This has been an interesting couple of weeks – both on the national stage, and right here in our little office.

Obama’s speech about race got me thinking about the things that distract us, and pit us against one another, and how we have so many fundamental things in common. I got the sense that he was trying to shift the discussion to a higher level – to get out of the details that stop us and focus on greater-good things. It inspired me to think larger, bigger, broader myself. Something that I find hard to do at times because I’m so caught up in doing and going and coming and working and playing and figuring out what I’m going to make for dinner. It inspired me to think again about what are the things I truly find important, and how to hone in on them and practice and integrate them into my life.

In the beginnings of OsoEco – the stage where we were all making our general “wouldn’t it be great” lists – we were very much talking in terms of bigger, broader brushstrokes. But then we got down to working on the (sometimes overwhelming) details. And the “wouldn’t it be great” lists faded away – not that they disappeared or that we stopped applying them, but we lost site of them in our consciousness… but now, here I am, back thinking about how to make the “wouldn’t it be greats” part of everything I do.

Here are some of the things that are so important to us at OsoEco…..

First, the group of us want a work, life balance that feeds us, our families, and our communities. This means that work and play shouldn’t be separated. All of us at Oso are intent on doing what we love and having every part of our lives inform and enrich the others. Part of this means being personally attached to people that we share work with. I spend 40+ hours a week working – i believe for my work to be truly fulfilling, that I let others know me and I know others. This means not viewing work as just work – but creating a new “work environment” which incorporates friendship… I want the people I work with to become part of my family.

This isn’t always easy. In fact, sometimes it can be, well, pretty painful. i don’t know about your family, but I don’t always get along with them. And sometimes, I find myself in disagreements with them about doing the laundry that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the laundry. I also think that in families, there are usually some pretty dysfunctional ways of doing things. This is no different in the work environment. But my committment, and the committment we all made with starting OsoEco was that we would push ourselves to grow and evolve as people – which means finding ways to communicate, finding ways to play, finding ways to share that feed us all creatively. This is WAY easier said then done.

Second, we want a world that reflects our values of caring, kindness, concern, engaged, open and transparent. We want to operate thoughtfully with knowledge and compassion in our choices. This means the choices we make together in our office; this means choices we make while we’re working out the details of what’s going to be on the site; this means choices we make when we walk down the street, talk to our neighbors, do our grocery shopping, etc.

We want a world where we realize there is no “other”. That all of us succeed or fail together. My happiness, safety, comfort is not valued greater or lessor because I am an American, or because I am female, or because I was raised Catholic, or because I have excema on my elbow.

I know, how idealistic does this sound, right? But that’s part of what we want to bring into our world as well. The idea of hope; the idea of positivity; the idea that as humans we can work to lift each other up in meaningful ways.

Out of these ideas, OsoEco was born. in our daily discussions we are bringing back in these “higher aspirations” and being conscientous about how we incorporate and integrate them into our day to day workings of OsoEco, in what OsoEco will eventually be and offer.

In short, we are truly seeing OsoEco as a step in making the kind of change we want to see in our world.

There are so many who believe business is business, and making money is making money and somehow separate from how we function outside our work places, in our community groups and social circles. We are challenging this. We are bringing in our values that there really is a triple bottom line – profit is not, and should not, be the sole measure of our success. We do this everyday, every minute that we work at our desks by ourselves, or together at the conference table in our office.

We’re experimenting with doing things differently by looking at how a for-profit business (OsoEco) and a non-profit business (Grass Commons) can truly work together for mutual benefit.

We’re experimenting with doing things differently in the design of what and how you do things on OsoEco. We are constantly bringing in the ideas of wikis and community-based input/control to further our world rather than pretending that we, OsoEco, truly know the right way to do things.

We’re experimenting with systems that really supprt both the value of getting and giving. We believe to have a meaningful exchange of knowledge and to move ahead, that we must both talk and listen to truly contribute. And again, we are doing this in the tools that people will be able to use on our site, but also, in the way we work, talk and listen to one another in our office.

We can all do these things – they don’t have to be done on a large scale. It’s the smaller scale, in how we are with our families, how we are with our co-workers, how we are with our neighbors and community that we can work to transform ourselves – where we can work to challenge ourselves and grow and move beyond our distractions.