Here’s a great story from MashUp Camp on how an Open Space Technology unconference worked. The article concludes with this quote:
‘The amazing thing about these camps, using open space methodology, is they shouldn’t work,’ said Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext, which makes social software for collaboration. ‘Like a wiki, it turns out that some very simple and open rules have shockingly positive results–because people, on the whole, are good. Open events like these have become almost commonplace in the Valley. In fact, I’d say they are a key driver for the current wave of innovation. One part wiki, one part space and two parts people, add water, and voila!’
Tags: openspacetech, openspace, facilitation, unconference
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Submitted for your consideration, as they used to say on The Twilight Zone…
I am a newcomer to the notion of “morphogenetic fields” – basically fields that contain information whereby social or biological structures take shape (see more at Wikipedia)- but whether they exist or not I’m keenly aware of something like that happening in working with groups.
Yesterday I was working with a small group and we saw something happen that surprised me. The field within which we are working is philanthropy and we are designing a program that will help Aboriginal non-profits develop capacity. This work is supported by foundations and other funding and has a great deal of goodwill associated with it. Our work has taken us into designing a program that is based on sharing, free exchange of materials and learning and funding. Our language is full of the language of gifting, sharing and capacity building.
The participants in our design consultation groups were given an honorarium for being in attendance, and yesterday several of those participants donated their honorarium to one organization that provides meals to homeless folks. The gesture was out of the blue, and had no connection to what we were talking about when the first person volunteered their money. That made me curious about where the volition for doing so had sprung from.
I think that as a facilitator, a lot had to do with how we were shaping space, or shaping the field. The conversations throughout the day were about this very thing, and then to have the behaviour manifest so clearly and so out of the blue made me wonder about the power of shaping space, awakening moments, and working with morphogenetic fields. Several folks have been commenting here recently about this idea of shaping space and awakening moments. Here is a concrete example of how doing so creates emergent phenomena like the sudden donation of $500 to a mobile soup kitchen.
Categories: facilitation, gift, morphogenetic+fields,
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From Jack Ricchiuto’s blog:
I want to riff off the comment on the ‘Free Speech’ post by zenmaenad: In my experience, when the issue seems to be free speech, the deeper issue usually has to do with responsible *listening*.It surfaces a significant distinction between free speech disconnected from listening and free speech that flows from listening.
I’ve been thinking about this in a variety of contexts, but the one that comes to mind is the kind of listening we do when we are receiving a teaching. Traditionally, in First Nations communities and in other traditional settings, when Elders are teaching, listeners engage in a kind of deliberate discernment. The point is to hear the underlying truth of the story being told, to believe not the truth of the story’s “facts” but the truth of the myth itself.
This came up elsewhere this week with a post at Anecdote as well, about the truth contained in narratives. I think this arises largely because in the west we have forgotten these practices of listening to stories and observing the world as interpretational acts, in which we see everything around us as a teaching. The history of the past 500 years has been the history of trying to figure out how to reach an objective consensus about things. This weighty cultural thread has created a situation where conversations about stories, if they are conversations at all, seem to be about clarifying the facts.
The deeper truths, the embedded teachings, are lost if we put too much weight on this. That’s important because if you are setting out into the world to learn something, whether it is a personal quest, or with a group, on behalf of an organization or as a member of an inquiry team, simply getting at the facts does nothing to propel your trajectory to a new level. Instead, you are left solely with the facts and very little else to suggest how one might transcend the situation that gave rise to those facts. Developing the capacity to hear all stories as teachings is an incredibly valuable practice.
Categories: facilitation, dialogue
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As a facilitator, there are days when a well planned process gets derailed by a million little unexpected things. It’s at those times that a little calm serenity and well timed ducking comes in handy. You do your best to hang on, and harvest whatever lands in your boat.
This video captures that feeling perfectly.
Categories: facilitation
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At Anecdote,Andrew has teamed up with friend Viv McWaters in an innovative community of practice exercise. They are running a three month long learning group on the uses of open and closed language among facilitators:
Our focus is on the language facilitators use to encourage or discourage a group discussion. This reflective practice will run over 3 months and for those participating we will provide reminders, feedback and stories from other participants. We aim to share our learnings and findings at a workshop for some upcoming Australasian facilitation conference… If you would like to join in on this reflective practice, send either Viv (viv@thereef.com.au) or myself (andrew@anecdote.com.au) an email and we will join you in to our program.
I signed up for it. It should prove to be an interesting exercise and should also contribute much to my understanding of the four practices of open space, and especially opening and inviting. Join us!
Categories: facilitation