Back in April, I got to be a part of one of the best hosting experiences of my life when I joined Tuesday Ryan-Hart, Toke Moeller, Monica Nissen, Phil Cass and Tim Merry and a bunch of others in designing and hosting the 2008 Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Conference. The other day Erin Caricoffe, one of the staff members of the core team we worked with sent out this summary of where we are now: By all shared accounts, the 2008 Food and Society Gathering for Good Food was a success, meeting planning Team goals of providing a …
On the OSLIST, Marc Steinlin posed a few questions that I took a stab at answering: What means “holding space”? What is the function, if demonstrably one can do without? The $100,000 question! Several of us over the years have written things on it (I wrote a whole book trying to understand it) but it is an elusive process. And I think it changes with the scale and size of the group AND most importantly with the pre-existing depth of their own relationship. If I was to generalize I would say that holding space means helping the group …
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission launches today (hooray that my friend Jane Morley was named as one of the commissioners last week!) and I’m here at Queen’s University in Kingston to run an Open Space as part of a conference of academics, policy makers and public servants from First Nations and non-Aboriginal governments and institutions on the topic. In Canada, the process that is being embarked upon today is spurred by the residential school experience. The main brief of the TRC will be to write the history of that 150 year period in Canadian history when residential school did huge …
I just opened space here for 550 people at the Food and Society Conference. This was the biggest OST gathering I have ever facilitated, and it’s huge in importance as well. There must have been close to 100 sessions proposed for today and I’m just gathering my energy for a long day and night ahead of compiling the proceedings document. I’m a stranger to the good food movement in the United States, and so it’s hard for me to know what the agenda looks like, but like all Open Space events I trust that it is what is needed right …
Taking a moment here in the newsroom to blog a little about the WK Kellogg Foundation Food and Society 2008 gathering here in Phoenix. It is halfway through day one of this two-plus day gathering to look at connecting and inspiring leadership in the good food movement across the USA. For the past nine months my Art of Hosting colleagues Tim Merry, Toke Moeller, Tuesday Ryan-Hart, Monica Nissen and Phil Cass and I have been working with the Kellogg Foundation and their partner Winrock International to craft a conference that was fundamentally different from the previous eight conferences that have …