At our art of hosting water dialogues this morning, several insights on the four fold practice of hosting: on hosting ourselves, one of the participants who used to work in emergency medicine shared his team’s mantra: in an emergency the first pulse you take is your own, participating means coming to any situation with curiosity and an ability and desire to learn something the practice of hosting doesn’t mean you need to be an expert. To convene you simply need the desire and courage to call and hold. the practice of co-creation is born from generosity and sharing resources, skills, …
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First of all there is no such thing. Second, a friend asked me the question “What is the idea group size for collaborative process?” and in trying to answert the question I emailed him the following (please note that this is all off the top of my head, and in practice I usually go with intuition, relying more on patterns than rules): Innovation generally starts with individuals, so I like to build time into to processes for people to just be quiet and think for a bit. Small groups can help refine and test good ideas, and large groups can …
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Last night in Vancouver listening to Le Vent du Nord, a terrific traditional band from Quebec. They put on one of the best live shows I have seen in a long time with outstanding musicianship combined with incredible energy. Listening to them and watching people dancing I had a deep experience of why we humans need art. It brings us into a joyful relationship which each other that we seem built to need – a kind of belonging that transcends each of our individual reservations, a sort of shared ecstasy. The cynic might say that such an attitude is decadent …
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Off to Salt Lake City Utah to work with Tenneson Woolf and Teresa Posakony on another Art of Hosting. Taking an inquiry into this one about the dynamics and the work of co-hosting. I take for a given the relationships I have with my closest colleagues, and the ease with which we are able to work together. There is a magic to it born out of deep friendship for one another (we have a saying that friendship is the new organizational form). There is also something about sharing an inquiry together and living deeply in a community of practice where …
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A birth announcement that might interest you. I have been a small part of a project over the past couple of years (along with a few other Art of Hosting stalwarts) to help co-create a pattern language for group process. Over the years we have been working away at discerning, writing and publishing this pattern language. The idea is to capture a limited number of patterns that, if practiced in a group context, bring life to gatherings. After years of work, I think we really have something. The project has now resulted in it’s first product: a deck of cards …