Facilitate connection
Last Saturday, the ashes of my wife’s beloved Tai Chi teacher were interred in our tiny town cemetery. People came from all over the world to celebrate her life, but some could not make the journey. Could I help distant […]
Search Results for: facilitation
Lessons for #eventprofs from an improv and mindfulness workshop — Part 1
Here are some improv and mindfulness lessons from a five-day improv and mindfulness workshop I attended in Maine in 2016. You had to be there. In this case, “there” was a wonderful five-day improv and mindfulness workshop Mindful Play, Playful […]
Who owns your event?
Who owns an event? Who owns an event? The usual answer to this question is “the event’s sponsors”. They are the people and organizations that decide to hold the event and contribute the resources needed for the event to occur. Sponsors typically define the context, format, scope, and […]
Feedback Frames—a low-tech tool for anonymous voting
Jason Diceman is developing a novel tool for anonymous voting — Feedback Frames. Unlike high-tech audience response systems, Feedback Frames are refreshingly low-tech (no computers, clickers, smartphones, power, or technical support required). One graphic explains the tool: Although I tend to prefer public and semi-anonymous […]
Participate! Labs
Learn to Design Participation-Rich Conferences Learn to design participation-rich conferences at Participate! Labs. “You don’t take a workshop. You are part of one.” —Seth Godin We’ve known for a long time that lectures are terrible ways to learn. Today’s attendees […]
Participatory voting at events: Part 1—Introduction
Look up “voting” on Google and the top search results are dominated by links about electoral voting. Making decisions (about elected leaders, opposing choices, action plans, etc.) is the first function of voting that comes to mind for most people. […]
Indaba—The simple consensus process that saved international climate change conferences
Negotiators twice used a powerful yet little-known South African consensus process—Indaba—to rescue foundering talks at international climate change conferences. Introduced at the 2011 Durban talks, the recently-concluded 2015 Paris talks also invoked indaba (pronounced “in-dar-bah”) to reduce “900 bracketed points of contention in the draft […]
Dear Adrian—More questions about event process design
Dipesh Mody, writing from Mumbai, India, asks five great questions about event process design. I’ve interspersed my answers after each question. Q. Dear Adrian, I have now read both your books and have truly enjoyed reading them. Your work has been very […]
The rise of the generalist
Are you a specialist or a generalist? “We used to be defined by what we knew. But today, knowing too much can be a liability.” —Peter Evans-Greenwood, How much do we need to know? Once upon a time, I enjoyed a lucrative […]
Pair share—What’s on your mind right now?
Here’s a simple and effective variant of pair share — a fundamental participative technique that fosters connection and learning via discussion with a partner during a conference session. It was conjured up the other day by Malii Brown while we were co-facilitating a peer conference roundtable. To […]