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Open and closed language in facilitation

February 4, 2006 By Facilitation

At Anecdote,Andrew has teamed up with friend Viv McWaters in an innovative community of practice exercise. They are running a three month long learning group on the uses of open and closed language among facilitators:

Our focus is on the language facilitators use to encourage or discourage a group discussion. This reflective practice will run over 3 months and for those participating we will provide reminders, feedback and stories from other participants. We aim to share our learnings and findings at a workshop for some upcoming Australasian facilitation conference… If you would like to join in on this reflective practice, send either Viv (viv@thereef.com.au) or myself (andrew@anecdote.com.au) an email and we will join you in to our program.

I signed up for it. It should prove to be an interesting exercise and should also contribute much to my understanding of the four practices of open space, and especially opening and inviting. Join us!

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Open Space Practice Retreat, April 18-20

January 31, 2006 By Open Space

Michael Herman and I are pleased to announce a three day Open Space Technology practice retreat to cultivate the essense of Open Space leadership April 18-20 here on Bowen Island. This is an intensive retreat for leaders, managers, facilitators, consultants, community activists, and anyone else who wants to open more space for renewal, visioning, learning and productivity — in business, government, educational and community organizations. This is an opportunity for deep learning about leadership and change, in the context of the practices that support facilitating Open Space.

If you would like to register, or for more information, visit the Practice Retreat page or contact me directly.

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Unconferencing

January 30, 2006 By Open Space

Okay folks…having read Jeff Jarvis today (thanks for the pointer Johnnie) and noting the unconferencing angst going on out there, and noting also that people seems to be feeling around in the dark for some way forward, I’m here to offer what I can.

I am a facilitator and I specialize in Open Space Technology. There is hardly a better method of structuring a conference that mimics the social networking landscape that we call the Internet. I have run all kinds of conferences with Open Space, including using Open Space combined with speakers and other bits of inspiration. I’ve used Open Space in combination with other large group process like World Cafe. I’ve convened conference using Open Space that were supported by wikis and blogs and that had an online and real life for months afterwards.

If you are after building bottom-up, conversational and highly networked conference, it’s really a very simple thing to turn a traditional conference into an Open Space event that gives you what you’re looking for. I have been hearing about people wanting to do this for a couple of years now, but no one has called yet, so here’s the offer:

If you are serious about wanting to create an unconference, phone me or Skype me or drop me an email and I will talk your ear off for free and tell you everything I know about how to do it. I will even help you create the invitation and figure out the logistics. If it suits you to work with me after that, I’ll facilitate the conference for you as well and/or find others out in the world who will be eager to help you out for an obscenely reasonable rate. You will have, at the end of the day, a dynamic event, with engaged participants and you will bring it in at a huge cost savings over what you are budgeting for a full-on conference with panels and video conferencing and skirts on the tables and such. You will have a powerful, low cost, learning event.

In exchange for my free set up advice, I’ll ask you to share what we learn with others on our respective blogs. All I want to do at this point is make sure that the new kind of conferencing takes off and that we can learn from one another.

So I look forward to hearing from you.

unconference

Mindful of teachers all around

January 30, 2006 By Being, Featured, Learning

Good old whiskey river:

Mindful
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
– Mary Oliver

Yesterday my five year old son and I went for a walk in a remote and wild part of our island to a point where the waves riding the southeasterlies up the Strait of Georgia break on a basalt reef littered with driftwood. And in that place, in that moment, with rain washing our faces and wind lashing at our ears, we talked about seeing with the close-seeing eye that watches where we step and seeing with the long-seeing eye that knows where we are in the forest. So turning, we made our way back through the trees with our close-seeing eyes and long-seeing eyes both tuned. We learned that it is important to stay aware of our feet below us and the turns in the forest path ahead of us, and that getting lost is a result of losing the manner of both modalities.

Such a trove of teachings in a simple, slippery path on a rainy day.

Allegri’s Miserere and Mozart’s birthday

January 27, 2006 By Music One Comment

Here’s an mp3 post for a rainy Friday afternoon, another contemplative moment.

This is Allegri’s Miserere, a stunning piece of choral music composed in the 1630s. It is so sublime that for a long time it was only performed once a year and anyone who wrote it down would be excommunicated for doing so. The story goes that Mozart (whose 250th birthday is today) broke the ban by hearing the piece, transcribing it from memory and then giving it away. In this respect Wolfgang may have preceeded Napster by a couple hundred years. Thanks to Wolfgang’s transgressions, this Miserere is now open source and able to be performed by any choir with a soprano that can hit that high C. For me, as one who is not a great fan of Mozart’s music in general, I consider this one act to be his greatest acheivement.

The piece is ten minutes long, so sit back, close your eyes and enfold yourself in the textures of it as it moves between plainsong and polyphony and as that soprano descends from heaven with the most heartstopping phrase in choral music.