Tag: free

#8 Mattering + Podcast With Douglas Drummond | September 2026

8 reconnect quote little bear - fireside.rs - newsletter image
Image attribution: Tobias Keller + quote attribute

Welcome to the eighth newsletter from fireside.rs, ‘unlocking creative productivity by gathering humans effectively.’

This month the fifth fireside.rs workshop was hosted by TED-Style Talks + Discussions in the capital city of Aotearoa / New Zealand with 36 community members participating:

A purely analogue, synchronous and novel learning experiences, not mediated by screens or technology but instead amplified through the sharing of space and time with the intent to nurture human connection.

These are experiments in sketching with humans, designed to allow those involved to get a sense of mattering merely through participation. To feel seen. To feel safe. To feel curious to learn / do more.

Currently have three workshops lined up during my upcoming Brisbane and Melbourne October trip, after which the ‘no-fee’ offer will be phased out.

So if you’re interested in bringing this unique learning experience to your community / staff (just cover my expenses), please do get in touch.

Until then, take care of yourselves and each other,

DK
fireside.rs Founder and Creative Gatherer

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

Where we feature, celebrate and learn from those who craft spaces for humans to actively belong and be, introducing:
8 Douglas Drummond - fireside.rs podcast - episode image

SHOW NOTES & PULL QUOTES

2.11: “They were doing a lot of reconciliation work and working with their premiers, a lot of land reconciliation, restoration work, and a dive deep into that perspective of the impact of colonisation and the tension and the calling to the conflict resolution and how effective gatherings and true manaakitanga hospitality can bring us together.”

9.23: “And the Esalan Institute in its history, founded in 62, amazing academic scholars, predominantly white psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health immersion, Aldous Huxley and Abraham Maslow and many other incredible academic pioneers founded and seeded their work there.”

10.28: “And this continuity, again, of reconciliation working with Indigenous groups, for me, it’s apex in terms of the calling of the type of work that I wanted to do. And quite a bit of that discord around diversity, equity, inclusion as a movement. But for me, it was always about human rights. How do we treat people with respect and dignity?”

16.41: “And we gather consistently in families, workplaces, these retreats, conferences, ceremonies, community. But being physically together doesn’t necessarily mean we are connected. And so to me, that effective gathering begins with this, I would say, a simple understanding that people want to know that they matter. And I might say that people want to feel loved. And want to feel connected and they want to feel that their participation has meaning.”

17.19: “So I always kind of bring it into these three levels of relationship, which is the relationship to yourself, ourselves, the relationship to another, and the relationship to the group and the community. And the premise and the real lensing of the methodology that’s helped me deliver this is through the work of Gabrielle Roth’s work, which is called The Five Rhythms, which is a moving meditation practice. And that really does run through predominantly the facilitation work that I do.”

18.36: “So when we walk into a room and our bodies are already reading this narrative,it’s certainly for me, and it’s definitely been shared in response and feedback from others, is do I feel welcome here? The question of who has status here? Who are the folks in the room that feel the most comfortable? Who looks like me? Who do not look like me? Is there a place where I can speak openly and truthfully? Can I disagree with people? Have I been watched or surveilled in some way?”

19.35: “And one of the distinctions I find useful between fitting in and belonging, and like fitting in might say I can be part of this if I can understand the rules and adapt myself, and then belonging would sort of suggest is there enough room for me here to participate without losing myself, And so it’s belonging without sameness. We really celebrate the differences and the diversity. And can I remain myself and still remain in relationship with someone else? Can you disagree with me without becoming an enemy or without becoming an adversary? And the connection doesn’t require agreement.”

23.44: “So we bring a lot of competency. We look at status, play with a lot of humor. There’s elements of strength. But if those currencies are the only ones available, it can be difficult to say, I’m frightened. I don’t know. I’m lonely. I need help. Or simply like, I’m just not sure who I am right now. So Moving Men is partly about creating enough relational permission for men to encounter those places without shame.”

29.31: “So effective getting becomes much more than how we run a good meeting and the deeper questions become like, you know, perhaps who has authority there? That’s really important around the protocol. Whose knowledge has been centered? What has been promised previously? Who carries the labor of maintaining the relationship? And it’s really important to acknowledge those before in the past and those may still very much well be there. And then are we listening in order to respond or listening to be genuinely understood?”

30.34: “And you can’t schedule a reconciliation workshop and declare the work complete. And often in that Western mindset, sometimes it can seem quite linear, but it’s very relational. And, you know, it gets built on repeat encounters and following through, returning, listening and getting things wrong. And then also just having the honesty and the vulnerability to acknowledge that. And then we can start leaning into the repairing and listening and continuing. the effectiveness of the gathering often can’t be measured simply by how people felt when they walked out of the room. That’s often the measure when it happens three months, six months, a year later.”

