It is a crazy, busy spring this year, with many wonderful learning adventures with my clients. More about that later on. But I wanted to get a few events on the radar screen of my North American readers, particularly those of you in the Northwest region.
Canada’s favorite blogging-cum-social media gathering, Northern Voice, is coming up the 15th and 16th of June in Vancouver, BC. I’m happy to say I’m going to get into trouble and co-instigate a session related to risk taking and improvisation the the irrepressible Alan Levine and Rob Cottingham. For a bit, I had lost the description we had submitted and I thought, “well, we’ll just improvise.!” 😉 But Alan reminded me our conversation was in Skype, so I grabbed the transcript. Here it is… maybe you have some ideas and suggestions?
The poet Guillaume Apollinaire wrote:
Come to the edge, he said.
They said: We are afraid.
Come to the edge, he said.
They came.
He pushed them… and they flew.Perfection. Bah. Certainty? You’re crazy. Our participation in the (social) world cannot be predicated by “looking good” or having a perfect plan if we are to move our learning and our practices forward. The opportunity in the moment is a rich space. So prepare to be surprised. Plan and then go with the flow, even if that means abandoning your plans. Come play with Alan, Rob and Nancy (plus our richly surprising networks) as we explore the role of improvisation in our online lives. Heck, offline too. Why not? Come jump off the cliff.
Bios:
Nancy White
Alan Levine
Rob Cottingham
Three crazy people who love to leap and learn. And learn and leap. And have fun.
I also raised my hand to help co-organize the open space part of the event, fondly called “Moose Camp” with the equally irrepressible Brian Lamb. Can you spell F-U-N? Michelle Laurie, Giulia Forsythe and I will be hosting one session for visual practitioners (aka graphicos) at Moose Camp. I love the invitation to create what suggests itself in the moment. This seems consistent with our “formal” session offering. Kind of ironic, eh?
The day before (June 14th), my amazingly productive and generative colleague Sylvia Currie hosts the annual Online Community Enthusiast’s gathering where we will be thinking together about the practice of designing and facilitating online meetings — among other things. It is great that this is piggy-backing up against Northern Voice. Again, this is an event YOU can come to as well!
So if you are in the neighborhood, JOIN US! I promise it will be fun and rewarding. Honest! Bring your pens, chalk, ipads, cameras, but above all, bring your SELF!