to take a breath and relax.

Vickie also publishes Settle It Now, a web-based dispute resolution journal.