Mediate.com, the world’s most visited conflict resolution web site, has added something new: a list of Featured Blogs. Designated by Mediate.com as “the leading Blogs in the fields of mediation and dispute resolution”, the blogs featured this month are:

Geoff Sharp’s Mediator Blah…Blah… and Mediation vBlog Project
Gini Nelson’s Engaging Conflicts
and this blog, Online Guide to Mediation

Thanks to Jim Melamed, co-founder of Mediate.com, for this distinct honor.

For just $19.95 a year, Deathswitch, a new web service promising to “bridge mortality”, allows users to communicate important information after death with surviving family members, colleagues, and others.

Among the uses Deathswitch advertises that it is suitable for are expressing final wishes, disclosing “unspeakable secrets”, and, not surprisingly, having the “last word in an argument”.

This proves yet again the extremes to which people will go to avoid difficult conversations. We mediators evidently need to improve our marketing strategy.

Long lines at the bank. Broken parking meters. Expanding prices, shrinking paychecks. Loud cell phone conversations in the movie theatre. No toilet paper in public restrooms.

There’s nothing like the small, daily indignities of human existence that can make comrades of us all.

At least that’s the premise behind Complaints Choirs Worldwide. The inspiration of two Finnish artists who recognized that kvetching is a universal phenomenon, Complaints Choirs Worldwide was created to provide people with a musical outlet for complaining and to bring them together to sing about it.

You can listen to the Helsinki Complaints Choir online (with English subtitles).

What we do has impact. Every deed, every word.

In just 90 seconds, the video “Children See, Children Do” shows how powerful that impact can be when it comes to the children whose lives we touch.

This video is part of a public awareness campaign of Child Friendly Australia, an initiative of the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN).

If you want to make the world a better place (and who doesn’t), watch this short clip.

(Thanks to the blog Dumb Little Man for the link.)

I have written before of the power of online games as a medium for building social awareness and raising consciousness (”War games: digital technology provides medium for educating and influencing” and “USC students develop virtual game to bring real-world attention to Darfur crisis“).

According to this story reported on the blog Boing Boing, the Spanish organization, Mensajeros de la Paz (Messengers for Peace), in an effort to raise world awareness of the plight of abused and abandoned children, has created an online presence in the virtual world of Second Life in the form of a homeless teenager. A video clip is available at YouTube.

Geographic literacy is critical to our ability to understand the world we inhabit. Those who enjoyed last week’s post on the Upside Down Map which depicts the world from a whole new perspective will enjoy challenging yourselves with a game that tests your knowledge of world geography.

How geographically literate are you?

For those of you who monitor depictions of attorneys or negotiation in popular culture, this video of two lawyers negotiating brings whole new meaning to “getting to yes”.

(Caution: not suitable for workplace viewing.)

(Thanks to Boing Boing.)

One of the talents that a mediator offers is the ability to help people see their world — and the people and problems in it — in wholly different ways.

I was therefore delighted to discover in the Boston Public Library’s online map collection a map that does exactly that–invites people to see the world anew.

For centuries now traditional maps have offered a Eurocentric view, depicting the world with the northern hemisphere on top. This map, however, literally and figuratively turns convention on its head.

To explore similar cartographic creations, also pay a visit to the The Upsidedown Map Page.

There are so many sights (or is that sites?) worth seeing on the information highway. It’s hard to find them all, let alone have time to explore them in depth. To save you some time and mileage, here are some recommended destinations this week for conflict resolution professionals:

Stephanie West Allen continues her Legal Highlights series at her blog Idealawg with an interview with the influential Kenneth Cloke, a pioneer and leader in the alternative dispute resolution field.

Erin Gleason at Open Discourse: International Dispute Resolution gets in the last word in the spot-on post “Cross-Cultural Negotiation: The Neutral’s Responsibility“.

Josh Weiss interviews David Lax, author of: 3-d Negotiation: Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most Important Deals, in this week’s edition of Negotiating Tip of the Week.

Victoria Pynchon ponders the extent to which we’re hard-wired for collaboration in “Unhappy Lawyers and the Cooperative Hard Wire” at the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog.

Ross Runkel at his Arbitration Blog asks an important question: “Arbitration – Is Justice Served?”

Geoff Sharp at Mediator Blah…Blah… presents a three-part series on BS detection, here, here, and here. Bring your shovel and hip boots.

