Assembly Design / Diseño de asemblea

Greetings.

I will respond now to the fascinating dialogue shared over the past 19 days. First, thank you all for your understanding as I stepped away from our loomio interactions to attend to some critical matters related to the conference. Ah, success does brings its challenges! As of yesterday, we have 641 people registered for the conference, and 163 registered for the Global Assembly. Pressing issues with venue contracts, speaker arrivals, and other items have consumed hours each day, so I apologize for my absence from our group deliberations on the Global Assembly.

However, after reading all of the posts in this conversation thread I see that the dialogue has moved forward in very productive ways. I am mindful that because we are working in a space that has left much room for the ebb and flow of organizer ideas, we do not have at this point a totally firm "schedule" for the day (although we are now really close I think), nor do we have an agreed-upon set of questions to address. In other words, as Cesar would day, we have not yet achieved a fully developed, and collectively agreed on, "methodology" for the Global Assembly. For my part, I am actually glad that we have taken some time in which our group, as Jose requested, has had a chance to put things on the table. I have just taken the time to read the full conversation, and I think I see pretty clearly what has been put on the table and how the varied points of view might fit together like the pieces of a really big puzzle.

Anyone who has done one of those 350 piece puzzles knows that it can take days, even weeks, to get all the pieces to fit. A few years back, some friends and I started one during a holiday that stayed "on the table" for almost two months and was revisited by different groups of friends and family as people dropped by and asked "Oh, this looks interesting; can I try a few pieces?" In our case, we have roughly 8 days to come to an agreement on our completed methodology for 16 June. This will be the completion of a small puzzle with big implications. I think we also are aware that after 16 June we will have much to do in continuing to put pieces together. Here, I think, we see the wisdom in Cesar's call for a Technical Secretariat, as this can provide some structure for moving forward with the understandings that emerge from the Global Assembly.

Anyone who has ever worked in an "open space" dialogic environment knows that such spaces can generate intense anxiety. The challenge is always to first of all create a "safe space" and then to allow it to become a creative space. To then act on the ideas, declarations, manifestos, and personal commitments generated in such spaces requires a determination to move from words to actions, to exam the impact of the actions, and to provide for a feedback loop that can be used to inform subsequent plunges into the marvels of open space work. Some approaches intentionally turn up the heat in terms of generating anxiety, and then spend virtually the entire time together looking at the starting point anxiety. I once participated in a workshop with 300 people in which the room was set up in a giant spiral of chairs, with one chair at the most inward spot of the spiral and the rest arranged in ever larger spirals out from that center point. The choice over which chair to select led to much anxiety, and the workshop leaders invited shared reflections on the choice and then tied the themes of the reflections to the themes of the workshop. I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting anything like that. I want us to start with a very welcoming and comfortable space and to then make clear both the Assembly methodology and the groundrules for our day together. I like what Karin shared: "Rules are needed for the dialogue to flourish." In fact, I hope we put this up on a large sheet of paper for all to see.

I am going to take a short break and then build on my comments above through a series of posts to this space. I intend to address, in this order, a) a proposal for the schedule; b) a draft of a plan for our breakouts; c) thoughts on the inputs from 12 June; d) thoughts on taking actions at the Global Assembly; e) draft plan for Global Assembly follow up and f) proposed schedule for Coordinating Group meetings from 11 June - 16 June . Please bear with me as it may take me the next 2-3 days to complete the job.

In closing, I do want to note that the job will be, as Jack might say, a labor of love. It is such a pleasure to be working with you all, and time and time again over the past 18 months of work on the conference and global assembly I have been reenergized by the sharing that has come through our planning groups. I will hold this awareness close to me in the swirl of activities, meetings and intense interactions in Cartagena.

Budd Hall wrote to me yesterday that Orlando Fals Borda will be "looking down on us" during our time in Cartagena, and his comment went right to the heart of things for me. As a young man working in alternative education and community-based youth-work in Southern California in the mid-1970s I sure wish I had been guided towards an awareness of Fals Borda's creative and courageous work in Colombia, just as I was guided by the work of Paulo Freire, Franz Fanon, A. S. Neill, Joel Spring, Jean Baker Miller, and others as I developed my understandings of "what's happening" and "what's to be done." In other words, finally, while I missed Orlando the first time around, I have found him this time and will do all I can to honor his labors of love by doing good work this June, 40 years after the first world gathering.

Now a break

Lonnie

Hi Lonnie

Thanks for your beautiful reflections. Looking forward to your thoughts on the design / methodology in the coming days.

Jose

Greetings. Here is the next piece. This is the draft schedule, and is based on a conversation with Jose and Wray as well as a review of other recent inputs. For the draft schedule to make full sense you need to see the draft Script. That is what I am now working on and will post within the next 2-3 hours. I then will work on the plan for the breakouts/roundtable work. I hope you all will do your very best to keep up with the dialogue here over the next 4-5 days, as this period will involve the finalizing of all the excellent work that has gone into the design of the Global Assembly.

Regards,
Lonnie

Now the draft script for your review and comments. This document takes us down into the real nitty gritty of June 16. Please do not be frightened by it. WE CAN DO THIS. There are missing pieces, so I ask that you all read this carefully and look for the things I have missed. I decided to risk putting up something incomplete rather than leaving this piece out for now.

