I was watching the Cop15 conference at a distance and I have been thinking that big conferences are maybe not what it will take to shift things. Bigger and more may not be what is needed, or what works. One of the problems is the pressure and expectation that comes from big gatherings – it tends to result in a level of planning and pre-ordained outcomes that actually suppresses emergent behaviour, and emergent behaviour is the mechanism I believe we need to evolve our next level of being, if we are to have a next level as a species. An …
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Almost 20 years ago I was a part of pioneering something and I had no idea I was doing that. Gathered under the creative eye of Rob Winslow at The Union Theatre in Peterborough Ontario, a small cast of us put on a weekly improvised soap opera called “The Cactus Hotel: A Western Philosophy” (My God! Here is the brochure for it!) Every Sunday night all summer we improvised a one hour show that advanced the story of a number of characters who found themselves in an imaginary world that owed its existence to the marriage of the Hotel California, …
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Today John Inman had a great post on using the world cafe for a five hour strategic planning session with a non-profit. His process works as follows: First I asked that the whole system be in the retreat. We had board members, a customer, grant writer, community member, and contractors. 1. Introduction in group setting 2. Introduce the process 3. Pose the question 4. Three cafe tables with three people each, start the cafe 5. Three rounds of conversation each 20 minutes 6. Returned people to original table and asked them to capture the main themes at each table. 20 …
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This week I had the tremendous privilage to facilitate two days of Open Space for Xyolhemeylh, the Aboriginal child and family services agency in the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver. The agency has been going through a lot of turmoil over the past few years, and has come to a point of reinvention. The theme of the gathering was “Reclaiming our Journey” and it marked a significant transition for the organization as it headed into community control from being managed by the provincial government for the past 2.5 years. The point of the Open Space meetings were to invite the …
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At the end of a beautiful day one of two days of Open Space with the Fraser Valley Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society. One lovely teaching from the Elders today: in Halkomelem there is no word for adoption, because there is no concept of a child being outside of family. Cool. It is a curious set up, this particular Open Space. We have 70 people in a circle and a dozen Elders sitting at tables outside of the proceedings, but that is as it should be. In Sto:lo culture, the role of the Elders is not to participate but …