This week I was hosting at a moderately sized conference in Victoria BC with 100 regional public sector union members. The purpose of the gathering was to increase the number of active members and to inspire members to engage and improve local communities. These union members all work in the public service and so they have a close ear to the ground on the issues facing communities from homelessness to addictions to environmental degradation to service levels in health and education. Many of them took public service jobs in the first place because they are caring and committed people, intent …
I have used Open Space in almost every way conceivable and what Lisa Heft wrote on the OSLIST today about using it with traditional conferences strikes home. This is good wisdom, friends: My experience is that – if doing a mix of ‘traditional’ format conference and Open Space – the most ideal situation is traditional, (recreation day before or after that or after the whole conference) and then Open Space. I have seen that if Open Space happens first – when there is the switch to traditional, participants feel uncomfortable and ‘edgy’ because they have tasted the power of self-organization …
One of the great pleasures of the weekend I just spent in San Francisco at the Applied Improv Network conference was hanging out with good friends, Caitlin Frost, Amanda Fenton (who is blogging up a storm these days), Viv McWaters and the inimitable Nancy White. While we were eating lunch one day, Nancy interviewed me on the subject of group sizes for a class she is teaching. Here is my off the cuff response: If you want to see more thoughts on group sizes, I wrote a post on this a while back. See this as an invitation to practice …
Was in a quick coffee conversation this afternoon with one of our local artisan metal workers on Bowen Island. He has been fascinated by bicycles for a long time and is thinking about how to build one that fits his 6’6″ frame. He has been scouring the net for information about building oversized wheels, and has decided that, as much as people are already doing it, there is something to be learned from “reinventing the wheel.” Occasionally innovation has to go back to first principles. Often in the group work I do there are two approaches to innovation: stand on …
SItting here with Geoff Brown and Steven Wright at the World Indigenous Housing Conference here in Vancouver. We are on the back end of what has been a terrific gig. We were hired by the Aboriginal Housing Management Association of BC to facilitate dialogue at this 800 person international gathering. The sponsor made dialogue a clear priority and after talking about intentions, we arrived on the design of three World Cafes: one in the plenary with everyone present and two in more focused breakout sessions. The first cafe would look at stories of success, the second would think about how …