MEDIA
The task of the media group is to determine how to best interface the NLP community with the world at large, via media (channels).
Media can serve the NLP community as a translator. For the NLP community/field to be represented credibly through media, it is essential to have a clear identity, a metasystem which includes guidelines and structures decision-making, and an official representative clearing house for information about the field.
Such representation will require money, manpower, infrastructure, and the whole-hearted support of the divergent segments of the community/field.
(Is it possible to evolve an effective, quality, credible system to support and represent a field whose make-up is characterized by rebels, individual thinkers, and creative options sorters, with an (aversion to) antipathy for power (formal) structures.)
(How can we, as a field, be mature enough in our 21st year to demonstrate the responsibility, support, and take the necessary steps to develop/continue/maintain the metasystem which would truly represent NLP through the media???)
GLOBAL TRENDS
- Self-help Revolution: Individuals are becoming more motivated to take self-responsibility for theor own health, mental states, emotions, and NLP provides excellent tools.
- Public Image: Greater demand for congruency on the part of leaders, including NLP.
- The Internet: More access, higher visability, high tech, high touch.
OUR VISION...
- A world that is aware of, uses, and respects NLP and its potentiality
- An effective media interface
- A metasystem in service to the NLP field/community's values/mission/purpose, and NLP's ecological interface with the world. (This service to the field will benefit all members, and compatible individual member interests will also be served.)
STAKEHOLDERS IN THE METASYSTEM
Consumers of NLP services:
- Individuals
- Corporations
- Education systems
- Community/governmental agencies
- Health systems
- Media
Und so wieter
NLP practitioners and institutes
Media outlets
Legislators
Others
WHY THIS VISION?
Bad news: The field will dissipate otherwise.
Good news: We can continue, strengthen, and grow NLP for the benefit of practitioners, individuals, families, communities, governments , and the world.
VALUES, PRINCIPLES AND BELIEFS
Yes.
A metasystem which is inclusive, fair, comprehensive, congruent with NLP presuppositions, expressive of the support/love/mutual respect/commitment of the members of the NLP community and aligned with the lofty purposes in their excellent work.
SWOT
(NLP Community here and present as observed by the Media Group)
strengths
21 years of NLP experience in diversified fields
21 years of feedback, and trial & error experience, in metasystem formation
Community of interested, supportive, (motivated) people
Ability to model effective metasystems, potentially even our own (Researchers from the community could study other models and report)
Skilled writers; people with decades of experience in media liaison; public speakers; excellent communicators; ability to listen to Q's and reframe them well; hear the Q's that are being asked; skills in choosing when to answer relevantly or not (very useful in dealing with media- SPIN)
weaknesses
Attendees are individualistic, associated with diverse fields that compete for attention.
Financial and time resources are taxed. Opportunities for interacting amongst the attendees before dispersal are limited, and the possibility that bad press will preempt our efforts and further dissolve the community hangs over us. The shadow: fear of the name, antipathy to organization, structure, external authority. Attendees averse to press and power politics (internal & external). We are therefore skittish about engaging in dramatic, high-profile outreach communications programs. "We are nice. We are VERY, VERY nice. Try us, you'll like us." Commitment for creating a mature organization is lacking. No political will to act on this.
opportunities
We are here now. All of our strengths (and vulnerabilities) can turn into an action (agenda). Can we look at our stengths and weaknesses. We can utilize this format to move through these as a first step towards preserving NLP as a field? We can free our energy and attention to use this opportunity to act. We can consider the formulation of plans for a metasystem (e.g., association). We can utilize the opportunity of what has happened here to continue. We can use the current external pressure on the system (forcing an identity crisis on us) to organize ourselves. Our real authority is not derivative; it comes from the collective developments and applications of NLP practitioners over the years since the original modellers shared their gifts with us.
Let us claim it!
threats
- Inertia: Easy to just do nothing; wait for someone else to do it.
This is a story about four people named, Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.: There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what what Anybody could have done.
- Lawsuits.
- Media bomb: Unsavory public material is already available that could seriously trash the community and the good work we can be and are contributing.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Change the fucking name. (Re-positioning would more accurately reflect what we actually do.)
Get a process started for settling the identity issues. (Are we a field, community, profession, network?)
Get some models of other organizations that have already been through this miserable stage and grown past it successfully.
Develop a model for choosing appropriate leaders to represent the community to the outside world and to help us cohere (i.e. spokespeople, domain experts, convocation conveners, information providers, angels).
Create a trouble-shooting team to coordinate a response for the community for disaster scenario.
Identify domain experts who can respond to issues and questions from the outside world. Sharp/tough/quick.
SUMMARY RECOMMENDATION FROM INLPTA (?)
One of the current challenges facing the field of NLP is that it is currently not enough of a cohesive system to be a truly integrated community. It is in fact, a set of micro communities (sub systems) which sometimes network or just interact with each other through various means. For the field of NLP to effectively relate with the media, it should first ideally be a cohesive and integrated community. However, in order to achieve this state an organizing system is required which can serve to organize the NLP community. In essence, a meta system is needed for the NLP community to organize itself. It is this meta system which ultimately enables the various NLP micro communities to align themselves into a more clearly identifiable general community. Upon such systemic integration at the micro, macro and meta levels, the field of NLP can more optimally and effectively interact with the media.
In order to achieve any movement toward offering the message of NLP to the media, it is necessary to determine:
- What is our message?
- Who will determine it?
- How will the NLP community at large be represented in the formulation of 1 & 2?
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