Drawing by ritwkdey I have been thinking a lot the past few weeks about the living systems vs. the mechanical systems worldviews. It’s interesting that there is a clear distinction between these two kinds of systems – a system is alive or it isn’t, at least in this point in time – and yet the way we humans think our way through being in these systems seems to fall on a continuum. My conversation with Myriam Laberge here has pointed this out. I initially wrote a post that put facilitating up against hosting as two words to describe different ways …
Photo by paparutzi My contemporaries. Still missed. Still remembered. Geneviève Bergeron (b. 1968), civil engineering student. Hélène Colgan (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student. Nathalie Croteau (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student. Barbara Daigneault (b. 1967) mechanical engineering student. Anne-Marie Edward (b. 1968), chemical engineering student. Maud Haviernick (b. 1960), materials engineering student. Maryse Laganière (b. 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department. Maryse Leclair (b. 1966), materials engineering student. Anne-Marie Lemay (b. 1967), mechanical engineering student. Sonia Pelletier (b. 1961), mechanical engineering student. Michèle Richard (b. 1968), materials engineering student. Annie St-Arneault (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student. Annie Turcotte …
Gila River Nation, Arizona I’m here, being incredibly busy, working on the design team for the Food and Society 2008 conference for the WK Kellog Foundation. More about that soon. On the way down here I was listening to a podcast of an addres by our former Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson that was produced for CBC Ideas (and which you can download for yourself here – mp3 podcast no longer available). In it she talks about how aware people about the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. She tells the story of looking a room full of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people …
A stump in a forest hosts life in a living system Photo by alastairb * NOTE: I changed the title of this post to better reflect the both/and nature of this conversation, rather than the unhelpful either/or way I originally wrote it. At the Art of Hosting last weekend, it finally came to me – the simple description of the different between facilitation and hosting as I understand it. So here are a few simple metaphors and a more detailed meditation. At the simplest level, you can think of a party. A facilitator is like a party planner, or …
One of the patterns emerging from our work in the Art of Hosting, is the practice of developing and supporting a core team that can collectively hold the bigger work that is being done. At the moment I am working consciously with the core team pattern at VIATT, with the WK Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Conference, with the Quinault Indian Nation on a tribal strategic plan and with smaller conferences and gatherings, including one next week – a conference exploring collaboration in the child welfare and family services practice field. On that one we have been working with …