Author: Tenneson Woolf

2008

January 8-11, 2008 — Canadian Union of Public Employees
Ottawa, Ontario — Developers 2008 Planning Meeting
With Nancy Fritsche Eagan, Angela Amel, Morna Ballantyne, Cathy Remus, Josey Finley, Bill Robb

January 24-27, 2008 — Art of Hosting
Whidbey Island, Washington — Open-Enrollment Training
With Christina Baldwin, Ann Linnea, Chris Corrigan, Teresa Posakony

February 9, 2008 — Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
Orem, Utah — Wildlands Dialogue Project
With Terri Martin, Deeda Seed

February 25 – 28, 2008 — Navajo Health Services
Shiprock, New Mexico — Client System Training, Consulting
With Chris Corrigan, Roq Gareau, Teresa Posakony, Orlando Pioche, Chris Percy, Tina Tso, Karen Sandoval, Marie Nelson

March 6-7, 2008 — Utah Valley University Woodbury School of Business
Orem, Utah — Summit and Planning Meeting
With Stan Jenne, Randy Beckham, Mark Rogers

March 13, 2008 — Salt Lake Center for Engaging Community
Salt Lake City, Utah — Enspirited Community Workshop
With Ramona Sierra, John Kesler

April 3-6, 2008 — Art of Hosting
Boston, Massachusetts — Open-Enrollment Training
With Tim Merry, Debbie Frieze

April 7-8, 2008 — Parternship of Excellence in Jewish Education
Boston, Massachusetts — 2008 Assembly World Cafe for 1,200
With Maria Scordiolu, Sarah Whitely, Cythia Lyon, Teresa Posakony, Sharon Hazelkorn, Amy Katz, Audrey Goldfarb, Pearl Mattenson, Jane Cohen

April 10, 2008 — Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
Provo, Utah — Faith and the Land: Conversations About Spirituality and Wilderness
With Deeda Seed, Terri Martin, George Handley

April 12 – 19, 2008 — Family Vacation

April 26, 2008 — Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
Ogden, Utah — Wildlands Dialogue Project
With Deeda Seed, Terri Martin, Gerald Thompson

May 7-10, 2008 — Art of Hosting
Tampa, Florida — Open-Enrollment Training
With Chris Corrigan, Peggy Holman, Sharon Joy Kleitsch, Muryah Baldwin

May 16-20, 2008 — Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
Moab, Utah — Community Organizing
With Terri Martin, Deeda Seed

May 21-22, 2008 — Streetwork
New York, New York — Open Space Workshop for Workers with Homeless Youth
With Angela Amel, Chris Corrigan

June 9-11, 2008 — Art of Hosting
Calgary, Alberta — Open-Enrollment Training
With Tatiana Glad, Cheryl De Paoli, Chris Corrigan, Teresa Posakony

June 15-17, 2008 — Art of Hosting Stewards
The Shire, Nova Scotia

June 19, 2008 — Culture of Connection
Salt Lake City, Utah — Core Working Group

June 25, 2008 — Salt Lake Center for Engaging Community
Salt Lake City, Utah — Board Meeting

June 27 – July 8, 2008 — Family Vacation
Fairmont, British Columbia

July 14-16, 2008 — The Center for Human Development
LeGrand, Oregon — Client System Training, Consulting
With Teresa Posakony, Diane Altman Dautoff, Steve Ryman, Roni Wood

July 18, 2008 — Salt Lake Center for Engaging Community
Salt Lake City, Utah — Community Dialogue on Refugee / Immigrant Welcome

August 6, 2008 — Salt Lake Center for Engaging Community
Salt Lake City, Utah — Finding Common Ground Initiative
With John Kesler, Wayne Jacobsen

September 5, 2008 — Greater Miami Jewish Federation
Fort Lauderdale, Florida — Staff Annual Planning Day
With Cynthia Lion Marinstein, Janice Rous, Julie Stuart, Dany Shandler

