Rare that I completely reproduce a full post from someone else’s blog, but Doug Germann did a masterful job today of capturing the terror of dialogue: There is deadly risk in dialogue. We are imperiled. If we are born in conversation, we die there, too. We die when we leave it; we die when we meet another, for we cannot long remain other, and yet we must. Both people must be willing to let shields down, the shields which keep us inside our images of ourselves. Our plans may not be accepted, they might be tossed aside, worthless. We might …
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It’s around this time of year when people all over North America are graduating from school and starting their new lives. If I were to offer one piece of advice it would come straight from this post about learning in networks. We are still about control, not sharing. We are still about distribution, not aggregation. We are still about closed content rather than open. We are static, not fluid. The idea that each of our students can play a relevant, meaningful, important role in the context of these networks is still so foreign to the people who run schools. And …
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Many of the circles I travel in instersect in many intimate ways. People I meet here on the west coast of Canada months apart turn out to be co-authors of papers and books. Folks I hear about from others turn out to be partners in crome later on. The Art of Hosting world is a little like that, touching as it does on many many different networks. And through these serendipitous connections, it turns out that I am personally acquainted with two of the three authors of a great little free e-book called Mapping Dialogue. I met Zaid Hassan last …
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I’m fond of saying that I’m the last consultant in the world without a cell phone. While that is true for business, my partner and I have one that we use for personal purposes. And because we use it so infrequently (mostly for emergencies or urban logistics when we’re in the big city) we have it hooked on to a prepaid plan from fido. Now fido offers you a couple of ways to handle prepayment. You can either buy vouchers or use a credit card. A credit card is preferable for us. So because we …
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I have been working lately with friends and fellows Brenda Chaddock, Tennson Wolf and Teresa Posakony to co-create another Art of Hosting training. We will be gathering on Bowen Island here in British Columbia from September 24-28 in a practice retreat to deeply investigate these questions: What could my leadership also be? What if I would practice using collective intelligence and learning in my organisation and network? What could strategic conversations also be if I host them with wisdom and courage? How do I create authentic involvement that leads to real implementation? The practice retreat is structured along the following …