At the end of a couple of weeks in Europe and being here in Glasgow during this past week has heightened my sensitivity to how democracy, devoid of deliberation and focused only on numeric results, has been hijacked and rendered ineffective for making complex decisions related to governance of complex issues. The UK is currently paying the price for a ridiculous decision made in June of 2016 to leave the European Union. Whatever you think of the merits of Brexit, there can be no denying that the method for doing so has been deeply flawed both in its democratic implementation …
The other day a friend asked me who is doing good writing that can inform her own journey with reconciliation. She is a very involved white woman, doing work with universities and indigenous communities and even she was having trouble finding good resources to keep her learning going and share with others. I couldn’t point her to sources for a couple of reasons. First, the world is moving really quickly, and good articles and papers that are written are often out of date fairly quickly. But more important, to get published, a writer often has to sanitize the outrage, emotional …
In his book Sea Room Adam Nicholson describes meeting John MacAuly, a Hebridean boat builder who has just built a boat for him to sail across the Minch to the Shiants. “And do you think I’ll make a good sailor of her” “If you had another life,” John said. “Ah yes,” I said reeling a little. “I suppose one needs to know these things instinctively.” “No,” he said. “You need to be entirely conscious of what you are doing and why you are doing it.”
Another two friends died yesterday. They were well known men in our community and both part of the hosting world on our little Bowen Island, integral to providing experiences for visitors that allow us to provide well hosted learning experiences for people here. They didn’t always do it loudly, but they left legacies that are so important to what we are able to do here. It has been a really strange few months with 9 deaths of people I know to various degrees; from close friends to intimate strangers. Two from suicide, one from a heart attack, the rest from …
Over the years the Art of Hosting community of practice has developed some methods for large group process facilitation that have become standards alongside the methods we have imported into our work, such as Circle Way, Open Space Technology and World Cafe. One of these, Pro Action Cafe, is one of my go to methods for hosting small and rapid fire project development. Ria Baeck, one of the co-developers of this method along with Rainer von Leoprechting shared the Pro Action Cafe origin story on the Art of Hosting list, and so here are her words and observations, for posterity: …