The work continues apace on the design of the community summit on youth suicide. I have completed a sketch of the summit agenda which will bear much more fleshing out, but it has been a terrific challenge trying to work with all the ideas of all my conversational partners at the global water cooler and fit these into a short day.
At any rate, here’s what I’ve got so far (.doc). If you’re still interested in contributing thinking to this, I’m looking for some really good questions (I have a few in mind which I’ll post soon) and also how we might handle building a marketplace into the design phase.
As always, feel free to arrange a Skype call with me to discuss further.
Technorati Tags: appreciativeinquiry, facilitation, suicide, design
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Prompted by posts by Johnnie Moore Ton Zylstra and David Wilcox, I’ve been thinking about how we might improve conferences.
As a facilitator of Open Space Technology and other large group processes, I offer clients ways of radically transforming conferences to make them highly productive. But these meetings require changes in expectations and frames of reference that are sometimes too much for a client to go on. When you are convening an international conference on business and the environment, putting everyone in a circle and placing paper and markers at the centre of the room can sometimes seem too much of a change.
Of course, I would argue that this degree of change is EXACTLY what is required to move to another level of think about complex situations. But I don’t “sell” clients on stuff that they aren’t comfortable with. I’ll discuss with them how to get the most out of what they are willing to do and sometimes those conversations open up new possibilities. In most cases though, with respect to conferences, I’m generally asked to come into a room of a few hundred people sitting at round tables and make something happen.
Traditional conferences with plenary sessions, speakers and power points are a huge missed opportunity in most cases. Conferences are not everyday affairs. In general people convene them because they want something special to happen: sharing information, learning, taking things to a new level. Occasionally a conference is convened with an expressed intent to develop a consensus or make a decision. In almost every case, attention to logistical detail generally ignores attention to process. How do we make the most of the opportunities that any given conference provides us?
For me the answer lies in three things. First it’s important to contextualize each person’s reason for being at a conference. If you can take time to come to a conference prepared with questions and invitations and learning objectives for yourself, you will bring built-in filters to the hoards of information and options provided by most conferences. You will also maximize your learning.
Second, good conferences have easy ways of connecting people. Think about it in terms of a marketplace. If you are in a conference on local economies, and you want to develop a local clothing line, you need to find the local designers, manufacturers distributors and buyers. Without a marketplace (something as simple as a bulletin board, or as complex as an Open Space agenda wall, which structures the entire conference around invitations) you have no way of connecting to others.
Finally, conferences find their power when we can provide opportunities for real and intentional dialogue and conversation. It is a cop-out when conference designers place this critical function at the mercy of coffee breaks, question and answer sessions and “networking events.” For the most part there is very little thought given to connecting passion and responsibility at these events. If you get into a good conversation, it’s more about luck than anything else, and if you are paying $800 to attend a conference, you don’t want your learning based on luck. Serendipity has its place and these unstructured processes are powerful opportunities, but they are made more powerful by being offered with intention.
I stand by Open Space Technology as a conference format in and of itself and I have had amazing experiences seeing that process facilitating change, learning and emergence. Short of that though, and responding to Ton’s idea that maybe we can import Open Space elements into conference setting, I have been toying with the idea of what I am calling “keynote facilitation.”
The keynote facilitator combines the attention and energy of a keynote address with the process care of a facilitator. Instead of giving you great ideas from MY head and experience, as a keynote facilitator I help to set the context for your own learning, and guide process that invites you to turn to those in the room and begin to craft innovation together in collaborative conversation. I have been using World Cafe as a process for doing this recently at a national conference on Aboriginal forestry and a regional gathering on Aboriginal economic development and I believe that it does provide added value for participants who are able to get quickly deeply into the issues and questions they face. The process also helps to develop an emergent sense of what the conference as a whole is thinking about and it provides individuals with an opportunity to reflect on their reasons for attending and to become more intentional about that. With the hour or so assigned to traditional plenary keynote speakers, I can have a conference of people talking to one another, creating connections and seeking out partners.
Supporting that conversation during and after the conference is the challenge, and that is one that my friend Susan Neden in Saskatchewan has taken up with her Conference Quest software which supports conference attendees as learners on a journey, or a quest for a nugget or two of knowledge and innovation that might change everything about how they do business.
