Harvest -- Salt Lake Valley Sustainability Summit

Invitation

Photos -- People, flipcharts, cafe table snippets that turned out well.

Strategies for Engagement -- A few notes and principles from one of the open space sessions in which I participated

Landscape Map -- Overview of the day, including agenda, framing poem, voice call-outs from cafe, open space topics and one-line summaries of learning from each

Open Space Harvest Worksheets -- From two one hour time slots. Also includes community announcements.

Key Learnings, Offerings, Needs -- Participants wrote these after participating in Open Space sessions.

Wordle Graphic -- Key Learnings

Wordle Graphic -- Offerings

Wordle Graphic -- Requests

Harvest -- New Zealand Men's Gathering

Invitation -- September 5, 2009

Design and Harvest -- Design Values, Agenda, Harvest Notes

Leadership Practices -- Harvest From Circle with Cohosting team

Dimensions of the Work of Men for this Time -- Fantastic piece from friend Glen Lauder

The Sacred Work of Men -- Another clear piece from Glen Lauder. He has unique listening ears.

Harvest -- Interior and Exterior

March 15, 2009

Noticed this thread from the AoH listserve recently. It is a helpful piece on interior and exterior harvests by Chris Corrigan.

I wrote earlier on four levels of harvest (look at the bottom half). Content and process, which fit in with Chris' exterior. And then relationships and field, which fit in with the interior.

"Just a thought in the harvest piece...For me there are many ways to harvest, but they all come down to either being interior harvests or exterior harvests. Exterior harvests are the ones we see and use to communicate with others, what we sometimes call artifacts. These can be notes, graphics, films, photos and other things that are portable and objective. They may be designed for a broad audience or only for those who were there, as a reminder of the experience, for example. I use all kinds of artifacts, and with most events I do now there is usually more than one.

The interior harvest - the learning and the collective story - needs special support to be useful. For me I use the shorthand of "feedback loops" to think about the ways in which we might create ongoing containers for these interior harvests to be revisited and refined. For example, setting up reflective practices to revisit learning, or setting a future schedule of storytelling sessions to continually work with the meaning arising from an event. These things use strategies of conversation and social technology as well as personal reflective practice to continue to work the interior harvest.

A holistic harvest scheme is an important part of the design of any event - it needs to meet needs, and sometimes that means a reductive accounting of time spent along side the establishment of a presencing practice to revisit personal learning.

It has helped a lot with clients when I say that we are planning a harvest and not a meeting. The meeting simply helps us arrive at the harvest that is needed for the group I am working with. Sometimes the need is just learning, and no external harvest document is necessary. Sometimes the need is a plan."

GMJF -- Makin' it Great

September 15, 2008

From a recent gathering in Florida with the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. This was one harvest from an afternoon cafe on making GMJF a great place to work.

Rap / Poem from GMJF Staff Retreat
Stories of Great. Stories of Challenge.
Suggestions for the Next Year at GMJF
September 2008

GMJF – makin’ it great. Makin’ it rate.
What’s your say? Do you want to say?

Servin’ in the community. Even with a little swervin’ we’re still servin’.
Unity in the community. What could this community be?

In common, workin’ with shared values,
workin’ as family – the human family.

Wow! Commitment is our commitment.
Wow! Responsible for living and giving and fulfilling.

Everyday – Aha! You are there for me.
I can see you are there for me, for we.

Bigger than Miami, the Miami family and more.
All the way to the Soviet Union (20 years ago).

I will never forget that kitchen. Zip lock bags on a line.
Cherish the simple. So fine.

Real people and real work.
Friendship. Super Sunday processing.
World conference mission – we celebrate culture and motivated volunteers.
Givin’ time and rhymes.

Stories of challenge. It ain’t all easy, easy peasy.
But we are committed to seeing, seeing and being. Agreeing with no fleeing.

GMJF. Growin’ it great. .That’s our fate.
What’s your say? Do you want to say?

Difference. Keepin’ us safe.
Meeting everyone in all the difference.