September 7, 2008 — Tampa Bay Art of Hosting Community of Practice
Tampa Bay, Florida — World Cafe Workshop
With Sharon Joy Kleitsch

September 8-12, 2008 — Canadian Union of Public Employees
Ottawa, Ontario — Developers Planning Meeting on Strengthening Local Union Leadership
With Nancy Fritsche Egan, Chris Corrigan, Morna Ballantyne, Cathy Remus, Greg Burkitt, Ed Hanson, Vivian Bouffard, Connie Credico, Jane Stinson, Judy Armstrong

September 24-25, 2008 — New York City Department of Education
New York, New York — Education Reform Partner Retreat
With Nancy Fritsche Egan

September 28 – October 1, 2008 — Art of Hosting
Bowen Island, British Columbia — Open-Enrollment Training
With Chris Corrigan, Monica Nissen, Caitlin Frost, David Stevensen

October 3, 2008 — Salt Lake Center for Engaging Community
Salt Lake City, Utah — Sustainability Summit
With Ben Mates, Jane Holt, Ed Firmage, Carole Firmage, Craig Caviezel, John Kesler

October 10-11, 2008 — Boy Scout Campout with Isaac

October 26-29, 2008 — Art of Hosting
Bear Mountain State Park, New York — Open-Enrollment Training
With Toke Moeller, Teresa Posakony, Nancy Fritsche Egan, Kelly McGowan, Martin Siesta, Vivian Vasquez

November 1, 2008 — Salt Lake Center for Engaging Community
Salt Lake City, Utah — Sustainability Summit Followup / Open Space
With Ben Mates, Jane Holt, Ed Firmage, Carole Firmage, Craig Caviezel, John Kesler

November 5, 2008 — Salt Lake Center for Engaging Community
Salt Lake City, Utah — Post Election World Cafe
With Kathy Lung, Zara Dawn Shallbetter, Meredith Lovato, Heather Miller, Chris

November 13-16, 2008 — Art of Hosting
Tampa Bay, Florida — Open-Enrollment Training
With Teresa Poskony, Sharon Joy Kleitsch, Harold Aldrich, Muryah Baldwin, Holly Masturzo, Jill Eatherly, Marie Nelson, Chris Corrigan, Carolyn Baldwin

November 17-21, 2008 — Berkana Institute
Boston, Massachusetts —

I’ve been in many of these conversations. Lately, I’ve liked the shift into the work — hosting conversations that matter — that sometimes shows up in the form of an event that is referenced as The Art of Hosting.

Also, from an Art of Hosting conference at Whidbey Island (January 2008), Chris Corrigan laughed in one of his teachings. “We will define the art of hosting in 80 ways over the next few days.” That feels about right.

Here is a bit of definition that has life for me. It came from a conversation with Teresa Posakony and Sharon Joy Kleitsch as we were exploring how Sharon Joy might speak of this to people in her Tampa, FL community.

AoH is…
– an experience of learning in living systems
– being in big imagination as community
– broader practice beyond method in deep, lasting, sustainable change
– framework for transformation
– a learning and operating pattern for full stakeholder engagement and action
– a way to build community leadership capacity
– fielding, working with energy fields in groups

The shift in understanding for me is helpful when I think of these as emergent outcomes. Because we come into relationship with one another, around purpose or identity, all or some of the above occur as outcomes. They don’t come from design. The emerge from interaction. Hmm…

I love the distributed linking and harvesting that is coming from this Art of Hosting. With the rise of the blog, more are posting their thoughts, stories, pictures, inquiries — more are in the practice of harvesting.

Here’s a few:

An appreciation from Jeff Aitken

I love this story from Jeannel King, whom I met in Kentucky. Jeannel was a participant at an AoH in Indiana, September 2007.

One of the reasons I love this story is that it shows how we can move very quickly and yet with clarity and beauty. I also remember Jeannel as she harvested back from one of the open space sessions — her group and birthed the Imperfect Action Committee. Big smiles. Big freedom to move with fluidity and simply keep learning.

