I Love the rain. The fall rains here in Bowen Island come heavy and steady starting in mid September and going through to December. They fill creeks and create the conditions for the salmon to return. You never know how many will return every year but without the rains they can’t taste their home stream or in ocean. For some reason I have been really craving the rain this year. Waiting for it like people in the North wait for the ice to break up in the spring. It feels like a release somehow. Todayt we are expecting about 50mm …
A couple of years ago, my friend Pauline LeBel and I were discussing ways to increase learning about indigenous peoples amongst our neighbours on Bowen Island where we live. We live squarely in the traditional territories of the Squamish Nation, and in thinking about how as settlers we should all orient ourselves to our indigenous hosts, the phrase “knowing our place” came up. Pauline employed it as the title for a series of readings and events that she has curated for a number of years now on Bowen Island. I use it as a kind of heuristic to answer the …
My friends at Bring on the Zoo in The Netherlands publish a little series of bookmarks with resources for their clients and workshop participants. The asked me for a recommendation of 10 books to help you work with complexity and here’s what I came up with. I hope some of these are new to you. Accessible Theory (Because you need theory) Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brownA personal and vulnerable account of working in complexity with inspiration and resources you may have never seen before. Simple Habits for Complex Times, Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith JohnsonAccessible theory situated in stories that …
A couple of days I ago I shared a link on twitter from Rob Hopkins about a community meeting held in Totnes in the UK which brought together the community to discuss what to do now that the town had declared a climate emergency. The design of the meeting was highly participatory and I’m grateful that the organizers took time to document and share the results. The design had all the hallmarks of an effective participatory gathering, including having a well thought through harvest strategy so that the gathering was in service of the work and that it left people …
Recently I have had several jobs that have required large group complex facilitation. Sometimes this work involves using methods like Open Space Technology or World Cafe, and other times it requires new designs and processes customized for the work. When I say “complex facilitation” I mean running group processes that are grounded in complexity theory and intended to move a group towards emergent outcomes. I first heard this term used by Sonja Blignault and Dave Snowden of Cognitive Edge, to describe this kind of facilitation. (Sonja has a great post on this stuff!) These are facilitation techniques and approaches that …