Here are some other games we played as a group on Day 1 of Open Space at the ACAPTA Flashpoint Forum in Sydney. The games were run by Dan Aubin, Artistc Director with CirKidz. As I said in my previous post, seeing a whole group of people at a conference make room to just ‘play’ (and move other conversation topics to prioritise this) was so refreshing. I noticed a significant change in the connection between participants after this 2 hours of play – a new social-contract between people seemed to emerge. Here is a copy/paste of Dan’s Open Space offering …

I am facilitating a 4 day forum (The ACAPTA Flashpoint Forum) with a great bunch of people from the world of Circus and Physical Theatre. We have people here in sydney from street performers to federal funders … trapeze acrobats to administrators. Today in Open Space, the whole group came together for 90 minutes to simply play and share games. Viv has written about this urge here and here … for me it seemed the group was yearning to step away from the ‘intellectual’ stuff and ‘connect’ with each other in deeper and more human ways – and so they …

At this precise moment … 12 years ago … Ingrid and I were married. We had known each other for 3 years and had travelled the world together. We had already shared experiences to fill a lifetime. This morning we recalled some of those moments and we feel blessed by the family, friends and sanctuary we have around around us. On the eve of our wedding, a song flowed from my heart … here is the chorus This chorus is about you, its written for you With a minor chord, I adore you … and I love you This chorus …

As I re-design a 5 day community leadership program, a whole bunch of little statements and slogans ended up on my mind-map – some are just ideas and others are borrowed from others. See the Wordle-Cloud below. A few things I know about this program … Improv games and principles will feature prominently – play, then sense and apply Participants will learn (very early on) to take the lead on hosting conversations and create inviting questions Everyone will be connected online and conversations will happen between the weekly gatherings Past participants will connect with new – the conditions for a …

The most common conversation I hear my clients having is about ‘Social Media’ … facebook, twitter, wikis, blogs etc. This is in the context of Knowledge Management, project management, internal communications and stakeholder engagement. Often I hear the tension between controlling it and letting it go – do the latter as it’s not that scary! Earlier this year, Euan Semple and I co-facilitated a day of social media conversations with a few of my clients. We had a ball and our parting words were … “let’s do that again sometime”. Well, that’s probably not going to happen in Melbourne for a …