Using a Praxis Log

One of the projects I’m engaged in is a rigorous exploration of my own theory-informed facilitation and hosting practice. I have been keeping extensive field notes of my work, in a hand written journal, that contains observations about myself and the group I’m working with in real time. It is an effort to refine my practice along the lines of the triangle I’ve been working on, to notice deeply the ways in which Structure, Interactions and Design coalesce into a container. It is also becoming a practice of discerning how to modulate my influence in the emergence of a container through working more deliberately and precisely with constraints, in general to see what happens when the emergence of dialogic containers happens largely through the Structure <-> Interaction relationship. What does it look and feel like in real time to withdraw Design (including intention and intervention and my own attention to what is happening) as far as possible into the background.

I’ve been engaging in the project with an LLM (ChatGPT 5.6 sol, currently). I offer this LLM my field notes and I’m able to explore areas where my theory work encounters praxis. The LLM also has access to my blog archive so it has nearly 25 years of field notes about my facilitation practice, and theory at hand. I’m able to track long term threads in my thinking, how things have evolved and generate summary reports that help me see where my practice has been coherent with theory and where it isn’t. It has allowed me to develop new experiments in hosting and group work that are always aimed at helping groups use more of their capability and less of mine, but which are helping me to find a set of practices and heuristics for facilitating, teaching, hosting and coaching.

I call this experiment a Praxis Log. Every mot I have the LLM write a learning report that summarizes my chats and notes. I’ll start publishing blog posts based on these learning reports and Praxis logs at the end of the month. A monthly cadence for this work is about right. I’m appreciating having an LLM to track and engage with the material and help me see things I would otherwise miss. And then as always, blog readers and commenters help tremendously.

In addition to improving my work, I’m appreciating the method of keeping a praxis log and using it to refine both my theory and practice. So stay tuned for the first set of learnings.