37.08: “You can’t understand a river without understanding the landscape around it. You can’t actually understand a human interaction without understanding the wider system and looking at culture and history and asking questions around power and identity and community and then bring it back to self, like to the body and the stories you mentioned before, the stories we carry. They’re all in the room. They’re all with us when we come together.”

Podcast music attribution: All I Did Was Wait For You: The Upbeat and Positive Track for Podcast or YouTube by kjartan_abel — https://freesound.org/s/543781/ — License: Attribution 4.0

Some creativity, productivity and gathering related content for the brain / heart:

“Three chords and a domain name.
I. WE ARE THE DIY KIDS
II. WE OWN THE MASTERS NOW
III. NO A&R, NO VENTURE CAPITAL, NO GATEKEEPERS
IV. THE ZINE NEVER DIED, IT JUST GOT A DOMAIN
V. MAKE WHAT YOU NEED, NOT WHAT “EVERYONE” NEEDS
VI. WEIRD IS A FEATURE
VII. IT’S AN ALL-AGES SHOW
VIII. THIS IS THE COUNTERCULTURE NOW.”
The IndieWeb Is Punk Manifesto

“By 1176, Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd, a medieval Welsh prince, had become one of the most powerful rulers the country had ever known. He’d successfully banished Norman invaders from his lands, made peace with King Henry and rebuilt Cardigan castle in stone. Prosperous and secure, he threw a grand holiday tournament, inviting bards and musicians to play and compete under his patronage in the first recorded eisteddfod, roughly, a “sitting together” – a tradition that still lives on today. This year’s national eisteddfod, a celebration of Welsh language, culture and creativity, has returned to its roots near Lord Rhys’s castle for its 850th birthday.”
‘It’s Glastonbury on wheels’: Welsh eisteddfod cultural event celebrates 850th year | Festivals | The Guardian

If you’re on a Mac / using iOS then check out this free ambient sounds app Blankie.

Explore Dark Hours and see if it’s worth going out tonight to look at the stars and other celestial bodies.

Thank you again and please do get in touch with any ideas / comments / insights / suggestions etc. plus encourage others who care about ‘unlocking creative productivity by gathering humans effectively’ to subscribe also:

Published

#5 Sketching + Podcast With Elena de Kan | June 2026

5 imagination einstein quote - fireside.rs - newsletter image

Welcome to the fifth newsletter from fireside.rs, ‘unlocking creative productivity by gathering humans effectively.’

This past month, I had the good fortune to facilitate the first ever fireside.rs workshops (in Wellington and Christchurch).

This is a learning experience designed to expose participants to a multitude of collaboration shapes / models of gathering in an attempt to ignite their imagination to the array of possible ways to work and create and be together.

For me as a facilitator it was also an attempt to ‘sketch with humans’ and observe how others interact with the curricula, to deconstruct how to improve, what to drop, where to add etc.:

Timelapse from the first ever firesider.rs workshop

As illustrated above, the first and last shape participants experience is the conceptual fireside, where darkness is used as a design element to engender safety, trust and reflection. What happens in between is a myriad of human forms which can be adapted / adopted into future cooperative ventures (beyond the simple ‘meeting’ shape).

Deep gratitude to those who entered the space(s) with curiosity and kindness, thank you for your presence and contribution.

Here’s what a bunch of people said about it:

“Thank YOU DK!! Such a treat of an evening – all the gathering experiments you did on us all sparked so much connection and insight. My data-driven-nerdy-gathering-mindset absolutely loved how your creative flair hosted and created the spaces for everyone to experiment widely. THANK YOU!”
Antonia Milkop, Leadership Coaching & Facilitation + author of Team Spirit: the power of purposeful gatherings
“Invigorating evening DK. Thoroughly enjoyed the experience.”
Ian (Harv) Harvey, Founder at Collective Intelligence
“This was a great evening. Was so different to anything I’ve done before and really brought me out of my comfort zone. Thank you DK.”
Cory Hay, LLB/BCom Student | Social Innovator

Big thanks to host partners Goodlife Collective (Wellington event held at two/fiftyseven) plus Unchatter (Christchurch event held at Mt Pleasant Community Centre).

If you’re interested in bringing this unique offer to your community whilst it’s still a ‘no-fee’ workshop experience (just cover my expenses), please do get in touch and I look forward in collaborating with you in the future,

DK
fireside.rs Founder and Creative Gatherer

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

Where we feature, celebrate and learn from those who craft spaces for humans to actively belong and be, introducing:
5 Elena de Kan - fireside.rs podcast - episode image - small

SHOW NOTES & PULL QUOTES

00.55: “That means that we are trying to be a good, I would say, companion and guide through transformations in the space of professional work and education.”

