I’m on my way to Germany with Gisela Wendling, The Grove’s Director of Global Learning, to conduct a new kind of workshop for me and The Grove. Called a Visual Interventions LAB, it is moving into the space long held by the National Training LABS that have been so instrumental in developing the professional field of organizational development.

A LAB isn’t a training in skill and content, but a deep inquiry and exploration, where the group process and its knowledge is the primary content. We came up with some big questions that will drive our inquiry.
Images - Stepping Up to Big Questions

 

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FutureTalkGraphicsRecently I met Mei Lin Fung, producer of Future Talk, a monthly TV show produced in Silicon Valley. She works visually herself and when she heard about Visual Meetings she invited me to be on her show.

We produced a half-hour session on visual facilitation and its application to complex problems in government. This was a three-camera, eight-person, all-volunteer crew, producing live and unedited from Palo Alto’s Community Media center. I talked about my work with visual meetings, showing some examples; then I demonstrated by taking notes on my IBM Thinkpad tablet when Mei Lin was talking.

Watch here – enjoy!

Tom_Atlee - Tom Atlee on Tom Atlee, the creative energy behind the Co-Intelligence Institute, recently wrote Something Bigger Than Life Is Trying To Work Through Us. He says, “I feel called to notice the role of contexts.” His crystal-clear analysis of our current predicament is that we are experiencing the shadow results of our own “enlightened” technologies and practices. The crises we experience will be transformational (or not), and Tom explores how they might be so.

As with any paradigm shifts, the emerging expressions are still being crafted. Tom is one of the shapers I respect. He speaks in poetic language of what it means to wake up to conscious evolution and see ourselves as mirrors of the larger evolutionary pattern.

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FiredUpImage - Group Learning Interview With Sibbet I was interviewed for Gordon Rudow’s web radio show “Fired UP” recently on the subject of Group Learning. Gordon began his own consulting business Bonfire Communications back in the 1990s and I was one of his mentors. If you can ignore the over-the-top intro music and rah rah framing from Webmaster Radio, it’s a great interview.

I’m increasingly impressed with how different speaking in the moment in direct response to other people is from composed writing or designed presentations. I always find myself saying things that surprise, and in this case, delight me.

Have a listen. I’d love to hear your reaction. You might also enjoy Gordon’s other interviews. The ones with Dawna Markova and Terry Pearce are excellent.