The stress of newness. Where’s the coffee!
The stress of blueness. Where’s the coffee!
Stress with a purpose. Stressin’ without digressin’.

Process? Process? Inner and outer.
Not knowin’ your time line. It’s often a fine line.
Invitin’ without bitin’. Invitin’ to heightin’.

Emotion. The motion of emotion in all different view points.
Stress with a purpose. Stressin’ without digressin’.

GMJF. Living it great. Take the bait.
What’s your say? Your say on this day?

Improoving is the practice. Improoving and grooving.
Perfection isn’t real. Just practice with zeal.

Start with an announcement. Poems.
Songs in a tux. Jokes.

Use the internet to see the profiles of our people,
Our people servin’.

A state of the art gym.
All kiddin’ aside, join this ride.

On site weight watchers.
Data base of resources.
Implement – it’s our rent.
Not just talk. Balking at the talking.

In my white room. Safe space. Safe place.
We need to meet. We need to be great.

Remote workin’. My wife is pregnant again.
Workin’ on ten, and a day care again.

Who is the resource. The source keeps us on course.
$10K from my doc. That ain’t just talk.

Sharing. Improve the knowin’.
Workin’ on accountable. Even just one or two.

Lunch and break room – for engagement.
Meeting for learning. Learning and our yearning.

Well done. Happy Birthday. Go play!

Imagine. Imagine. Imagine.
Learning in our job. Not just gobs and gobs.
What is real? What beyond zeal?

GMJF. Livin’ it great.
Stay by your say. Say on this day.

Servin’ in the community. Swervin’. Servin’.
The parking spot is yours!

Graphic Recorder Resources

To add to the choice of harvests...

Nancy Margulies
http://www.nancymargulies.com/
I met Nancy in the early 90s, working together at Berkana Institute dialogues. She is a brilliant thinker and artist. Nancy is pioneering remote recording in forms of videos, live tablet drawings, and others. I love her work, and in this remote sense, commitment to lowering carbon footprint. Nancy also has great books and resources to strengthen the graphic recorder in all of us.

Frankie James
http://www.frankejames.com/debate/?p=109
Nancy Margulies told me to check Frankie James, in particular her visual essays. Nice harvest options here.

The World Café
www.theworldcafe.com
Includes a resource directory for visual recorders.

International Visual Practitioners Forum
www.ifvp.org
Really easy interface to find graphic recorders.

Julie Stuart
www.makingideasvisible.com
Georgia
Julie and I are with a team hosting and harvesting a one-day retreat, including a world café, for the Greater Miami Jewish Federation

Nancy White
www.fullcirc.com
Washington
Nancy and I were with a team hosting and harvesting conversation spaces at the Pegasus Systems Thinking in Action Conference, November 2007

Steven Wright
http://www.wrightmarks.com/
Washington
I haven’t met Steven in person, but know of him through Chris Corrigan.

Janine Underhill
www.idea-360.com
Colorado
Haven’t met in person, but was happy to know of her out in the west.

Martha McGinnis
http://www.marthamcginnis.com/
Georgia
I haven’t met Martha but became aware of her through IVPF.

Stephanie Crowley
Chrysalis Studios
Texas
Have a look at her 2 minute video, time lapsed to see a great version of what can happen.

Principles for Harvest

May 1, 2008

I recently co-hosted a world cafe and on-going conversation space at an assembly of over 1,300 Jewish Day-School leaders. I met today with people in the calling and convening group, Partnership for Excellence in Education (PEJE), as well as co-hosts from the Art of Hosting community of practice -- Maria Scordiolas, Sarah Whitely, Teresa Posakony, and Cynthia Lyon. Today's call was a focus on harvesting. What to do with the notes and piles of post-it notes that contained bold ideas about the issues of affordability and leadership?

This is a good challenge and opportunity to learn. It is too easy to default to typing up notes, creating a large report or manual that is a lot of work, yet holds little life. And to learn when those kind of reports are helpful.

