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 and spark new thinking. With a week full of designing and facilitating non-OST meeting ahead of me, Ming’s link couldn’t have come at a better time.

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 swap would create some confusion and chaos for readers of my blog. If you’re just a casual visitor, you might never notice that the posts this week are not mine, and would people wonder why I’m suddenly into aboriginal music? I thought about this and decided that creating a little chaos and confusion once in a while is really a good thing, and to just lean back and see what comes out of it.

Writing on Chris’ blog made me think more deeply about what I was writing. First of all, I wanted it to be something that was relevant to the people who regularly read here, but I also wanted the stuff to be good, so I probably spent a little more time on each post than I normally do.

A great big thank you to Chris. I admire him for trying this out, even though as he writes here, he was unsure about it. I could actually sense his reluctance when we emailed about the idea a while back (don’t ask me how but I could), but it was great to try it.

To me it has been weird, fun, confusing, chaotic, scary, new, uncomfortable, interesting, and much more. In short: A real learning experience (yaaaay). And now it’s back into my old, comfortable pants. I hope to see you there (here the pants metaphor gets a little shaky).

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.

This is a very similar situation to my project with making people happy at work – again it all has to start with the motivation or the conscious decision to change.

So here’s the question: Where does the motivation to change come from?

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 him a fool

He�ll go upside-down
and back �round the bend
He�ll see Death Mouth eating
each postcard you send

He plays the act
he knows how to play
He says the things
he�s got to say
He rides around
from town to town
just full-time turnin�
upside-down

He got no plan
Got no idea
He may not be
�I not even here�
But as the wind
and smoke may dance
you�ll see him move
by simple chance

He has to die
some other day
That�s just to live
some other way
And as they take him
out of sight
a voiceless voice
says �it�s all right�

It seems hard to believe these days but Dan Turrell caused a lot of controversy in Denmark back in the 70’s, not for his writing but for being bald and wearing black nail polish – it probably takes a little more these days. He was a generous spirit and a very talented writer of poems and suspense novels.

I just finished reading Gesundheit! by Patch Adams, and it’s left me totally high. I saw the movie Patch Adams starring Robin Williams a while ago, but I never realized that there was a real doctor by that name, striving to create a totally revolutionary hospital – the Gesundheit Institute.

Patch Adams is mostly known for introducing humour in the treatment of his patients, but this book reveals that his philosophy goes way beyond that. It is about the whole person. This is hardly a new notion, but it is certainly waaaay different from how medicine is practiced in most places today. For example, when a new patient arrived, rather than conducting an interview in an office, Patch would take that person fishing or for a walk in the woods, depending on what that patient enjoys doing. The interview would cover symptoms and medical history but would also include talking about the persons hopes and dreams, spirituality, upbringing and much more.

Some parts of the book that really stuck in my mind are:
* Fun death. Why does dying need to be an unpleasant experience? Sure you want to postpone it as long as possible, but is it impossible to create an environment in which dying is as much a part of life as everything else, and is appreciated as such? Patch writes at one point that “Dying is that process a few minutes before death when the brain is deprived of oxygen; everything else is living”.

* A description of a hypothetical patient og the Gesundheit Institute, a 37 year old man with an ulcer. The treatment would consist of he and his family staying at the institute for a week or ten days. While he gets treated, the family can enjoy the nature and generally have fun.

* Patch on greed: “Greed is one of society’s worst malignancies, and it appears to have metastasized to every corner of the earth… Certainly one of greeds most devastating symptoms is cynicism… We believe that a society must care for its population enough to take care of its need.”

* On loneliness: “I remember an eleven-year old girl who had a huge bony tumor of the face with one eye floating out in the mass. Most people found it difficult to be with her because of her appearance. Her pain was not in the dying but in the loneliness of being a person others could not bear to see. She and I played an joked and enjoyed her life away.”

Patch is still working to raise the funds that will allow him to build the institute, and I’m simply flabbergasted that he hasn’t yet succeeded. Having read the book, it is obvious to me that his way of practicing medicine is not only better for the patient, it is also better for the medical staff (who suffer hard from burnout today) and (incredibly) more efficient and cheaper than todays bloated health care system. If I ever get sick, I certainly want to be treated the Gesundheit way!