Diversity Advantage invites thought on leveraging diversity in a brainstorming session.

Language Log looks at pseudoscience, journalism, and people’s propensity to seek out urban legends which confirm their prejudices, and also takes a poke at doublespeak in the “war on terror”.

Any mediator who’d like to get in on the blogging fun would do well to read Tammy Lenski’s latest post on “Choosing a Name for Your ADR Blog“.

Finally, happy belated birthday and wedding anniversary to Mediation Mensch Dina Lynch!

There’s a little mediation history in the making going on right now in cyberspace.

My friend Geoff Sharp, the Wellington, New Zealand, attorney and mediator who publishes the witty and irreverent weblog Mediator Blah…Blah…, has launched the world’s very first mediation video blog, the Mediation vBlog Project.

Geoff has extended an open invitation to mediators around the world to participate in this first-of-its-kind forum:

I started on this project because I have always been a little uneasy about the way we mediators work behind closed doors, without much sunlight in the room …so time to change that with the video blog project.

My hope is that we’re going to be the first, the very first, to track our practice by video blog - a kind of mediation genome project by video blog.

The idea is to take advantage of recent video sharing technology to post short video clips of mediators everywhere at work, the more live the better. The growth of video social networking is amazing with 60,000 new videos uploaded every day and over 100 million viewed every day, as more people explore this type of online medium.

So the aim is ambitious. The object of the vBlog Project is to provide a platform for mediators from all over the world to share our images by video. It may take some getting used to but think of the possibilities for exchange when you see colleagues in Germany, UK and Boston debriefing a mediation or giving us a glimpse of themselves as they go about their professional life. One things for sure, unless you contribute the project won’t take off, so how about giving it a go?

Geoff asked me to record the first video clip to welcome him and, of course, you. You can see for yourself at the Mediation vBlog Project.

(And don’t forget the popcorn.)

The Internet is a place of continuous discovery. At once marketplace, library, and public square, its wealth of voices, viewpoints, and ideas never ceases to delight and enlighten me.

Although the pleasures of new discoveries are great, there are places on the web that I find myself returning to often, just as any of us do in the real world we inhabit. One of these for me is the blog Idealawg, published by Stephanie West Allen. With an original voice, this blog explores and reveals the art within the practice of law. It skillfully traverses ground as well that mediators will feel at home in–idea productivity, restorative justice, conflict resolution, client relations, and, of course, mediation.

This fall Stephanie introduced a new feature, Legal Highlights–interviews with members of the legal profession aimed at putting the focus on what’s right and what’s working with the legal profession and justice. As Stephanie explains:

One of my goals with Legal Highlights is to balance out, perhaps round out, all that we read and hear about what’s wrong with the legal profession and system. With the Highlights, let’s focus on the uplifting, the affirmative, the effective, the professional, the gratified, the decent, the good.

Stephanie honored me recently by inviting me to participate in a Legal Highlights interview–the fourth one in this series. You can read it here.

(Thank you, Stephanie–and congratulations on creating such a fine resource for dispute resolution professionals.)

Anyone who trains mediators is always on the lookout for good videos for training or teaching purposes. They’re tough to come by. Finding free videos is even harder.

Thanks to the efforts of Professor James Coben of Hamline University School of Law Dispute Resolution Institute, 20 videos depicting mediation in litigation contexts are available for downloading, all at no cost. (Some of you may remember that Professor Coben is also the author of one of my favorite articles on mediation, in part because of its great title, “Gollum, Meet Sméagol: A Schizophrenic Rumination on Mediator Values Beyond Self Determination and Neutrality” (PDF), discussed here in a post from last year.)

All that Professor Coben, who produced these videos, asks in return is that you notify him if you’re using the videos and let him know the context, and of course to provide proper attribution before showing them. A very small price to pay indeed.

Some of the videos are better than others, and downloading should definitely not be attempted without a high-speed internet connection. What makes some of these vignettes especially fun are the deliberate mistakes here and there you’ll see the actor-mediators make–lots of food for thought and discussion here.

Thanks to my colleague and friend, Melinda Gehris, for the link.

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

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

The University of Minnesota has produced an online guide designed to assist families prevent and address disputes over estates. Who Gets Grandma’s Yellow Pie Plate offers information and resources to aid families in making tough, emotionally fraught decisions over the inheritance of personal property.

There are free articles available as well on this site, along with some quizzes to assess your estate planning preparedness.