05.23: “So I think here we went through a period of time that was actually quite long where sort of the extremes were tested and where this became a topic that was raised, I think, above the usual smaller crowd and maybe design, real estate, facility, strategic team to really a topic that CEOs were talking about, the press was talking about, the newspapers were talking about.”

06.11: “And now the most disruptive thing that is happening is certainly artificial intelligence and how that might shape and change further how we are working. That then I would say has quite an impact on things like attention, well-being, some fears have for sure sparked again both individually and collectively so I see a little bit of a parallality to what happened to the pandemic and again it raises questions around well-being and with that I come to the to I think the biggest topic and that is underlying of the other trends that we see around privacy, around working from home, around the collective coming together, everything that happens on a social sphere is that element of well-being and how much that aspect that we all rely on heavily, physically, emotionally, cognitively, being well is something that we all have an interest in, companies that we work for and we ourselves.”

08.40: “And if we think about modern workspaces, often we have, especially in open offices, we see rows and rows of desks. So here there’s a lot happening, of course, in front of you, behind you, next to you. And that also means that a part of your brain is always going to scan for danger from where you can’t see it. So that in return means we don’t have a lot of brain capacity left to actually, first of all, relax. Second of all, have our default mode network working well and then be able to actually form and articulate a thought and work well. So I think sometimes it comes down to those very basic aspects of what do we need physically to be safe.”

12.13: “I would say trust by default happens when vulnerability is possible. So only when people and systems at large are able and willing to be vulnerable to share something that feels a bit risky, maybe, to themselves, only then can you create trust, right?”

13.35: “So environment can never solve for everything that happens sort of on an emotional and cognitive level, but it can nudge you into different modes. It can nudge you to write something on the wall. It can allow you to actually see other people in the office. So if you have only built walls and all you see is a hallway and separate rooms, it’s hard to be, it’s hard to connect with what’s happening on the other side…”

16.49: “Now, we will always have some tensions because there will always be some people, some brains that really need impulse, that they need color, they need light, they need change, they need texture. And there will be other brains that really need the absence of all of this. So how do you decide, right? How do you design one space? I think there’s a few things, a few general principles that can help to not overcome this tension completely, but at least to mitigate that and make a lot of space. And one of them is biophilia.“

17.51: “Everybody feels good when you have a mix of texture, when you have biophilic elements. We need less medicine, less painkillers. When we look into nature, we learn better when we are in a biophilic or natural environment. So there’s lots of fascinating data, actually, how impactful this can really be. So when you design with nature as your role model, you cannot really go wrong.”

27.04: “Also, the representative aspect of a space is, I think, not to be forgotten. If you think about law firms, if you think about doctor’s offices, if you think about professor space, their office has a function that goes beyond the individual work that they do, that has a function also in shaping that identity and representing a certain role that is taken by them in the spaces that they operate in.”

30.42: “But think of an intern maybe or somebody who’s new in a role, sitting next to someone, they might have ideas, questions, wonders that they might just be able to ask in the space, like, “Hey, what are you doing here? Can I have another look at your screen, at your table at whatever you’re doing, they might never have the idea to even ask that question when they never share the same space.”

37.16: “I hope that as humans, we get strong in understanding where we actually need to defend space from AI. Where does it actually cost us more than we can gain from it?

Podcast music attribution: All I Did Was Wait For You: The Upbeat and Positive Track for Podcast or YouTube by kjartan_abel — https://freesound.org/s/543781/ — License: Attribution 4.0

Some creativity, productivity and gathering related content for the brain / heart:

“He once said that his aim was “to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress” and even in 2013, just before his retirement, he was arguing he still had much to do: “People say, ‘Sonny, take it easy, lean back. Your place is secure. You’re the great Sonny Rollins; you’ve got it made.’ I hear that and I think, ‘Well, screw Sonny Rollins. Where I want to go is beyond Sonny Rollins. Way beyond.’””
Sonny Rollins, colossus of jazz saxophone, dies aged 95 | Sonny Rollins | The Guardian

“Globally, the number one reason people say they go to the office isn’t to do their best work — it’s because they’re required to.”
Blueprint for a Better Office – Steelcase

If you’re a music artist check out Subvert as a cooperative-owned marketplace to sell directly to listeners (the platform itself is owned by the community who use it).

Some wicked Artemis II Mobile Wallpapers – NASA.

Thank you again and please do get in touch with any ideas / comments / insights / suggestions etc. plus encourage others who care about ‘unlocking creative productivity by gathering humans effectively’ to subscribe also:

Published