iEmerge — Integral 360: the History, Future, Life, and Death of the Integral Vision

Bay Area Integral is thrilled to announce our third iEmerge event (our take on the hip, intelligent TED talks) – with three speakers presenting integral perspectives on the topic of the history, future, life and death of the integral vision itself.

Our community is bristling with brilliant minds (emerging voices, not just big name speakers) who are applying vision-logic to some of the most important issues in the world. It’s fantastic to hear from the well-known speakers and teachers we bring to our popular speaker event series, AND we also want to hear from and foster younger, more local, up-and-coming integral thinkers with something to say.

iEmerge is a forum not only for these vital emerging voices but also for the focused exchange of ideas, passion and cross-pollination among all of us in the integral-evolutionary community. To the TED-style talks we will add consistent Integral clarity and 2nd person engagement, and creating focused interactive, engaged We-Space too!

So please join us in welcoming our third slate of iEmerge speakers, and wish them luck—it will be a fast-moving evening with 18-minute talks and engaged dialogue. Don’t miss it!

Michael Richardson-Borne:
Documenting The Worldwide Renaissance

How can Integral leadership stop “leading” with the dogma and “brand” of Integral and instead move into culture “integrally informed” but without proselytizing the theory? How is Integral’s next generation or “Second Wave” showing up differently in the world? How can the Worldwide Renaissance be documented and how can young Gen Xers and Millennials unite in a global cultural movement unlike anything ever witnessed on the planet? We’ll explore this and much more by discovering the journey that manifested a new Integrally informed platform of micro-documentary films called The Renaissance Project.

Michael Richardson-Borne is an author, filmmaker and digital media expert. He is the founder of Creativity Camera, a San Francisco based creative firm and production studio dedicated to the human spirit as conduit for art, innovation, culture and story. Ken Wilber called his first book, Suicide Dictionary, a “startlingly original work of sheer genius”. Michael and C-CAM recently launched The Renaissance Project, a global invitation to filmmakers and bloggers to document the Worldwide Renaissance in the age of new media. Learn more at creativitycamera.com and therenaissanceproject.com.

Dr. Keith Merron:
Notes From the Field: 30 years of success and failure applying integral theory

Longer than perhaps anyone in the world, Dr. Merron has been applying integral theory to the practice of transforming individuals, leaders, and organizations. His research, over 30 years ago, with Bill Torbert, helped form the foundation of integral theory and spiral dynamics and he has been working as a integral practitioner ever since. He earned his doctorate at Harvard University on the subject of ego development and leadership effectiveness, the core of which has influenced his work with countless leaders all over the world. He will present on his experience, offering a window into the beginnings of the notion of integral theory as we know it today and his lessons learned.

Dr. Keith Merron is the founder and Managing Partner of Avista Consulting Group, an organizational consulting and leadership development firm dedicated to helping organizations with bold visions achieve sustainable high performance and industry leadership. As an organization effectiveness and executive development consultant, he has more than 30years of experience assisting executives and managers in business, government, and education. In partnership with his clients, he has successfully conducted over twenty-five large-system strategic, cultural, and technical change efforts resulting in a measurable increase in organizational productivity, employee performance, and employee satisfaction. His work has positively impacted Hewlett- Packard, Freddie Mac, AmeriGroup Corporation, MedCath, Wang Laboratories, General Public Utilities, WorldCorp, California State Automobile Association, Endocare, The Healthcare Financial Management Association, as well as over 200 other companies and organizations.

Karen De Looze:
Dying for Post-Dummies: an integrally informed perspective on death and dying

I am ripping you open. I am making you bleed in vulnerability.
I, Death, see you.
I am the emptiness that embraces you, right now. I am the darkness in which you shine.
I am the Love in which you claim; arrogant.
I am the immortal in which you stand mortal.
And yet, we are one.

I would like to invite you to investigate with me some of the crucial assumptions we hold about death, inspired by our cultural patterning. We will discover how these assumptions impact the perspective we mostly take when we discuss death, and how they influence even the practices we engage in when we have gathered the courage it takes to ‘face’ death. What does an integral ‘take’ on death offer those who want to engage with their mortality in a wider variety of ways? How can it foster the intensity of our awakening to the ‘little deaths’ we ‘live’ on a day-to-day basis, to finally bring us to the point where we die the ‘death that precedes death’? What are some of the phases and types that our acquaintance with death may move through or touch on? How can we welcome our own mortality as profoundly and fully as possible, dancing through the space that integral lays out for us to explore? Could the fruits of such an exploration contribute to and transform integral consciousness in turn.

Karen De Looze is a PhD researcher in the Interdisciplinary Center Leo Apostel at Brussels Free University. She is fascinated by people’s ‘hope of permanence amidst the drama of transience.’ Over the years, she discovered the importance of being at ease with her own mortality and as a result, she has sought to deepen her embrace of this fact layer by layer. Karen has a background in pedagogic sciences, social & cultural anthropology, and cultures & development studies, and has recently completed the apprentice module in Integral Coaching ®. Her current research has taken her to study rituals that are held for the dead and dying in several places in India for nearly two years.