I was always a social justice minded kid. But on December 6, 1989, when I was 21, my lifelong support for the feminist struggle was cemented. Every year I publish the list of women who died that day and whose deaths changed the lives of so many of us. Never forgotten are: • Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), mechanical engineering student • Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student • Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student • Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student • Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student • Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student …
I’ve been deeply influenced over the years by Christina Baldwin’s principle that “no one person can be responsible for the safety of the group, but a group can learn to take responsibility for it’s own safety.” I too think that the principles of Open Space allow for the right balance for individuals to take responsibility for co-creating group safety. What is remarkable is that safety is an emergent phenomenon in Open Space, a true artifact of a self-organizing system. Of course I have seen some real conflicts happen in Open Space, but what seems to mitigate them is the double …
This is the year I finally turn my version of the chaordic stepping stones tool into a book. I’ve been intending to do this for a number of years now, and the planning guide that lives on this website (available for free in English and Spanish) is essentially the book treatment and summary. The book itself will include a little bit of theory as well, based on my decade long dive into complexity work. It will also contains some stories, case studies and inspiration. As a part of preparing the book, I’m offering a four week online course starting …
In his book Sea Room Adam Nicholson describes meeting John MacAuly, a Hebridean boat builder who has just built a boat for him to sail across the Minch to the Shiants. “And do you think I’ll make a good sailor of her” “If you had another life,” John said. “Ah yes,” I said reeling a little. “I suppose one needs to know these things instinctively.” “No,” he said. “You need to be entirely conscious of what you are doing and why you are doing it.”
Over the years the Art of Hosting community of practice has developed some methods for large group process facilitation that have become standards alongside the methods we have imported into our work, such as Circle Way, Open Space Technology and World Cafe. One of these, Pro Action Cafe, is one of my go to methods for hosting small and rapid fire project development. Ria Baeck, one of the co-developers of this method along with Rainer von Leoprechting shared the Pro Action Cafe origin story on the Art of Hosting list, and so here are her words and observations, for posterity: …