The team at Slideshare have developed the Slidecast. Huh?! What’s that you ask? Quite simply, a Slidecast is an online Slideshow with voice-over. Here’s a picture … How can Slidecasts be useful? First, I intend to use Slidecasts in my work as a facilitator. Slidecasts will help to make the magical ‘transition‘ from workshop-land to the real-world. In other words, Slidecasts created in workshops will assist my clients to more clearly communicate (and remember) the ‘essence’ of workshop decisions.  Second, we know that Spoken Words (like a story) supported by Visual Images help us to learn better. Our brain is …

I have facilitated 6 workshops since returning from Byron Bay. 5 moved forward to a place of possibility … 1 ended up where it started. Why?  5 focused on solutions not problems … participants expressed things visually rather than using language … conversations were about the future and didn’t dwell on the past 1 chose to tackle the problems … participants got stuck with words and sentences … the future was took hard to see through all the problems … it felt downward spiraling This picture sums it up for me … Geoff 

As facilitators, we know how powerful a group discussion on ‘assumptions’ can be. In my experience, it helps groups/people to understand each other’s perspectives … and move through Sam Kaner’s “Groan Zone”. I like to shine a light on assumptions with an activity that is both fun and active. I use ‘Activity IX’ when groups begin to struggle … fall asleep … or when it simply ‘feels right’ to throw out there. By the way, it always works and the subsequent group discussion is entirely unpredictable … so ‘let go’ of where you think it might end up. Here it is … Activity IX …

In Yochai Benkler’s TED talk (Open Source Economics) he says something like … “Social interaction and ideas exchange on the internet is not just a passing fashion … it’s the ‘deep change’ that is challenging our incumbant industrial systems.”  If you wonder why I bother to blog and read other’s blogs … post ‘tweets’ to twitter and join online social networks, well its because I get real value from it. Yochai goes a step further and suggests that for the first time the control of the new information age is in the hands of everyone with a computer and internet …

On his blog, marketing 2.0 guru Seth Godin penned a gem called The New Standard for Conferences. I am going to build on 2 reviews on other blogs (thanks Viv McWaters & Garr Reynolds) AND relate Seth’s message to my own experience as a facilitator. My Conference-Rant – I have been involved in hundreds of conferences, meetings and forums as a facilitator … and even a few as a participant. Invariably, conferences fall into the fatal “death by powerpoint” trap. Generally, they try to rely on “experts” to enter the stage and blow everyone away with their wisdom and experience. Often, conference …