Communications "working group"

At the Transition Los Angeles city hub, our Communications "working group" is a bit different.

In most cases, a working group within a Transition Initiative is a circle of people who are working together on a single idea -- perhaps focusing on a sector of the community, like food, or water. They inventory what resilience-building organizations and resources are currently available in that sector. They visualize what that sector could possibly be like in a resilient, low carbon, resource aware future. And they do "backtracking" to chart a course of how we could get to that resilient future from the place we are now.

At Transition Los Angeles, our Communications group is focused on the now. We realize that in order to successfully Transition this massive metropolitan area, we need to grow resilience across the entirety of the L.A. basin (yes, no small task). Transition is by definition a locally-focused community-based approach, and in our geography we know that it will unfold neighborhood-by-neighborhood. Already, we have local pods of Transition activity emerging in several different neighborhoods. ("What is a pod?")

Communication between these pods is essential -- first, to share resources and "what works/doesn't work." But over time, we will need to evolve a unique means of connecting, of working together, to achieve that widespread local resilience.

Our Communications members currently serve in the role of "pollinators." Just like the noble honeybee and the workhorse hoverfly, our Communications members visit the meetings of several local pods -- not merely the one in their own geographic neighborhood -- and they carry messages, resources, successes, and stories back and forth, cross-pollinating all our various pods.