Category: events

New Westminster BC Next Tuesday: Practice for Engagement in Learning in the Classroom

They have 20 free slots still open if you are up in the Vancouver area!

JIBC is hosting a World Café style Speaker Series on Tuesday October 16th, 2012.

Description:

There are many practices from the field of facilitation that can engage individuals quickly and meaningfully into learning processes. When we shift process, shift the locus of engagement from “teacher to learner,” we also shift away from simple transmission of information into discovery, ownership of learning and, most important, meaning making. Come experience some of these practices and see if they have meaning and application in your classroom.

Facilitator:

Nancy White is going to facilitate this great session. Nancy is the founder of Full Circle Associates. She helps organizations connect through online and offline strategies. She is internationally recognized as an online interaction designer, facilitator and coach for distributed learning, teams and online communities. For more information check out: http://fullcirc.com/wp/about/about-nancy-white/

For registration contact: Tracie Gavriel, facultydevelopment@jibc.ca

Date: Tuesday October 16th, 2012

Time: 5:00 – 5:30 Food | Refreshments, 5:30 – 7:30 Collaborative Session

Location: JIBC Café. 715 McBride Boulevard, New Westminster, BC.

via Practice for Engagement in Learning in the Classroom «.

Applied Improvisation Network 2012 World Conference Storify

Have you been intrigued by my AIN12 posts? Here are some more goodies via Viv McWaters – Applied Improvisation Network 2012 World Conference (with images, tweets) · vivmcwaters · Storify. Look at all the little gems, or perhaps more aptly, facets that the tweets expose. I think you had to be there for the gems. I think my favorites are:

  • “‘Go towards the thing you’re scared of.’ Gary Hirsch#ain12“
  • “@improvapy: “Trauma sucks people into the past. Laughter pulls people into the present.” Genie Joseph#AIN12“
  • #AIN12 @brentdarnell Traditional training is a conspiracy create by sellers of 3 ring binders
  • #ain12 Matt Smith: “do what you can to get into a sense of gratitude before you perform” …or teach, or host, or lead, or…
  • Adam Blatner: “I’d rather learn something new than be right” #ain12
  • “You have to find people who are broken and help them heal. Laughter is my weapon of mass construction.” Genie Joseph #AIN12

Gotta love “laughter is my weapon of mass construction” from a woman who uses improv to help soldiers heal from the trauma of war. Mind blowing.

Wholeness: AIN12 & the Museum of the African Diaspora

As part of the Applied Improvisation Network World Conference in San Francisco, we divided up for three “field trips” on the first day. I was on the “Jazz” trip.

21 of us headed off to the Museum of the African Diaspora. We were given a fairly typical introduction to the museum and about the African Diaspora. But things started getting interesting when we viewed a short film about Howard Thurman, who talked about, among other things, the importance of being whole. (Read some of his quotes here.) This had so many layers of resonance for me, not just in terms of improv, but in every aspect of life.

Then we entered the current exhibition, Choosepaint!chooseabstraction! Celebrating Bay Area Abstract Artists.

From the moment I entered the gallery I was gobsmacked by color, emotion, ideas, layers… and eventually, some sense of wholeness. I’ve always loved abstract art.

As I walked from one canvas to the next the power of both thought, intention and improvisation came across. Reading the artists quotes about the paintings, reading the titles, seeing that many of these artists were born in the 40’s was incredible. I regret not writing down more than a few of the quotes, after some assurance from the staff that they were online. Alas, they are not. No catalog either. But the resonance was around things such as “letting the paint speak,”

Arthur Monroe wrote:

“If I had not been sanwhiched between jazz and Abstract Expressionists, I would have lost my way and may chances to paint.”

Museum of the African Diaspora :: Gone, 2005 by Squeak Carnwath
Museum of the African Diaspora :: Gone, 2005 by Squeak Carnwath

While our host from the museum did some Q&A to elicit the connection between this art and improvisation, I kept circling the room. I was so moved.

What an interesting start to a four day gathering on Applied Improvisation. MoAD gave me insights to my own practice of facilitation, communities and graphic facilitation. About wholeness, about being in the present, about color and beauty in every sense of the word. Simply Amazing.

