Action Nerds

Studio Days

Posted by Jeremy Beaudry | November 29th, 2011

Recent work in the Action Mill studio

The Action Mill hosted members of the core team from the State of Vermont (who have quickly become our colleagues) in the studio last week for a 2-day intensive design session. The days were long, exhausting, energizing, challenging and immensely rewarding; and having that amount of focused time to discuss, act and design together was a real milestone for the work and our deepening relationship with our partners.Read more

Design Thinking and Transformation

Posted by Jeremy Beaudry | September 20th, 2011

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Design thinking is only the beginning of how we work.

Last week, as Jethro mentioned in his recent blog post, the Action Mill attended Transform 2011, a design conference that is hosted by the Center for Innovation at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.Read more

Meaningful Business

Posted by Rob Peagler | August 2nd, 2011

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What would meaningful action look like if it permeated all aspects of our work?

What would meaningful action look like if it permeated all aspects of our work? What if we designed our business—from the way we market our work, to our approach to financial management and human resources—to be fully grounded in our values? And what if the way we engaged with our potential clients was itself meaningful? Could we function, even thrive, as a business? What advantages would it create for our clients and for us?Read more

Getting unstuck from blood diamonds

Posted by Nick Jehlen | May 10th, 2011

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If Leonardo DiCaprio can't get us to stop buying diamonds, what can?

I hurt my back pretty badly last year. To recover, I’ve had to change a lot of my behaviors and create a number of new rituals. One is a weekly four mile walk, split in the middle by a nice bowl of soup at Wagamama. Always the same route, always the same soup, always with my notebook so I can do some writing.Read more

The TEA Cycle

Posted by Nick Jehlen | May 3rd, 2011

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A model for conveying understanding through new behaviors

There are several names for the kinds of problems we work on – intractable problems, wicked problems, social messes – which are all ways of describing problems in systems that are complex, changing and unpredictable. Health care in the US, for example, and global climate change, but also neighborhood development and organizational crisis. Read more

How much time will it really take?

Posted by Meredith Warner | April 28th, 2011

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At the Action Mill, we use the Fibonacci Sequence to set time limits on our tasks and conversations. You should too!

The Fibonacci Sequence is a series of numbers. By definition, the first two Fibonacci numbers are 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, ...

The sequence appears frequently in nature-- in leaf arrangements, scales, fruits, grains, hives, branches, shells and the like. It is a matter of efficiency in growth and light exposure. You can even find it in some proportions in our own bodies.Read more

Limited language

Posted by Nick Jehlen | February 21st, 2009

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Rules are often restrictive, but the right rules can set you free.

Part of our ongoing discussion about online communication with Social Media for Social Change.

We talked a bit in our last meeting about working with limited vocabulary and how it can change communication. This is an extension of one of my favorite tools for working on a problem, and one that we use in the Action Mill all the time: rules. Read more

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Where are the commons?

Posted by Nick Jehlen | February 12th, 2009

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What do we mean by the “commons”? The commons are spaces where we interact with other people.

(Crossposted at Social Media for Social Change (SMSC), a collaboration between the Action Mill and faculty (Jeremy Beaudry, a super-smart friend of the Action Mill) and students Ona Krass, Hunter Augeri, and Alie Thomer from the College of Media and Communication. SMSC is a design research project that investigates how networked technologies and social media may be used to create hybrid public spaces — bridging the physical and the virtual — where civil discourse and meaningful democratic participation are facilitated, organized, and nurtured at a grass-roots level.)

In our work at the Action Mill, we talk about “taking action in the commons” as an important component of social change work. But what do we mean by the “commons”? The commons are where we interact with other people. Public spaces are only commons when there are people interacting in them – people who don’t already agree with each other, or aren’t already part of a group.Read more

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