Welcome to The Flow, the occasional overflow from our Rain Barrel. We aren’t promising a blog, exactly, but we do want an informal space where we can post some of our thoughts and recommendations. Following in the spirit of the United Nations, we want to create a forum where we can engage in fruitful dialogue with kindred spirits and those with very different points of view. We promise to write only when we have something to say. We will post links to other sources of information only when we feel they are valuable.

If you have already peeked at our bios, you know that we have long careers at the United Nations and in journalism behind us. We feel we have a new world before us. The experience we have had working around the globe has given us a lot to talk about. A lot to criticize. And a lot to believe in. We see the new era of communications as an unparalleled opportunity for new forms of expression and engagement. We believe it must be harnessed as a public good, an engine for fundamental change that benefits all.

After decades of institutional constraints, we are, quite frankly, rediscovering our own voices. Free of agendas not of our own making, we are taking a fresh look at communication and the maddening, confusing, beautiful world around us. We are unlearning and listening, and sharing with our clients the insights from a collective century of work.

This website tells you a bit about who we are. We want to know who you are and what brought you here. Whoever you are, a warm welcome. Send us your comments. We invite you to go with The Flow.

–Paul and Robert

When I’m not putting words into other people’s mouths (e.g., speech writing) or pontificating, I listen. Or rather, I try to listen through the cacophony of external and internal distractions.

I’m not a particularly good listener. But I try.

As a journalist, I loved interviewing sources and weaving their quotes into my articles. Working for UNICEF, I tried to amplify the voices of children and adolescents by opening up media, including digital platforms, where they could be heard.

I confess that one listening mode I enjoy most is eavesdropping.

I know that sounds creepy. Actually, I don’t go out of my way to spy on anybody, but often — on a bus or in a restaurant, in the street or during a conference coffee break, or through the walls of a hotel room –voices drift in, capturing my ear.

In fact, I’ve been collecting juicy snippets of conversation over the years. I call them Overhearings.

Sometimes they work their way into a poem. Now that we have the Rain Barrel website, I’ll share them with you from time to time in The Flow.

Here’s one I jotted down on the #104 bus lumbering down Broadway in Manhattan just the other day. The speaker is a nerdy looking, middle-class teenager, talking to a friend. They are sitting behind me in the back of the bus.

I enjoy stealing and returning the things I steal before the person even realizes I’ve stolen anything. Sometimes I also like to get caught returning things I’ve stolen. If they get angry I just say they should be grateful and that I deserve a reward for giving them back their stuff. But the best thing is returning the things I steal very slightly, very subtly transformed. Then I make myself bets about whether or not they’ll notice the change and how long it will take them to notice.

Leaving aside its weird creativity and my own childhood forays into petty thievery, what struck me about this snippet was the offhanded way with which the kid made his confession. Out loud. In public. As if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

Maybe it was a set-up, a piece of performance art for my benefit. Let’s boggle that guy’s mind. Freak him out.

But the casual bravado of this semi-public admission of remarkably complex mischief did, in fact, amaze me. It fit a pattern I’ve noticed in recent years that I associate with the use of cell phones everywhere, anywhere: a blurring of boundaries between private and public space. Lack of regard for other people. In-your-face airing of intimate doings and private transgressions.

Cell phones and online social networks are transforming our communications and perceptions of the world around us. A new culture, with social norms we may or may not welcome, is evolving. Young people are its bellwether.

I intend to keep listening to them. Listening and learning. Not judging too harshly. Laughing.

– Robert