Last week I facilitated a workshop with a group of people whose work is diverse and complex and our topic was Floodplain Management. An interesting thing happened … After making a point that the large circular board room table may be of great use to the group later on, my client started with a short ‘chalk&talk’ presentation to set the scene and context for the day. We identified the key questions to draw out the group wisdom and we ran a structured group process to tackle the first question. Pretty simple so far, then … We had no plan for …

Here’s the stuff worth spreading … Viv McWaters on Ways of Knowing Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) launches WhoOnEarthCares campaign The Anecdote Team analyse Dan Pink’s TED09 presentation on Motivation From Blogx comes the best You Tube video I’ve seen since Free Hugs (hat tip to Chris Corrigan for this one) Dave Pollard‘s links and tips of the week often keep me going for hours! Zen Habits writes How to be Childlike Dave Snowden on Drivers and Modulators Euan Semple unearths a video of Moments that is superb

After 5 years of working for myself, planets have really started to line up. Once fragmented pieces of work, and the networks of people, are connecting. The 2 pieces of work I refer to are ‘facilitation’ and ‘behaviour change’ (in the context of people and communities tackling climate change). For the part of my consulting work that we habitually label “behaviour change”, whole conferences are being planned right now to better understand it and measure it! For my part, I hope we can coin a new term that better reflects a broader social context. Mark Earls, author of Herd and …

Last week, I had the privilege of participating and presenting at the 2009 ALARA (Action Learning & Action Research Assoc.) Conference. As a participant, I was at last able to connect with a group of people I’ve been learning from for years. People who have authored some of my most used books like Yoland Wadsworth and Bob Dick were there. And facilitator’s I have learned from, by watching them in action, like Ross Colliver were also in fine form. Unfortunately my time there on Friday was too brief and I didn’t get to immerse myself in the afternoon sessions and …

Many people have written about ways of improving conf. Moving away from the keynote expert experience to participation and dialogue of the crowd. I just discovered this beautiful video on Chris Corrigan’s Parking Lot! When we do have a keynote speaker,we need (metaphorically) to demand audience participation and experience in the subject matter. Just watch this video featuring Bobby McFerrin. World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.