Building on Wendy's ideas a little... I worked last year helping a small group design a conference. They started with a cafe around the question of "what did you come here looking for?" or something like that, the idea being that everyone develop a key question for themselves to open themselves up and ground their reason for being. I think after the cafe then everyone was invited to turn their name tags around and write on the back of the name tag - the balnk side - what theoir question was. Then people just walked around for two days like that, going to sessions, but displaying their questions instead of their names. Every so often two people would connect around an inquiry, and introduce themselves (which is a far more civilized way of becoming acquainted).
Anyway, it worked well...could work nicely with Wendy's idea of making those questiontags glow with art materials. Chris On 1/26/07, Wendy Farmer-O'Neil <we...@xe.net> wrote:
Hi Tenneson! What a great list you have already generated. What about also addressing some of the needs of learners with non-dominant styles—the emotional learners and the kinesthetic crowd. Emotional learners can be challenging to accommodate in a traditional conference, but you could create a reflection room where folks could go to quietly reflect on how they feel about what they are learning and also to make notes in their journals. If you provided some exercise balls as alternate seating for the regular settings, this can help the doers in the crowd. Also a toy or play table with some art supplies for drawing or painting or cutting. Things like that which support non-dominant modes and left-right integration. And in terms of deepening relationships and learning from others, is there a way to introduce a random element? I have found that introducing a random element can really support folks in getting out of their usual patterns. For example, generating random pairings of participants and inviting them to believe that they have something very important to learn from each other over the conference time. They don't have to go around together or anything, but it can support folks in stretching their antennae a bit farther and noticing and wondering more. Cheers, Wendy ------------------------------ *From:* OSLIST [mailto:osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu] *On Behalf Of *Tenneson Woolf *Sent:* Friday, January 26, 2007 9:19 AM *To:* osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu *Subject:* Request for Ideas *Hosting Friends,* I am shaping the design for a conference hosted by my university organization, The Dyer Institute for Leading Organizational Change ( www.dyerinstitute.byu.edu). The conference, April 4-6, 2007 is focused on leading organizational change – more specifically, on themes of leadership and engagement. In many ways, this is a conference with traditional formats – couple of keynotes, concurrent sessions, Q&A. The audience we expect is 100 – 200, (60% practitioners, 25% MBA students, 15% university faculty). The conference is offsite, at a resort hotel in a nice mountain setting. I am working at the edges to add as much non-traditional formatting that really cooks the learning possibilities. I'd welcome your suggestions. *What deepens relationships, learning, and capacity to act in a more traditional conference format?* A few of my ideas: - learning wall, self-organized for post-it note questions, learnings, observations - offerings wall, self-organized for people to name where they will be for given topics outside of the conference program - participant created resource table - conference journal to encourage reflection and learning that happens in hosting self - learning cafés (you've heard a bunch of stuff, now let's turn to each other to make sense of these ideas) - conference blog for people to harvest questions, insights, next steps for them - video recordings (Thanks Tatiana at WC Stewards), Dyer TV to harvest stories, key challenges, endorsements - support for each presenter to facilitate group work and interactive presentation - an open learning room, for those who want to self-organize (not open space but open space) * * *Please, join me with your ideas, improvements, stories* of hosting the middle spaces in non-hosting environments. Piece and peace in the middle…. Tenneson Tenneson Woolf The Art of Hosting tenne...@berkana.org www.artofhosting.org 801 376 2213 Dyer Institute for Leading Organizational Change tenneson_wo...@byu.edu www.dyerinstitute.byu.edu 801 422 2665 * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist* * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-- CHRIS CORRIGAN Consultation - Facilitation Open Space Technology Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
