Category: facilitation

Strategic Communities of Practice for The Nature Conservancy

strategicCopsI had the great pleasure of leading a webinar yesterday with The Nature Conservancy on Strategic Communities of Practice. We focused on gaining some shared sense of what we mean by “communities of practice,” a framework fo looking at them strategically, some of the basic roles involved in communities and a quick peek at evaluation options.

There was some lively interaction in the chat. Many of these folks work in parts of the world where web based online interaction is not so great, so a wonderful thread on mobile-device-supports for communities emerged. If you know of any great examples, please share. ( I just found this one with a quick search and also suggested looking at http://www.mobileactive.org. I think some of the Twitter chats could serve as a model for a mobile-based distributed conversation by a community as well! Here are some examples in education.)

In addition, the good folks at TNC said I could share the webinar recording. I’m not sure if you can bear 90 minutes of recording, but just in case, here is the link. I’ve put the slides below as well, but as usual, they don’t make a ton of sense without the narrative. Thanks to Olivia, Nicole and Gillian at TNC for being such fabulous hosts and webinar facilitators!

via Strategic Communities of Practice.

GroupWorks Deck Method Mapping at NCDD2012

This past weekend I’ve been hanging out at the National Coalition for Dialog and Deliberation‘s national confab, NCDD2012. Synopsis? Amazing people. Also it was great to connect with folks I’ve met/known online and demoralizing to NOT connect with others who were there in the flesh. Not enough time or energy. 🙁

Thursday I took part in pre-conference workshop using the fabulous Group Works Deck to map out the elements of a variety of group methods and processes. (I wrote about the deck a while back here. )

As we did the exercise, I realized that I needed the narrative with the map, so took these off the cuff videos, now debuting as this week’s Monday Video.

via GroupWorks Deck Method Mapping at NCDD2012 – YouTube.

What I noticed about the mapping was the more we did it, the more discerning we became at identifying the essential “spine” of a method AND,through reflecting on the other possibilities offered by the patterns in the cards, observed new ways of “fleshing out” the method depending on context. In other words, the cards enabled us to have great learning conversations about the methods. Very cool. I plan to use the cards a lot in the coming weeks of crazy work and travel! I also deeply appreciated all the knowledge in the room. As I learned about Participatory Budgeting from John Kelly, I was getting all kinds of ideas about how to reapply the basic idea to Knowledge Sharing/Budgeting (in terms of time and attention — which seems to be a big problem in my world these days!)

At the meeting, I also was part of a fabulous team of visual practitioners who volunteered to do a visual capture of the plenaries of all three days as a unified product. Tim Corey helped us envision a 24 x 8 foot image and then we all figured out a) how to work together to b) make a coherent capture. I’ll write more about this later after our debrief, including links to all the fab people I got to work with. But it was great fun and a lovely learning laboratory.

 

Other NCDD Materials:

  • NCDD 2012 Tweets (I hope someone Storify’s them or harvests them before they are gone. It was not a huge tweeting crowd, but there are some good captures!)
  • My photos, including some not-so-great images of the giant collaborative graphic capture 8 of us worked on (better images to come)

Monday Video: Sandy Schuman Facilitators should not be Neutral

Oh how happy I was to come upon this on Sandy Schuman’s blog. I have long struggled with the perspective that facilitation must/should be neutral. I struggle with the fact that it is HARD as a human being to be neutral. In fact, I can’t pin down the range of practices required to be and stay neutral, especially when facilitating. Neutrality has long been preached by the International Association of Facilitators.

I came to the conclusion then, that I was either a bad or a renegade facilitator. For me, it was about being AWARE of my influence, power, position and opinions and not letting them distract me from serving the group. And at times, yes, using my opinion, with clarity and transparency (I call it “taking off my facilitator hat and putting on my citizen/subject matter expert/Nancy hat!) Take a look…

And thanks, Sandy. I knew I have been right to admire and learn from you all these years!

via IAFNA2012 Fast Talk Sandy Schuman Facilitators should not be Neutral.mov – YouTube.

Shahab from #CommProj12 Interviews Me About Online Facilitation

IMG_07112012_160533We are deep into week 5 of the Project Community course. The course explores the role of online communities and networks in open, innovative design engineering. (See previous posts here and our shared Faculty blog.)

Shahab, one of my co-faculty, and I did a Google hangout on online facilitation. Here is the short 12 minute version. You can find the longer 19 minute version here. I mentioned the Community Roundtable about half way in and want to share the link so viewers have an easy link to follow! The week’s reading on online facilitation is here.

via Nancy white on Online facilitation – YouTube.

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 «.