2 years ago I worked with Chris Corrigan and Steven Wright at the first World Indigenous Housing forum in Vancouver, Canada. With over 600 delegates, a key technical design challenge was about “how to” harvest individual and small group ideas and from a group of that size?! In a long story short, we engaged the brilliant Luke Closs to build us a text2cloud system. Our brief was to enable delegates to text their insights to a central number. We needed to be able to access the data quickly and discover themes using online tools such as Wordle. We needed a …

Last night I was a participant at a workshop. I turned up with 50+ members of our local community after a month of issues, poor leadership, lack of communication, rumor and misunderstanding – I’ll give no more away, but you get the picture. A meeting was called by the institution concerned and the relevant state government department took the facilitation role. At the moment I entered the room, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck … this was to be facilitation at it’s very worst. Being a participant, with a passion for the content, I couldn’t stop …

Viv McWaters has been my mentor, colleague, co-conspirator and friend for many years now. Viv has a knack of seeing beyond the ‘established norms’ of facilitation and create new ways of working from out beyond the horizon – its quite inspirational. Viv is a pioneer of Open Space, action methods and in the application of Improv Theatre to facilitation (and life). In recent times, Viv and Johnnie Moore have been breaking new ground in world of facilitation and facilitation training. Together, they have been working at the edge and applying lessons from improv theatre, neurological sciences, psychology, systems biology, design …

I am sitting in the corner of the room whilst a workshop makes it’s way to a close. These people represent the polarity of an organization – people in strategy, others at the edge working with community and others who cut across the 2. Their intent is to build strategy that has a clear purpose, is co-owned and provides a framework that is flexible enough to cope with the unexpected. In this line of work we are dealing with community and natural systems, so the unexpected will happen … Often! They are building this strategy in both a top-down and …

Home at last! It’s been a hectic 6 weeks. I have facilitated many workshops, hosted conversations, travelled many miles and, as always, improvised along the way. Most of the workshops have been with 1 organisation and they involved an engagement process with community. The standout from this process was the teamwork and willingness to genuinely engage and learn – as often a sole facilitator comes in, performs and then leaves. Staff from across the organization have contributed their time, passion and stories. The month long process has been a learning journey for all involved. Many staff have had opportunities to …