Thanks, Chris -- We used Canadian Tables at an OS in Fairbanks last month. It was a great gathering of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, about 160 people from 40 tribes, each sending an elder, a chief, a youth, and the tribal administrator, to develop a tribal vision for Interior Alaska. The convention center manager was very impressed with the Canadian tables, and said she'd use them again, even outside OS. I told her the idea could only be used if the event had OS facilitators. :-) Thanks again for your training; come back to Fairbanks soon! Brian Rogers
-----Original Message----- From: Chris Corrigan [mailto:ch...@chriscorrigan.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 9:52 PM To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Subject: Re: a note from the trenches Julie wrote: > Earlier that week I had strolled by our School Boardroom and was amazed > to see chairs set up in a circle, tables tilted on end holding flip > chart paper... Now I have to point something out about this. Michael Herman may not have been the first to do this, but when we were in Alaska we discovered that our space did not have a good enough wall to put the agenda on. Michael, the seasoned pro that he is, just started opening up a bunch of six foot long folding tables and standing them on end which made a very serviceable wall. And as the proceedings grew in number, so grew the wall such that it covered one end of the meeting space and rounded the corners and started coming down the side walls. To my Canadian eye it really began to resemble the end of an ice hockey rink prompting myself, Judi Richardson and a player from the Alaskan youth hockey team in the Arctic Winter Games tournament to start playing an impromptu match with a black puck-shaped stone I had brought from my island. Now this may all seem like Greek to some of you (they are rolling their eyes in Israel and India as we speak) but the fact that an improvised hockey game broke out at the merest suggestion of an arena prompted Michael to refer to this particular agenda wall design as "Canadian Tables." And that's how it is known today. "We don't have a good wall? That's okay, we can use Canadian tables!" I'm hoping that it joins the ranks of "Dead Moose" and "space invader" in the lexicon of the OST facilitator. Thanks for the stories Julie. I can hardly believe it has only been six months since we proselytized in your neck of the woods! Chris * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html