Mediators, however, will come away disappointed. Although this excellent site offers useful material and resources, mediation was somehow omitted from a web site created to assist families prevent, reduce, and address conflicts over estate-related issues.

(Thanks to Joel Schoenmeyer, author of the Death and Taxes Blog, for the link.)

Those of you who are on the alert for depictions of attorneys in popular culture should take a look at this pizza ad campaign for Donatos Pizza, which hilariously lampoons ambulance-chaser web sites.

(Via the Duct Tape Marketing Blog.)

Technorati tags: Culture and Society, Lawyers

Here’s a reminder to long-time subscribers and news for first-time visitors to this blog.

If you have a blog or a web site devoted to alternative dispute resolution, mediation, conflict management, negotiation, or if you publish a blog that regularly features posts about mediation or ADR, please sign yourself up to be listed at any or all of the following web sites:

Directory of Alternative Dispute Resolution Blogs

Currently this directory, a mediation blog work in progress which I launched just last month, lists 30 alternative dispute resolution and negotiation blogs, together with blogs that are mediation-friendly, across eight different categories. If you’d like your blog listed here, let me know. My hope is to do for ADR blogs what Blawg.org did for law blogs–a madcap scheme, I know, but, hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?

Alternative Dispute Resolution Web Ring

Anyone who owns a piece of Internet real estate–a blog, a web site, a wiki, a directory, an online community–devoted to ADR, mediation, conflict resolution, negotiation, you name it—can request a listing here. You can even upload a small image to appear next to your listing when you sign up.

For more details, you can visit the ADR Web Ring Portal, or go straight to the web ring itself.

Map of the Alternative Dispute Resolution World

Put yourself on the Map of the Alternative Dispute Resolution World, where you can post a message and add a link back to your web site or blog. (It’s also fun to see where around the globe your fellow mediators hang out.) This guestmap is not as populated as I’d like to see it–my goal is to have all continents (yes, including Antarctica) represented.

Listing on all of these sites is free of course–just a link back is all I ask.

Technorati tags: Blogging, mediation blogs, mediation, mediators, online guide to mediation, Internet

Ian Best, the law student I told readers about who is blogging for credit at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, has at last completed his taxonomy of law blogs.

Hunting through Best’s categories is rewarding for anyone whose work is grounded in or shaped by the practice or study of law. Explore at random to sample law blogging in all its seemingly infinite variety. Best’s categories break blogs down in numerous ways, including by state (my home state, Massachusetts, has two) and by specialty.

There’s something for everyone here, mediators included, since Best has included a category for alternative dispute resolution blogs. Visit Best’s blog, 3L Epiphany, to see for yourself. (And congratulations to you, Ian, on a job well done.)

Business travelers, human resources professionals, mediators, and anyone else who actively seeks to develop their global awareness should visit Culturosity, a web site created to advance multicultural learning and support diversity. According to founder Kate Berardo,

Culturosity.com is committed to helping individuals find the resources, experiences, and opportunities that will open their minds and broaden their perspectives. We help people understand global realities and empower them to live and work effectively in a multicultural world.

Culturosity includes a learning center where visitors can download articles on cross-cultural communication, diversity, and cultural awareness (challenge yourself with the Diversity Test), learn about opportunities to travel or study abroad, build their capacity for greater cultural awareness, gain insights into diversity, or explore specific cultures in greater depth. Culturosity links to many useful web sites, including Executive Planet, where international road warriors can download to their Palm handhelds a guide to business culture and etiquette in 45 countries, Diversity Central which focuses upon workplace diversity, and the Alliance for Conflict Transformation, just to name a few.

Culturosity even offers downloadable Pop Culturosity Guides which uses pop culture as a means of transforming day-to-day activities “into intercultural learning opportunities”. There’s plenty here to help all of us connect more meaningfully with the world we inhabit.

As anyone knows who has tried to get through to customer service by phone, probably nothing is more frustrating than being trapped in phone menu hell.

The Boston Globe reports this morning that Paul English, of Arlington, Mass., has come to the rescue. Today marks the launch of English’s online campaign, gethuman.com, a web site aimed at helping stressed-out consumers beat automated voice response systems to get through to an actual human being.

gethuman.com features a handy list of “gethuman cheats” arranged alphabetically by company, as well as some all-purpose tips to help you avoid spending eternity on hold.

To learn how you can join Paul’s cause and rage against the machine, click here.