Tiffany von Emmel

From Dreamfish

[edit] Contact

[edit] Welcome

Hello! I look forward to connecting with you here in Dreamfish. Please feel free to join me for the monthly Global Meetup Call on the first Wednesday of the month.

[edit] Current Projects

[edit] Writings

(These pages on the old wiki should migrate to the dreamfish wiki, and be wiki pages) Book chapters and presentations

[edit] Practices

Here, are ideas, tools and methods that influence the waters of Dreamfish.

Knowledge Creation theoretical ground
Relational Design - aid for planning
Interactivist Model - network facilitation model
Knowledge Revolution - slides
Score - collaboration design method, useful for formed group. Use Interactivist Design for network facilitation.

[edit] Large Group Methods

(want to migrate from old wiki to here)

Change Jam - a open source group score, experiment of in-person event with micro-blogging
Dreamscape group method - a large group collaboration method with participatory arts.

[edit] Bio

I am the founder of Dreamfish. A social entrepreneur and interactivist, my work has been to mobilize social collaboration for sustainability by creating new worlds of work. My life purpose is to connect. I believe deep connection to each other, the environment, and ourselves is the key to thriving in world that is participatory by nature.

A pragmatic, techie, optimistic third-generation entrepreneur, these days, I can be found knee-deep in social software and network development at Dreamfish. A maven, I also enjoy speaking at cross-pollinating conferences, facilitating a group of MBA students for Stanford Women in Management, using experimental performance to engage engineers in inquiry, teaching consultants in grad school, and design thinking with scientists in the wilderness.

I have had a very lucky life to have experienced living wide and deep. I have worked in multiple industries, cultures and worlds, wealthy and poor, abled and disabled. I was raised Irish-American, German and Chinese. I started work young, first in my family's manufacturing company, then in Jewish theater in L.A., directing musical productions. In my 20's, I was in New York City, on the startup team of National Business Network. NBN was a trailblazer in advertising which aggregated over 100 grassroots B2B media buys, empowering grassroots media to compete with national media. Our team sold NBN to 3M, moved to California and formed Dow Harris, to consult on the turn from traditional media to networks. Living fast, I then slowed to find meaning and life purpose. I became immersed in East Asian practices, mentored by Wataru Ohashi. Working on systems and networks at the individual level, I taught somatics of relationship for groups, and then organizations. In 1994, I combined my two interests to found The Empowerment Place, a continuing education company, which served thousands of professional adults in mid-life transition, funded by a marketing network of small businesses.

In the late 1990's, I became an interactivist, as I faced my biggest challenge, a life-death encounter with chronic illness. Suddenly, sustainability was not just a six-syllable word. Every moment, I had to improvise and adapt to the unpredictable to sustain life. This experience of disability with having been steeped in somatics led me to challenge mental models about the people side of the sustainability movement - how we engage diversity at work and enable all to participate in the economy. Along this journey, I have lived in San Francisco and Berlin, earned an MA in Organization Development and a PhD in Human and Organizational Systems at Fielding Graduate University. I live in San Francisco with my German partner, Dietmar Brinkmann, and dog, Mimi von Ridges.

In 2006, I founded Dreamfish with a vision of millions of independent change agents throughout the world in collaboration for a sustainable world. With Dreamfish, I am realizing my personal dream to support the livingness of life. My story is one of the stories under the hood of the Dreamfish Humanifesto.