A sign at the government wharf in Tofino, BC reserving parking for Elders from the Indigenous communities of Clayquot Sound. Yesterday I was on a call with one of our Complexity Inside & Out participants who was getting started with Participatory Narrative Inquiry and NarraFirma. Like I do with everyone, I pointed him to Cynthia Kurtz’s websites on these topics and then walked him through an installation of the NarraFirma WordPress plugin. My friend wanted to use PNI to gather stories related to his family. He comes from a big family who have regular reunions at which more than 100 …
Here in the mid latitudes of the norther hemisphere, there are a few days around the solstice when there is technically no night time. This image, from TimeAndDate.com shows that the sky remains in twilight at midnight for another few days. Further north of course it’s light and in the Arctic, the sun doesn’t set at all. Here on Bowen Island, it’s still a dark night, and the moon has just risen around 12:30am or so, but we are treated to a very special time when there is no actually, technical night. I’m not sure so many folks in this …
When we are teaching dialogue practice and participatory meeting design, I often draw on the example of organizational and team staff meetings. Every organization I’ve worked with has these meetings and they ae almost nearly the same: an endless re-iteration of what people are doing, and rarely nothing more compelling that an email wouldn’t take care of. There is rarely even time for discussion becasue you have to get through everyone’s update in the 30 minutes assigned for the meeting. So I often advise folks who want to bring more participatory culture to their organizations to focus on staff meetings. …
I was reflecting today with a friend on the nature of the world right now. We were discussing some of the story collections I have from the early part of the pandemic when I was running Participatory Narrative Inquiry projects with organizations seeking to understand the effects of the pandemic on their services. It’s hard to remember that time, and it’s very hard to remember the “before-times,” as people call them. But reading these stories reminded me of what we all did together all of a sudden. It was meant to be a short-term intervention in our lives. It wasn’t. …
Peter Rawsthorne is back to blogging and today he published a post that discusses his process for writing in a time in which AI can be a useful writing companion. Here’s his process. Step by Step my blogging will now follow this basic approach; Interesting. I’m curious how others are using AI in their writing. What’s your process?