Oregon Direct Action

This past weekend Daniel, Shane, and I gathered for our first ODA retreat, which also was our first in-person meeting since the end of the school year. I honestly had no idea what we would talk about for the entire two days, but we managed to discuss ODA business most of that time and, in fact, could have benefited from more ODA discussion time at the end of our retreat.

I felt that we started our retreat off on a good note. We had a short meeting to get one another on the same page and review our past todos. The majority of our past todos list was completed, which allowed us to start off the retreat with a clean slate.

I think that ODA can learn a lot from the experiences that Daniel had with WDA. I very much appreciated the mini-presentation that Daniel gave about his work with WDA. He had talked to me before about his work with WDA, but I felt this time I got much more out of it, due to the fact that I am now more involved with ODA. I hope Daniel remembers both what worked and what did not work so that ODA can avoid some unnecessary blunders.

I very much enjoyed Shane’s lecture about the Theory of Change; he did a fabulous job. Before this, I had only guesses as to what knowledge Shane would bestow on us concerning the Theory of Change. The ideas discussed in the lecture should definitely stay in the front of our minds as we maneuver through our project and make goals for ourselves. Also, I thought that the podcast Daniel suggested we listen to, “Is Aid to Africa Doing More Harm Than Good?,” nicely paralleled Shane’s lecture.

Thank you Daniel and Shane for the technology lesson. I think I learned a decent amount for the time that we had. I have been reading through my Google Reader multiple times a day! It is so much more efficient to have the news come to you… hopefully now I will be more up to date on current events. I am still a little bit unclear about the wiki, but I am sure once I have to do something with it, I will be fine. I am excited to say that this blog is my first ever self-published blog! (and I am sure that it will not be the last)

My favorite part of this retreat was getting to know Daniel and Shane better. I enjoyed listening to their philosophizing. The Fountainhead was mentioned so often that I now feel the need to read it and see what all of the hype was about. In all, I thought the retreat was quite productive. For our future retreat, I hope that we can also have the time to include more outdoor activities, like hiking or Frisbee.