Tag Archives: #FacHistory

Reviewing the past to prepare for the future: #FacHistory in Copenhagen

Facilitating #FacHistory workshop - photo @jppoupardThank you to everyone who joined my session Reviewing the past to prepare for the future on Friday, at the IAF Europe conference in Copenhagen Facilitation Reloaded.  Here I am sharing links to the resources and case studies that I mentioned during the session – both on our topic, which was the history of facilitation, and on the process we used, which was the ICA ‘ToP’ Historical Scan method.

FacHistory Historical ScanFor more on the history of facilitation, and the events and links shared online and at various IAF conferences this year, cick to enlarge the photos here of our own session and of the IAF travelling timeline, andIAF travelling timeline see also:

On ICA’s ToP Historical Scan method, see:

For case studies of real-life applications of the method in different contexts, see:

To join me and other faciliators worldwide in reflecting together on the past and future development of facilitation and our profession, please join our #FacWeekChat twitter chats, October 22 & 23 during International Facilitation Week 2014., or do also share any comments on the post, here below. Thank you!

Celebrate International Facilitation Week 2014 by joining #FacWeekchat on twitter!

International Facilitation Week 2013As part of International Facilitation Week 2014, I will be hosting Twitter chats with IAF colleague Ben Ziegler, as we did last year.  This year’s chats will be on October 22 and October 23.  Please join us!

Just like last year, each chat will run from 12-1pm New York / 5-6pm London time – follow these links to see world times for Oct 22 & Oct 23.   Each chat will include 6-8 questions, spaced out throughout the hour, for you to answer, comment on, comment on other people’s answers, ask questions, etc.

A twitter chat is basically a dialogue, a conversation between people on twitter with a shared interest, discussing the topic at hand. Twitter chats are a great way to connect, share, learn, and have fun, with a community of practice; ie: facilitators!  The many tweets of a twitter chat are followed by using a common hashtag. For our chats we will use the same hashtag as last year, #FacWeekChat.

IAF 20 year celebrationThe topic for the two chats this year will be facilitation history, concluding a six-month collaborative process undertaken to celebrate the 20th anniversary this year of the International Association of Facilitators – see How has facilitation developed over time, and where might it be heading?  On October 22 we will reflect on the history of facilitation to date, and October 23 we will look ahead at what the future may hold.

Before the chat, please take a look if you can at some of the events and resources that have been shared since April with the #FacHistory hashtag – you can find edited highlights compiled  on Storify.  Please also add more of your own!  Simply tweet using the hashtag #FacHistory, or share and discuss on Facebook or LinkedIn.

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A bit about Twitter chats.

New to Twitter, and/or Twitter (aka Tweet) chats?  This article, How to Participate in a Tweet Chat, by Janet Fouts (@jfouts), helps explain things.

We hope to have you join us on Wedensday October 22 and Thursday October 23! 

Please tweet to invite all your twitter friends. Got questions that can’t wait? Contact either of us via Twitter – @benziegler or @martingilbraith

What else will you be doing to celebrate? Please let us know (tweet #FacWeek or @FacWeek), and so connect and join with facilitators worldwide in promoting the power of facilitation!

Facilitation Reloaded: Reviewing the past to prepare for the future

Facilitation ReloadedI am excited to be included among an impressive range of international presenters offering no less than 40 workshops at the upcoming IAF Europe MENA conference Facilitation Reloaded, October 3-5 in Copenhagen. It is shaping up to be a fantastic learning and networking event, so do join us – it is not too late to register at www.facilitationreloaded.com!

The conference theme will be explored through a wide range of highly interactive sessions in 12 conference tracks.  In my own workshop, Reviewing the past to prepare for the future, I will demonstrate the Technology of Participation (ToP) ‘Historical Scan’ method (or ‘Wall of Wonder’). This is a powerful tool to enable a group to share and learn from their varied perspectives of a journey through history – to review the past in order to prepare for the future.

IAF 20 year logo 500The session will draw on, and contribute to, a wider six-month collaborative process to develop a collective story of the history of facilitation (past, present and future), as IAF celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This has included a ‘travelling timeline’ that will be coming to Copenhagen with contributions from IAF conferences earlier this year in Orlando and Singapore, and it will culminate with a series of online and and local events during International Facilitation Week, October 20-26. For more on that wider process, see my recent post How has facilitation developed over time, and where might it be heading?, and see #FacHistory on twitter.

During the Copenhagen session we will plot key events in the unfolding history of facilitation on a timeline, alongside key events in our own lives and work and in the wider environment. We will reflect together to share stories, successes and challenges, to draw insights, and to discern chapters and trends for the future. We will have time to reflect together on the method and it’s applicability to participants’ own work situations, and a method handout will be provided as a resource.