KM Singapore Recap

Last week I had my first trip to Singapore and was a keynote speaker and workshop presenter at KM Singapore. My talk was entitled “The Heaven and Hell of Communities!” If you want the short version, a 2 minute recap can be found here. (I just blogged about the Graphic Facilitation workshop as well.) I want to thank the fabulous Edgar Tan, Wai Kong and Patrick Lambe of Strait’s Knowledge for hosting me. You guys ROCK!

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about this presentation, so I thought I’d share some of that process, acknowledge and thank those who helped me, and then share the slide set.

Process

My first instict was to use my communities and networks to “think out loud” about the tensions that are mounting in the productive and strategic use of communities and networks. Little did I realize that I was actually setting myself up for the very challenges I was trying to talk about. Filter failure. Lack of discrimination and strategy in how I tapped my networks. Too much on my plate. Mama mia. It was all in front of me, and I wasn’t even seeing it.

My first round was asking on Twitter for “radical ideas” about knowledge collaboration. Then I set up a Google Doc to start sharing my ideas and solicit comments. THEN I added one more mechanism, Google Moderator (which it turns out, I’m not so fond of) which gave me more diverse input. Then I started scanning more generally on my network and the “kismet” factor kept turning up more and more interesting and relevant links. These are still a disorganized mish mash on the Google doc. I think I’m not such a great Curator! (Robin, now you know why I was massively inarticulate on this topic when we last talked in Rome!) Thanks Jennifer, Dave, Eugene and Christopher and the rest of my network!

I was pretty darn well overwhelmed, so I let it all sit. Then a week before I was due to travel, I started with my “post it note” presentation planning, pulling out three main thoughts, supporting information, key anecdotes and at least 2 actionable suggestions for each main point. I begin to feel urgent, so I started dumping things into PowerPoint, with the intention of drawing the visuals for the slides once I had them set. But they just would NOT SETTLE in my mind or on the screen. So I decided to travel with things “unfinished.” Sometimes at the event, in the PLACE things fall into place. But I could not chase away some niggling worries.

I got a bit nervous as things had not fallen into place. Then the night before the keynote they did. David Weinberger’s keynote on day one totally resonated with what I wanted to talk about. Patrick Lambe’s talk analyzing the incident review of a major breakdown in Singapore’s public transit system told the perfect story validating the three points. In fact, almost every talk had a resonate point or reference. And somehow the language around the points got clearer as I reread some of my favorite work of friends. The idea of resilience instead of mitigation, of creative destruction to make room for strategic participation in communities and networks, and of conversations that matter all  felt right.

As an aside, here are my Sketchnotes from some of the other presenters!

[slideshare id=14227608&doc=kmsingapore2012sketchnotes-120909221148-phpapp02]

Slides

The room at the Swissotel was pretty bright and images on previous slide sets were washing out. I usually use visually oriented slides – either photos or my own drawings. I realized a simple, bold text strategy might be better in this room, so that actually saved me some prep time. I rarely use text, but I think this worked out OK.

I was surprised how popular the slides were on Slideshare, even without any notes or narration. I was featured on Slideshare one day! Now I need to get the  audio/video so there can be a bit more sense making.

[slideshare id=14196396&doc=heavenhellofcommsnetsfinalkmsg12-120906192628-phpapp02]

Feedback

The room seemed to feel some resonance with the messages.  The group was fairly quiet through the whole two days of the event, so one would not expect whooping and shouting, but the follow up questions were very thoughtful and we continued some of these in the afternoon “Knowledge Market.” The three time horizons from Steve Waddell, the ideas I borrowed from the sustainability field around resilience instead of just mitigation and the chance to STOP doing something resonated. Patrick and I now want to work more on practices for creative destruction! Stay tuned for a workshop series.

All in all it was great fun.

Related Links and Event Artifacts

KM Singapore Graphic Facilitation Workshop

It makes no sense to fly all the way to Singapore just for a keynote, so the good folks at Straits Knowledge and IKMS set me up to offer a graphic facilitation pre-conference workshop prior to KMSingapore (#KMSG). 12 folks joined me to explore how we productively use visuals as we facilitate in our work. After some visual introductions, we did the classic “I Can Draw” exercises, then worked on basic visual vocabularies. With that under our belts, we explored how we can use these visual skills in a variety of facilitation settings. You can see the full agenda here. Below are some images from the workshop, including our use of the visual practice “river of life” as a workshop evaluation tool.

[slideshare id=14227986&doc=graphicfacilitationworkshop-120909230832-phpapp02]

Resources