I’ve been asking around about the properties of circles. Mostly I’ve been querying the OSLIST community and there have been some fine responses. My query began with a quote from the “script” I use when I open space in OST meetings: Circles are really rather neat forms of geometry because they force us to have a look at things in a particular way. For example in a circle, we don’t really know who “the leader” is. In fact we may be forgiven for thinking that the leader is either not here, or is each one of us. And as a …
Flemming Funch points to a great collection of citizen participation resources, which includes Open Space Technology and 62 other approaches to helping groups converse and make decisions. I love collections like this. As a facilitator, I mostly design my own processes and tools for meetings depending on what the client wants. Open Space Technology is really the only “fixed” process I use. I draw heavily on Appreciative Inquiry, scenario planning, and a variety of other approaches to group work in all the design work I do, so it’s great to come across these kinds of tools to refresh my memory …
We’ve come to the end of the blog swap experiment, and here are my thoughts about it: First of all, it has enriched my blog. Chris introduced some new topics to my blog, and the depth of his thinking and writing are an inspiration for me. Especially his thinking on the nature of this experiment just blew me away. He wrote very eloquently about it here, and I for one, will certainly try to shift my thinking on blogs from a “place” metaphor to a “pants” metaphor from now on :o) I found myself getting a little worried that the …
I have a question for you. I was at a network meeting today, and one of the participants has just started a project to increase the health of the 10.000 employees of one of Denmarks biggest companies. She asked us to supply some inspiration how this could be done, and one of the thins we agreed on was that it is to a large degree a question of motivation. The company can offer employees fitness training, diet planning, massages, aerobics classes, stop-smoking classes and much more, but if the individual is not motivated to become more healthy, it won’t work. …
Going through the archives here on the parking lot, I can’t help but notice that Chris is kinda big on poetry, and I’ll just assume that the same goes for his regular readers. So allow me to introduce you to Dan Turrell, one of Denmarks best known authors and poets. Karma Cowboy Theme Song Some folks got to reason Oh but I hope you�ll understand I don�t reason nothin� I�m just ridin� thru the land ridin� ridin� thru the land writin� daybreak thru my hand The Karma Cowboy is only a tool in the hands of a Karma that makes …