For a recent example of the ToP Historical Scan method in action, with a diverse, international group of around 120 in Turin, see also Facilitation case study: Celebrating 20 years with the European Training Foundation in Turin – #ETF20.

Do join us in Copenhagen if you can, and if you can’t be with us in person then please join us by sharing and discussing online – Celebrating the development of facilitation – world-wide and history long!

How has facilitation developed over time, and where might it be heading?

IAF 20 year logo 500facweek logoWhat are some key events in the history of facilitation – past, present and future? What online resources are available on the development of facilitation over time?

Join facilitators worldwide in a six-month collaborative process to develop our collective story of facilitation, as the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. For more details of the background and process, see my earlier post Celebrating the development of facilitation – world-wide and history long.

Many events and resources have already been shared since the process was launched, including at the IAF North America conference April 9-12 in Orlando – you can view those below, and on Storify (or download a pdf as of 2 October).

Join us by contributing events and resources of your own – simply add a comment below this post, tweet using the #FacHistory hashtag, or share and discuss on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Follow as well for facilitated workshop sessions and other opportunities to share and reflect together at upcoming IAF conferences, 14-16 August in Singapore and 3-5 October in Copenhagen, and at local IAF chapter events such as the monthly IAF London Meetup.

Thank you for participating!

[View the story “Celebrating the development of facilitation – world-wide and history long #FacHistory” on Storify]

On the Road

This article was first written for and published in the IAF Europe MENA newsletter, May 2014.

Moscow facilitators planning ‘What can we do over the next 3 years to promote a culture of participation in our organisations?’Moscow facilitators learned the ToP Participatory Strategic Planning process last month by planning ‘What can we do over the next 3 years to promote a culture of participation in our organisations?’

When Julia Goga-Cooke invited me to contribute to this new ‘On The Road’ section of the newsletter, I think she may have known what sort of month I have been having. As well as visiting some interesting places, I have been able to meet and work with some wonderful IAF colleagues.

I began writing this from Marrakech, where I was facilitating last week for the first Arab Regional Forum on Youth Volunteering. This was convened by UN Volunteers, and brought together over 100 stakeholders from across the region and beyond to share, learn and plan together. On exchanging business cards with one delegate from Jordan, he told me that he had just emailed with IAF about joining or setting up a local chapter. So I was happy to share what I knew about the IAF membership in the region, and IAF’s chapter approach, and to learn from his experience of facilitation and facilitators in Jordan.

Prior to this I was in Turin with IAF member Michael Ambjorn of AlignYourOrg , in preparation for facilitating an event there together this week with the 120 staff of the European Training Foundation to celebrate its 20th anniversary this year. It was in designing this event, including a ToP ‘Wall of Wonder’ historical scanning process, that I had the idea for the rather more elaborate process to contribute to IAF’s 20th anniversary year celebration that became ‘Celebrating the development of facilitation – world-wide and history long’. This was launched in April, online and at the IAF North America conference in Orlando. Please do join in, online and at future conferences and chapter events between now and International Facilitation Week in October.

Prior to that, I was in Moscow at the start of April for the 5th annual Moscow Facilitators’ conference. It was great to be back, having attended for my first time last year and contributing a keynote and pre-conference ToP Group Facilitation Methods training. This year I presented a case study of the ToP Participatory Strategic Planning process with an international humanitarian agency in Geneva, ‘Transformational Strategy: from trepidation to ‘unlocked’’, and post-conference ToP Participatory Strategic Planning training (see photo above). The 100 or so participants came from the regions of Russia and Ukraine and Finland as well as from Moscow and the UK.

I have been privileged these last few weeks as well to serve as a mentor to one of ICA Ukraine’s ToP facilitation trainers, and to learn something of how she and ICA are working to network diverse actors in Ukraine and to re-envisage and rebuild their country’s future together. It was a privilege also (and fun!) to help to network ICA Ukraine’s facilitators with Russian facilitators attending the Moscow Facilitators conference by exchanging real-time Facebook updates between my post-conference ToP strategic planning course in Moscow and Natasha’s simultaneous ToP strategic planning course in Lviv.

It is a great disappointment to me to learn that this year’s IAF Europe MENA conference Facilitation Reloaded will no longer be held in Moscow, although recent events have made it increasingly self-evident that it would not be able to go ahead as planned. It seems to me that there is a need, now more than ever, for facilitation to grow and make a valuable impact in the region. I am delighted to know that the conference will be relocated rather than cancelled, and that the Moscow team will remain involved, and I shall be delighted for the opportunity to visit Copenhagen instead in October. I hope to see you there, and I hope that colleagues from Russia and Ukraine will be able to attend.

In the midst of all this I was also able to squeeze in a day of facilitation training with ICA:UK, for an international firm of sustainability consultants in London – happily, and rather appropriately, I was able to travel to that on foot!