I learned much with this wonderful group. I was particularly interested in the principles that I heard the group of nine of us speaking today. They inform a next level for me of framing a harvest to make it helpful. They inform me of the underlying energy of harvest, rather than just the volume.

- Work with the processes you have -- often their are already channels with which to make visible the new learning
- continue in beauty -- it is beautiful to see people engaging and creating. It is beautiful to continue in this energy with harvest
- experiment with another way -- there is always another way
- stay in the pursuit of wiser action -- this grounds the process, this belief that our actions can also be something else. Our relations feed wiser action.
- must marry content to process -- process by itself is interesting but not sustainable
- for a field to hear, it doesn’t need all to hear each person -- this is such an invitation to train to listen for patterns rather than volume
- welcome the simple -- often more sustainable -- and not to be confused with reductive
- questions give us entry -- so often I have seen in myself an others a kind of apology that the outcome is questions rather than answers. Questions can be such gifts to keep us in our most imaginative selves in concept and action.
- story is a medium for learning – what is done and what is starting to be imagined -- such richness to tell stories with each other, and to gift each other with directly applicable insights from seemingly unrelated contexts
- imagining is required
- support self-organize (name, connect, nurture, illuminate) -- you can't really manage large systems in the old ways. But you can support conditions for emergence to occur, and with deliberateness
- integrate assembly to PEJE and field
- support conditions for self-organization
- notice what is different in participating from representing -- another zinger here. To participate is to create. So often, representing is to present, even perform. Creation is far more impactful, and a principle of living systems -- people support what they create.
- let the transformation of the assembly transform PEJE -- our work in systems, in the outer happens simultaneously with the inner
- doesn’t matter where ideas come from -- training into the voices that speak the clarity of the system

Kirkridge AoH Phone Council

There is a lot that is captured in this little poem from a call that I could not participate in. The power of relationship. The power of community.

What lives on in us from Kirkridge?
~ A Virtual Harvest of 20 ~


Feeling welcomed
Loved
And accepted into a community
Where principles don’t need to be negotiated

The power and presence of circle
The importance of rituals

But without a key note speaker
Where will the wisdom come from?

It’s a surprise!

Maybe it’ll come from the rise of the 40 year olds… (no matter how old they are)

Maybe it’ll come from us, who are learning to integrate new skills and
Generate between generations

Maybe it’ll come from us, who are finding our voices and
Learning to ask more authentic questions, like…

How do I live divided no more?
How do I let curiosity soar?

It starts with the spirit of inquiry and sense of discovery…

We remember
Dancing knots and
Falling snow
The sweetness of closing circles around
A fire a-glow

And that gives us the
Courage and
Strength we need
To create a quiet space to listen to our soul
To practice hosting every day
With an open heart

We tug on the thread from Kirkridge and pull it through
To new beginnings

And although it’s frightening
We know we are a part of something bigger
Something exciting
Something that frees us

So we start close in
We feel connected to each other
And filled with gratitude

We know it’s not impossible yet

The Walking People walk with Us

Harvesting

In Ottawa, I hosted an OS on “Harvesting – taking it out of the room” with CUPE. Really good hit for me with some great learning. And people were digging and joining in the artifacts.

Here’s a link to the harvest: http://web.mac.com/neagan/Site/CUPE_January.html#85. And all the other photos that Nancy posted there.

This was a session on taking it out, but included threads on “what happened in the last three days?” A bit of what stands out to me…

- a good artifact for someone who was not at the event is one that makes them curious enough to ask you to tell them more about it
- common ground is a harvest even without words (yup, they were feeling the field)
- be thoughtful about headlines (this is really a practice, eh)
- magic (a comment on what happened from one on the design team that was really skeptical)

And this funny one that was a strong awareness of how concretely we worked with speed – redesigned workshops in 75 minutes, etc. “You guys are like Quaker Oatmeal – instant.” It was so cool.

All born from the field, wisdom that becomes available because of open heart, engaged conversation, and enabled action, I feel.