On the weekend I was happy to be running an Open Space event for 125 people who live across British Columbia’s Gulf Islands. We had a ball, and I’ll write more shortly. One of the great things that happened there was that four amazing people joined me in holding space: Wendy Farmer-O’Neil, Valerie Embry, Nancy McPhee and Beverley Neff. A million small and interesting conversations happened between us during the event, a great side effect of working with a team. One of them was about the vagaries of praise and blame, and especially how important it is to be stable …
From Jack Richhiuto: “My college buddy Al was telling the story last night of a community meeting he had in one of his development district neighborhoods. They were presenting a whole project of new middle and upper income housing right in a neighborhood of poverty and low income folks that would significantly increase the neighborhood’s density and population. The presentation complete, Q&A opened with total silence, until someone from the back raised their hand and tendered a question: What will they think of us?”
From Jack Richhiuto: “My college buddy Al was telling the story last night of a community meeting he had in one of his development district neighborhoods. They were presenting a whole project of new middle and upper income housing right in a neighborhood of poverty and low income folks that would significantly increase the neighborhood’s density and population. The presentation complete, Q&A opened with total silence, until someone from the back raised their hand and tendered a question: What will they think of us?”
Seems like a lot of people are getting hit with comment spam, no matter what platform they are using. Blogger, MT…everything seems to fall prey. Can I just say – knocking on wood – that I have been with Haloscan since near the very beginning, and it is a rare day when I get a piece of comment spam. Whatever they are doing, it works, and you don’t have to register, enter little codes or log in. And it’s free and it comes with syndication. So here’s props to Haloscan!
One of the things I hear from many clients is a call for “structure” in conversations. This is a term in need of a definition, and whenever I hear it, I try to clarify what is meant. In a lot of cases, structure means having items laid out on an agenda and a clear sense that we will come to come agreement on them. “Structure” is often a synonym for “control.” I don’t have an issue with structure, but, in keeping with the previous post, control is more problematic. Structure appears everywhere. Despite the fact that many people see Open …