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SAM
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Interview made in Juan Dolio, Dominican Rep. in the final meeting of Mistica 2.

Q: We are with Sam Lanfranco. I would like to ask when did you first encounter Mística 
Sam: I met Mística through Funredes, I have worked with Daniel Pimienta for many, many years.

Q: What else?
Sam: I am in Canada so I mainly watch Mística from a distance. Recently I was the director of a large school at my university so I didn’t have as much time to work with Mística as I would have liked. I hope to work more with Mística in the future, especially with helping to developing a greater degree of focus around its work agenda.

Q: And looking backward from this point of the present, how do you see the Mística process?
Sam: I think it’s been good for what it has been and what it has done. I think that the challenge now is to train a new group of leaders to help drive Mística forward. That would be the challenge.  The projects have been good, the results have been good but now it is like handing the truck over to new drivers. It is very important that the new drivers think hard about what’s Mística’s work agenda should be, what its activities should be. It is a time in Mística for talk and action, not just talk. 

Q: Which possible scenario could Mística build up? In the near future and the  far future.
Sam: Well, both in the near future and the far future it has to articulate for itself, and for others, a very concise mission and vision.  In the short term it needs to look at what are its strongest resources. In my view that is the intellectual capital and the strengths of the participants. The members of Mística have to say: “Given our strengths, these are the three, four or five activities we should be engaged in. It should then focus on the pursuit of those activities.  Some of that will take work before there is financing. There is some work to be done before there will be financing. It is not always possible to get the financing first. 

Q: Finally, what’s your opinion about the process of this meeting?
Sam: There is a difference in style between North America and Latin America. If this been meeting in North America we would have many of the issues boiled down in advance, in documents, and made decisions based on the documents. For me, and some other people outside the region, the process moves slowly, and sometimes in circles, but we understood why. Here, this is like the creation of a new “child of Mística”. There is much more general discussion between people who have been working together for a long time. They are here to learn more about each other for two reasons. They are going to have to work together to build Mística itself. But that is not enough. They are they’re going to have work together to build the projects of Mística. 

Q: What comes next?
Sam: What is important is: What happens in the electronic space, after the end of this literal meeting in the Dominican Republic? Can the member of Mística, and the friends of Mística, go beyond being an online discussion community of interest. Can they become a collaborative community of practice, carrying out a work agenda that embraces the mission and vision of Mística? The time has come for talk and action, not just talk. The time has come for sharing labour in common effort, and not just sharing information and ideas. That is the work that must carried out within the “cocoon” of the online electronic spaces if Mística is to become a beautiful butterfly that it should become.

Interviewed by:  Javier I. Pinzón P.
December 2004.