Tag Archives: ToP Historical Scan

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!

Celebrating the development of facilitation – world-wide and history long

IAF 20 year logo 500facweek logoAs the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, join us in celebrating the power of facilitation by exploring, sharing and reflecting together on its history worldwide – past, present and future. 

We are inviting facilitators everywhere – and everyone with an interest in facilitation, professional and otherwise – to join together in a six-month collaborative process to develop our collective story of facilitation, culminating during International Facilitation Week 20-26 October 2014.  Our aim is to strike a balance between honouring the past, celebrating the present, and envisioning the future – and to learn and have some fun together in the process!

We invite you to share key events & milestones in the history of facilitation, from your perspective and in your experience, and links and resources on how facilitation has developed and where it might be heading – share and discuss online at Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (hashtag #FacHistory), and participate face-to-face as well!  Facilitated workshop sessions and other opportunities to share and reflect together will be held at each of IAF’s global conferences this year (April 9-12 in Orlando, 14-16 August in Singapore and 3-5 October in Moscow), and we encourage IAF chapters and other local groups to hold their own events as well – in the run up to International Facilitation Week and/or during the week itself.  Follow @FacWeek and #FacHistory on twitter for the latest.

The six-month process will be modelled on the Technology of Participation (ToP) Historical Scan method (or ‘Wall of Wonder) – 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.  We will build on ideas shared during such a session at the 2007 IAF Europe conference in Edinburgh “Reviewing the past to prepare for the future: demonstrating the ToP Historical Scan method to discern a shared image of the past & future journey of the facilitation profession”, and a subsequent article Reflections on the history of professional process facilitation by Richard Chapman published by IAF Europe & AMED in 2011 – and of course the history of IAF.

Questions we might use to reflect and learn together on the story emerging from the shared events, milestones, links and resources could include:

* Which are/were most exciting or encouraging for you (and which less so)?
* Which are/were most influential for you, in your experience or from your perspective? How?
* Which indicate the power of faciliation to impact positively – on people, on communities, on organisations, on societies?
* What trends can you discern over time, or across geography?
* Where can you discern turning points, as between chapters in history?
* How would you name the chapters? How would you name the history as a whole?

During International Facilitation Week itself, as well as any other local or online events, there will be a couple of #FacWeekChat twitter chats to reflect together on what has been shared and a the results will be published all together online as a storify.

Please join us now by following and sharing your events & milestones, and links & resources, at Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter (hashtag #FacHistory)!