Psychodrama

5 July 2007 0

Today I had lunch with my Playback buddy Shani – we’d not been in contact for a long time after meeting at Playback Theatre workshops about eight years ago. Shani came to last year’s facilitation conference in Geelong and it’s been great to reconnect. In the intervening years Shani gained a PhD while I…well, let’s…

By Viv McWaters

The Story Spine

5 July 2007 3

This is the third time this week someone has asked me about The Story Spine, so I thought I’d share it here. It’s not my idea – I first found it on the web and then learnt more about it from Kat Koppett’s excellent book Training to Imagine. I’ve used it with groups for reflecting,…

By Viv McWaters

Top 5 Books

4 July 2007 1

A friend asked me if I could keep only 5 of my books* (gasp!) what would they be. *Existing books, already on my bookshelf *Work/business-related books So here goes: (in no particular order) Hang on – this is hard! I’ve had to decide on some criteria – so ‘currently useful’ and ‘well thumbed’ (which I…

By Viv McWaters

The value of facilitators?

2 July 2007 2

In a recent comment about facilitator language Johnnie Moore wrote: I just find it incredibly hard to define facilitation and I think our efforts to do so can be counter-productive. I’m very wary of saying facilitators bring special skills to bear. I don’t think it’s ultimately about either skills and certainly not about knowledge about…

By Viv McWaters

Links 29/6/07

29 June 2007 0

My Open Space buddy and blogger friend Chris Corrigan has a weekly list of links. It’s such a good idea, I’ve decided to copy it. So, here’s this week’s links. The Annual Australasian Facilitators’ Network (AFN) Conference will be held in Adelaide, SA, in late November. This year is the 10th Anniversary Conference. Not bad…

By Viv McWaters

WTF!!!!!!

29 June 2007 0

Part of a letter in the 16 June edition of New Scientist, from Andrew Yake, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. “Conflating origination with voluntariness is a common error in unsophisticated discussions about free will. Suggesting that deterministic chaos is evidence for any conception of free will, however, propagates far worse confusions.” Yep – I’m confused!

By Viv McWaters

The Juggling Metaphor

27 June 2007 1

Everybody knows about the juggling metaphor – well, I think they do anyway – you know, keeping all the balls in the air, juggling work-life balance etc. And I think there are other uses for juggling in exploring organisational concepts. As a keen juggler I’m always looking for ways to incorporate a spot of juggling…

By Viv McWaters

Facilitator Archetypes

26 June 2007 0

Last night I hung out for a few hours with other facilitators (what is the collective noun for facilitators? a rabble of facilitators? a host of facilitators?) at one of the regular Victorian Facilitator Network meetings. Andrew Rixon and cartoonist/illustrator extraordinaire (and long time friend) Simon Keebone took us through the process of creating a…

By Viv McWaters

Belonging

23 June 2007 0

My footy team won last night. Now this is not very remarkable unless: 1) you live in Melbourne, Australia and 2) you barrack for Richmond aka the Tigers. Footy (Australian Rules Football) is a religion in Melbourne over winter, and while I no longer go to every match, I remain a devoted follower (after all…

By Viv McWaters