I ran a workshop yesterday – an interactive membership learning exercise for a group of 40 international network members – which gave me a moment to reflect on dynamics and the value of diversity of, well, practically everything. In my workshops I like to keep things moving, to get people out of their seats to […]
As many of my friends and acquaintances know I am a big fan of Getting Things Done (see the blog’s GTD tag on this, and also the tag on Productivity). One of the GTD tenets is the “Weekly Review” and there are some great resources for this – from the GTD Times article The GTD […]
I just had a suggestion come in to help make job interviews more informative, and therefore increase the potential of finding a match between the candidate, the position, and team within which it sits. How do you learn enough about someone (and help them learn enough about you) to make this important match successful? Traditional interviews […]
I hear over and over again that meetings go way too long (and certainly have been in more than a few of these myself). People are not always to the point (if they get to the point), and the actionable items are often embedded in lots of description and anecdote. Loose narrative is not necessarily a bad thing, and […]
I am currently working with a team focusing on biodiversity conservation and assessment to “makeover” an existing training curriculum into one even more interactive and learner-focused. As a part of this process I offered to put together a selected list of resources, from the raft of those available, that are particularly useful to me in this kind of work. As […]
Systems Thinking Learning: Stand Alone or Integrated? This year I have been working with LEAD Europe (Leadership for Environment and Development) to integrate systems thinking effectively into the leadership curriculum. Last year, I contributed a stand alone module to the LEAD Training (Using Systems Thinking: How to Go from 140 PowerPoint Slides to 2), and think that this […]
I was very honoured tonight to be able to speak after Melinda French Gates, Graca Machel, Hans Rosling, and Mechai Viravaidya at the TEDxChange event, hosted by the Gates Foundation. Well, this is technically true, although I was speaking on the TEDxGeneva local stage, which followed directly after the simulcast of the New York event. Lizzie, representing tonight the Hub in […]
We were very sad a few weeks ago when Joan Davis, one of our speakers, and a Switzerland-based founding member of the Balaton Group, let us know that she was not able to attend. She was to be an important part of our programme, focusing on organic agriculture, and scheduled for Day 3 of our annual Balaton Group Meeting on “Food Futures”. […]
We started our annual Balaton Group Meeting this morning (held this year in spectacular Selfoss, Iceland). Our topic this year is “Food Futures” and we have already heard several speakers on the topic, including Karan Khosla (Earthsafe in India) who presented a systems model aimed at conceptualising the issues. John Ingram from the Environmental Change Institute (Oxford) shared with us […]
There are so many kinds of workshops/meetings/events, with as many different kinds of objectives and outcomes desired. Each needs a specific structure and build to get successfully from start to finish. For veteran facilitators this might be a statement of the blindingly obvious. However, we do have our favorite sequences. We have tried and tested frames for group work, our […]
I arrived at the Chicago workshop about 5 minutes late and was horrified to see all the participants in their seats looking at the trainer/facilitator who was in mid-sentence describing the objectives of the day. He didn’t even pause as he said “gruetzi” to me (“hello” in Swiss German), to which I quickly replied “bonjour” (I […]
What do you notice when you have the opportunity to watch 35 Pecha Kuchas? We have featured these interesting presentation techniques – 20 PPT slides autotimed at 20 seconds each – in different workshop settings in the last few months. Here are some of the things we noticed that made them work: 13 Tips for Pecha Kucha […]
(Note: I went to TEDGlobal this year in Oxford, so this is written from my experience, and may be very different for the other TED events.) Going to TEDGlobal was like jumping into an icy stream, or swimming in Lake Geneva at 4 degrees C. It took endurance, a little craziness, and provided that kind […]
I just finished co-facilitating a week-long leadership training course with LEAD’s Edward Kellow. Systems Thinking was one of the cross-cutting skills components, which started with an introduction on Day 1 (introduction and drawing Behaviour Over Time Graphs), and then on Day 2 we got into reading and drawing Causal Loop Diagrams. Both were entirely based […]
A week of TEDGlobal Talks leaves you with many lasting impressions and some very interesting things to mull over – especially after hearing almost 100 hand-picked speakers in under 5 days. Here are some of the fun facts that just won’t leave me alone… Some resources for the future may not come from earth – one […]
Why am I here? No, not why am I at TEDTalks. Why am I on this planet? I am here at TEDGlobal with hundreds of people who know exactly how to answer that question. And they can do it in 5 minutes or less. Which is pretty impressive, to say the least. I just finished […]
I leave tomorrow for a week of TEDTalks (Ideas Worth Spreading) at the upcoming TEDGlobal conference in Oxford. The theme this year is perfect as far as I am concerned – “And Now the Good News”. The speaker roster is also exciting, TED is known by its slogan, “Riveting talks by remarkable people”. At this TEDGlobal there are […]
We just completed a very interesting workshop where 110 stakeholders were involved in giving feedback to 15 speakers (project proponents and authors of 11 Chapters of an ambitious global Reporting project) in 1.5 days. How we did that is a completely different blog post! (We did use Pecha Kuchas to give the Chapter overviews, which overall worked well – […]
(Note from me: This (rather long) post was inspired by my partner in this exercise who challenged me to try to blog about our own process reflections. It seemed congruent to frame it as a “How To” – so this is my learning about learning!) In many project documents and programme concept notes you see mention of building on or using learning from […]
Something I am noticing about groups that I work with frequently over time is their growing ability to read through the agenda versions I give them and imagine what will happen, anticipate the kind of questions or challenges the participants might have with the task or group work, or wonder if the time allocation is […]