And if we offer anything less to people, I think we are wasting the great potential of the conference setting. I’ll be talking with Johnnie and Ton and Susan over the next week or so and I’ll report here what we discover in conversation about what the role of the keynote facilitator could really be. If you have thoughts leave a comment and maybe we can have a quick Skype call about it as well.
Technorati Tags: conferences, facilitation, openspace,
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It has happened again. THis time in Kyrgyzstan.
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Good reads from good feeds:
- Speciulation that Einstein was a space alien
- Wealth Bondage on a spirited defense of liberalism and the public square.
- “�True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility. If you love something, you want to look after it. Common sense has much to learn from moonshine.� from Phillip Pullman in the Guardian, found at sift everything
- Simple rules for the self-organization of communities of practice. Shawn wants you to help make them even simpler.
- The big problem with strategic planning in non-profits: “…most plans are filled with horrible mistakes, unrealistic expectations of the ability to control variables beyond the control of group, and a level of “me first” thinking that is not only bad for the group but also devastating to network dynamics.”
- The top 100 spiritually significant films found at birdonthemoon.
- A favourite new read from a great new friend: word gravity from Wendy Farmer-O’Neil
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The group of Aboriginal youth I have been working with, Building Our Legacy Together, have had a busy winter, and their activities were recently summarized in this report from coordinator Crystal Sutherland:
Invited guests were: Shawn Atleo – BC AFN, Patrick Kelly – INAC Deb Foxcroft – Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transitional Team, Harley Wylie – BC Aboriginal Network on Disability Society, Lorraine Calderwood-Parsons – Office for the Child and Youth, Peter Knox – Hereditary Chief, Basil Ambers – Fort Rupert Elder, Stanley Sam – Ahousaht Elder, Archie Thompson – Toquaht Elder.
One of the immediate outcomes from the Fort Rupert BOLT forum was the engagement and participation of a group of teens from the Fort Rupert reserve in a band council meeting the week following the BOLT forum.
The next steps are:
- To secure funding for the ongoing activities for 5 more forums across BC in Kamloops, Prince George, Skidegate, Chehalis and one provincial forum to follow-up.
- The BOLT Youth Executive will have a strategic planning session to determine our next steps.
- Create the BOLT for Youth Foundation to grant funds to youth designed projects in BC First Nations communities.
Many committed people worked hard to make this event a success. We would like to take this time to thank and acknowledge the supporters of the BOLT initiative:
Kleco (thank you) to the Fort Rupert Hereditary Chiefs for allowing us to meet in their Big House, Kleco to Chief and Council for donating their facilities, Kleco to the Fort Rupert Elders and singers for sharing their prayer, song and dance with the BOLT participants, to the volunteers and to the Fort Rupert community for their generous hospitality and for looking after their territory. Kleco to the Vancouver Island Youth Task Group for volunteering countless hours to design and deliver the forum, to the youth keynote speakers whose stories inspired the youth participants, to Chris Corrigan for facilitating, to leadership who listened with understanding, to Patrick Kelly for taking photographs that tell our story, to all our sponsors who made this event possible – BCAFN, INAC, VIATT, Inter-tribal health authority, sacred wolf friendship centre, Ha’sa Program, and RedWayBC. Kleco to the caterers for keeping us nourished to do this good work, to the chaperons for caring for the youth and keeping them safe and to Joan Calderhead for advising and mentoring us. Lastly, Kleco to all the young participants who took the time to share and voice the serious issues (suicide prevention, teen pregnancy, children in care, addictions, sexual abuse, decolonization etc…) that must be addressed in order to create healthier communities for future generations and the Elders who provided support, love and traditional knowledge to the youth in these heavy discussions.
On March 2nd at the Economic Opportunities Roundtable, the following supporters each donated $500.00 and put the challenge out to other Chiefs and Aboriginal Financial Institutions. The BOLT Youth Executive would like to acknowledge and thank the following contributors:
Chief Shane Gottfriedson – Kamloops Indian Band, Chief Gary Oker – Doig River First Nation, Chief Jerry Asp – Tahltan Band, Keith Matthews – Community Future�s Lawrence Lewis – Bute Inlet Development Corporation, Chief Barry Seymour – Lheidli Tenneh Band. A special acknowledgement and thanks to the BCTC for their $10,000 donation!
This whole project is youth led and youth organized. They are attracting the resources they need through invitations to work together like this one. If you would like more information about these guys, or see a way to contribute to their work, get in touch with me and I’ll hook you up.
Technorati Tags: aboriginal, firstnations, youth