Enjoy this story…

Hi all,
I wanted to share an experience I had at tenth annual Grupo Tortuguero conference my organization hosted in Loreto, BCS. This conference basically brings fishing communities throughout Baja and Mexico together to network and learn from each other’s sea turtle conservation efforts. While it focuses on Baja, the conference is truly an international one, with participants coming from all over the world. This year, RETOMALA joined the conference, bringing a strong Latin American sea turtle conservation contingent to the process.

A week before the conference was to occur, my director shared with me that RETOMALA planed to create a Latin American sea turtle conservation manifesto as the last session for the conference. She knows about my passion and experience with Hosting, and put me in touch with the organizing group so that I could help them shape the process. Unfortunately, the week before a conference is a bad time to reach anyone, and repeated attempts to connect were unsuccessful. I ended each communication with my offer to help in any way I could with this exciting project.

Well, an hour before the manifesto session was to occur, my director found me and asked if I could work right now with RETOMALA to shape the manifesto process–to basically come up with a plan for the event. Omar and I got together and spent a good half hour drawing up some diamonds of participation. Because time was short and supplies were even shorter, I went for a modified cafe format and really focused on questions to drive the conversation process that would really resonate with the group. Because of the lack of time, and my so-so Spanish skills, I served only as designer for this process, while Omar actually facilitated the group. Here are the questions we ended up with:

1) What are the threats that compromise the survival of sea turtles in YOUR community?
2) What is YOUR community willing to commit to doing to assure the survival of sea turtles?
3) What does YOUR community need to continue to work for the protection of sea turtles?

These questions were important and powerful for the group, because sea turtle conservation is typically viewed through a broad lens, and we wanted to invite each community voice to speak to what THEY experienced in their work. By looking at what each community was willing to commit to, and what they needed to be supported in that commitment, we built in an element of sustainability for the manifesto.

Sixty people attended the manifesto session from the Baja California peninsula, Mexico, and Latin America. Twenty-one of the individuals participating were community leaders, and viewed as elders in the work. People were divided into four groups: all of the community leaders were in one group, and the rest of the people were split amongst three other groups to discuss our questions in a modified cafe. It was important to RETOMALA and the community members themselves to keep the community leaders in one group. This allowed an elder council, if you will, to share their respected views from their individual communities, and proved to be an incredibly powerful process for all participants both in the small groups and once they came back together.

As Omar facilitated, I wandered about the groups to observe the process. I can’t tell you how amazing it was to see people from diverse backgrounds and countries sitting close together in small groups, lost in discussion and sharing. Everyone was so respectful and intent on delving deep into these questions–looking at the issues from each community’s perspective and then bringing all that insight together to find the commonalities from which to build the manifesto. Listening to the elders share their experiences was powerful, and there were very few dry eyes in the circle.

Feedback after the process was amazing. I found my friend and colleague who had participated as a community leader in the discussions and aske him what he thought of the manifesto session (he didn’t know about my role in it). He said that it was very good and very powerful. As a community leader, he gets wrapped up in his own issues surrounding sea turtle conservation–namely, the problems involving bycatch from fisheries. It was humbling and enlightening for him to hear about the diverse range of issues different communities experienced in their own work, and it was empowering for him to realize the commonalities they shared and the support they could offer each other.

Excited at his response, I tracked down my director to share Chuy’s comments with her. She said that she had heard the same thing from several participants–that they were very proud to have participated in such a process, and all the harvesting is being synthesized into the manifesto document.

So, I guess my lessons learned from this experience are:

1) Imperfect action can be a great thing!
2) You don’t have to facilitate a process to have a hand in creating an amazing process…it’s about whatever strengths you can share.
3) Sometimes flying by the seat of one’s pants is just what an event needs.
4) Even if you’re flying by the seat of your pants, don’t forget about the harvest!
And finally,
5) This stuff really does work!

Abrazos a todos,
Jeannel