It is always exciting when you get to work with a new organization as a facilitator or learning practitioner. And at the same time you know that every group has its own everything: processes, policies, values, vocabulary, leadership style, secret handshake. So what can you do to understand that as soon as possible? And what can the […]
Many people say they are not good with names, and apologize in advance for forgetting yours (over and over again). However, if you are facilitating a new group, it doesn’t ingratiate you if after the first few hours you still cannot call on people by their names. Or worse, call them by the wrong names; or […]
This morning I went to an interesting Writer’s workshop on publishing – it ran the gamut from traditional book publication to online self-publishing. It reminded me of some of the things that I had learned doing this myself, which I had never recorded. So before I forget, I thought I would blog this experience for […]
Before I started a workshop recently, I checked both of the Fire Exit doors to make sure they were not locked (believe me, it happens). I also roamed around outside the workshop room to find the fire extinguisher, which I knew was there somewhere (under a table – in plain sight if you are 1 […]
It is far too easy to fall out of reflective practice when you get extremely busy. Like funding for learning, it might be one of the first things to go when resources get tight (at both the institutional and individual level). Then you don’t take the time to stop and think how you can do […]
Trainitation, Facilitaining? When Lizzie and I went through the Certified Professional Facilitator process, there was a Trainer (with a capital T) in our group who didn’t get through (e.g. didn’t get certified). There was a clear division between training and facilitating to which the assessors were incredibly sensitive. I remember myself, in one of the […]
I got a great question this morning from a fellow learning practitioner working at the UN in Geneva, asking for ideas about how to structure 20 short participant presentations over a 2-day workshop. I wrote a blog post last month about using Pecha Kucha’s and Ingnites for this kind of thing (see The End of […]
One of the most useful conferences I go to each year is Online Educa, held annually in Berlin in November/December. It’s a gathering of several thousand people from all over the world who work, live and breathe technology-supported learning. It follows a rather traditional format of plenary and parallel break-out sessions on a wide variety […]
We often get asked to introduce ourselves at the onset of a workshop or meeting, or at the beginning of a presentation. We may say a few words, or cram our entire CV on a PPT slide. What are some other, more creative ways to introduce ourselves? If you want to give an impression of […]
Tonight I went to a network meeting at 2, place du Chateau in Nyon. I had made plans at 20:30 to see Lizzie (my co-blogger) afterwards and was a little stressed when at 21:15 the speaker asked the group if he could go over by another 15 minutes. I surreptitiously texted Lizzie under my chair […]
Drawn on a napkin during a recent dinner I had with a systems expert, you might have to look closely to see what this Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) advises. It considers some of the dynamics involved in working independently and wishing to balance work with family life. (Click on the image to enlarge it.) It […]
I am at a workshop of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Commission on Education and Communication (CEC) in the Scottish Highlands (beautiful, yet not the best place to be when an Icelandic Volcano erupts.) CEC is one of IUCN’s 6 expert Commissions, which are global knowledge networks of individual practitioners that contribute […]
This video link was sent to all of us attending the upcoming meeting of IUCN’s (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Commission on Education and Communication. I’m proud to be the Specialty Group Leader for a Community of Practice focused on Learning and Leadership, a group which itself explores new learning approaches. I hadn’t seen […]
I had a design conversation this morning for a one-day workshop that featured 10-15 participants each individually presenting project ideas, one after another. How do you make that interesting (after the third one)? Why not a pecha kucha or an Ignite (the tag line is “Enlighten us but make it quick”)? Both are presentation techniques […]
Can you imagine getting an invitation to a workshop that has as its main goal playing 20 games? Would you go? Those invitations went out a few weeks ago, and we had a very good response to a test workshop we held in Bonn aimed at playing and discussing 20 games that deliver messages around […]
Many people say they don’t have time for social media, are not on Facebook, can’t follow the flow of Twitter, don’t keep up with LinkedIn, never tried a ning, would never bother with a blog. They have too much email, spend too much time on the internet already looking for things; they simply don’t have […]
I am just about to comment on a PPT presentation that a couple of elementary school students made about what to do in case of a tornado (Among other things: Seek shelter under a sturdy table in the basement. If there’s no basement available, go to a first floor, small bathroom opposite of the tornado. […]
Last Friday night I went to a birthday party that a friend of mine threw for herself. It was a nice group size, 10 women, that she had drawn from various of her different social groups. Because of this diversity, everyone knew somebody, but no one knew everyone, except for her. So she decided to […]
When I worked in an NGO environment, we didn’t ever really notice how long it took to do things. We experimented very briefly with time sheets (about a month) and found that tricky and even a bit boring to note down how every 15 minutes was spent, mostly because there was no real incentive to […]
GROUPTROUP*TROMPTRAMPTRAMSTEAMS I couldn’t believe that this worked, on my first go, after reading Brian Remer’s puzzle instructions in this month’s Thiagi Gameletter (TGL-Seriously fun activities for trainters, facilitators, performance consultants, and managers). Brian calls this instructional puzzle a “Doublet”, and cites Lewis Carroll (of Alice fame) as its originator. In Brian’s description of this puzzle […]
