In 2004, I wrote a piece called “Movement as Network” which captured the imagination of a number of people in the social change community. Over the intervening years, I’ve wanted to follow up on many of the ideas that grew out of that work and my experiences at Groundwire. That is what I will be doing here at the Alchemy of Change blog.

What can you expect to find in this blog? Well, networks play a big role in how I see the world and I think a lot about organizations and how they engage people in their work. Democracy, innovation and sustainability are also key themes that you’ll find woven into much of what I write.

I’ll be trying to write in a modular format with lots of links to related posts so that after a few months there will be a nice little kernel of interconnected ideas for others to use in their work with organizations and networks.  Beyond that, I don’t know exactly where this will go.

Turning to writing has been a big step for me. This morning, while at a gathering for my son’s school a man asked me what I do for a living. After a few moments hesitation, I told him “I write. I am a writer.”

So, I guess I better get to it.

That’s what I feel tonight after our new http://groundwire.org website went live today – pretty much without a hitch. This site is the culmination of a lot of work over the last 12 months, creating the new name and the new branding that surrounds it.

Groundwire is the new name for ONE/Northwest. The new brand represents our hopes and dreams for the movement for a sustainable society – that it be more “connected” to people. This is the key to shifting society on the scale that we need at this time in our history.

You are connected.