Dear friends,

This is a report on the Training for Transition this past weekend at Fort Mason,
San Francisco.

There were 52 participants, from places as far flung as northern
Idaho, Nevada City, and Boulder, CO, wishing to know how to implement a
transition initiative. There was a (predictably) disprorportiontely large group
from Sebastapol/Sonoma. There were also several people from Santa Cruz there -
Santa Cruz is the first city in CA with "official" TT status. Apparently there
was a waiting list of 100 people who would have liked to have participated in
the class.

Sophy Banks and Naresh Giangrande led the 2-day training with power-point
presentations, short films, small group discussions and other activities.

The first quarter or so of the training focused on the factual realities of
climate change and peak oil, and their implications.

A good part of the subsequent training was focused on inner work/change
psychology, complete with a joint visioning process and a Joanna Macy-inspired
despair exercise.

Yesterday, Naresh offered a 20-minute presentation on how the financial crisis
fits into the Transition paradigm, complete with a visual schematic "map" of the
breakdown. Another highlight yesterday was a demonstration of Open Space meeting
technology.

What impressed me most was the fluid, flat and highly networked structure of
this movement.

Following the Training, several of us in the SF East Bay are planning to meet again
to work together. (I think there's another group forming in SF.)

There are plans in the works to have a Transition US conference in Colorado in
late August.

After this, Sophy and Naresh are doing trainings in LA, New Zealand, Australia,
and Japan.

One way of getting linked in is thru the US networking site is:
http://transitionus.ning.com/

Personally, I'm eager to start a local currency. I'd love to hear from anyone
reading this post who has experience in that area, because I have almost zero.

- Judith Katz
judithkatz@yahoo.com