Next up will be: a draft of a more concrete plan for breakouts/roundtable work; thoughts on the inputs from 12 June; thoughts on taking actions at the Global Assembly; draft plan for Global Assembly follow up and, finally, a proposed schedule for Coordinating Group meetings from 11 June - 16 June. Please stay with me on all this. I know it is going to require some hours of reading and responding. But we are close to having a fully developed global assembly methodology, and I want us to see this all the way through.

Get some rest, meditate, and let's keep it moving forward!

Lonnie

Greetings. Attached you will find the proposal for Round One of the dialogues to be held on June 16. We have a design team/coordinating group meeting planned for Friday, June 2 (Saturday, June 3 in Australia). The three documents posted over the last three days will be the focus of this meeting.

what time is the meeting again? I might be able to attend

Hi Karin and everyone

Here is the event link.

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&tmeid=aXZvcjM2cm5uMG1pdDM5NWZyZzZyazAyajggYWN0aW9uZm9yZXNpZ2h0QG0&tmsrc=actionforesight%40gmail.com

Everyone - if you click on this it will tell you when the event will be in your time zone (I presume) and you can add yourself to the guest list.

the times are here

Melbourne, Australia Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 11:00 pm AEST
San Diego, USA Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 6:00 am PDT
Stockholm, Sweden Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 3:00 pm CEST
London, United Kingdom Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 2:00 pm BST
Bogota, Colombia Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 8:00 am COT
Johannesburg, South Africa Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 3:00 pm SAST
Cheyenne, USA Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 7:00 am MDT

Here is the next piece I have written for us. In this 4-page document I share my thoughts regarding the four themes to be developed from the June 12 workshops. I Hope we soon will see the brief report from Mary and Lesley and the four themes from Cesar. Remember that we are using the experience of theme-elicitation as a critically important part our preparations for the Global Assembly. Later today I will work on a draft for "Round Two" of the Global Assembly activities in which we work on the themes and move from discussion to proposals for action beyond the 1st Global Assembly.

Lonnie

Hi Lonnie and everyone

Lonnie I think you've done an excellent job of bring many disparate considerations and pieces of the puzzle together. You need to be acknowledged by everyone for your commitment and hard work. I can't even imagine what the last few months ave been like for you.

It will be easier for me to order my thoughts and help articulate next steps if I can summarise what I think we are at now.

There are about six or seven design needs with solutions attached to them, that have emerged or are emerging:

1 - the need to ground the GA in real issues and challenges communities have been having in the area of KD. Resolved by beginning the GA with thematic topics drawn from participatory workshops, june 12 and cesar's issues in a directed open space format.

2 - the need to allow interconnections of thinking and relating to flow through / across the GA - resolved in part by using some world cafe style methods.

3 - the need to map interconnections globally among the network of PAR + who are working / want to work together in the explicit project(s) of policy change. Potentially resolved through some process in the GA.

4 - the need to come to grounded and pluralistic visions for KD that can inform action. (grounded in a shared analysis and understanding of particular topic areas.) Resolved by having an after lunch session that asks participants to create a vision of what transformation would mean to them.

5 - the need to produce actionable projects people at the GA can work on together, as experiments that align with the vision. Potentially resolved by some system of producing proposals and online decision making coupled with organising tools.

6 - the need to bring together the GA into a joint statement / report on KD. Potentially resolved by a technical secretariat.

7 - the need for participants to take responsibility for their own approach to knowledge and KD and enter into transformative inquiry. This is potentially resolved by some use of Budd Hall's questions.

My feeling is that there is still some integration work to really make the GA sing.

• I feel that world cafe can be better interspersed throughout the day to better aid interconnections.

• I feel there is some method or technique lurking that can help us to do the mapping of interconnection.

• I feel this mapping of interconnections could be key in articulating an "ecology of knowledge" at least in the realm of PAR+.

• I feel this mapping of interconnections may also be key in the emergence of projects for change.

• I feel that the vision element is also relational - that we need to have a way of cutting across topic areas and creating coherence.

Overall my feeling is that all the elements are here, but that there is an inner logic that want to emerge that can bring these elements together in a way that really works.

that is all for now.

jose

Hello Everyone, I am sorry to have been rather absent from this discussion and want to register my commitment to being there and supporting the day, but have not had capacity, for various reasons, to engage more actively in this discussion. That said, I have been following it all. I know there is a meeting today (this afternoon for me) that I am unlikely to be able to attend so I wanted to say the following in case it is of help to your meeting.

firstly, I am happy to do anything on the day that will help the day, register people, facilitate a group etc.

secondly, hot of the back of the Annual Working Meeting of the International Collaboration for Participatory Research (ICPHR) where we discussed the 'four questions' sent over from Mary and Lesley, I would suggest, like Jose, that we make sure we frame the time for the discussion adequately. We had two hours to discuss the questions, and it was insufficient and, despite my very strict time - keeping, people rolled up late to the beginning which disrupted the first round.

I like Jack's idea's of having only two 'seemingly' simple questions as that allows for the debate to flourish along the lines take by the people in the group. the comments about the four questions made by ICPHR members were that at first they thought 'what do these questions mean', ie that they were ambiguous, and then as they got in to their discussions they welcomed the ambiguity as it was that very ambiguity that meant the questions triggered rather than shaped and framed discussion.

I think the one hour slots, which I could almost guarantee will be less than that, because the first one for instance, starts with people are coming back from a break and they will by late! and so the one hour will not be long enough. I think we can never over-estimate how long it takes people to move from one chair to another and this needs to be built in to the timings. I think the first round of conversation could do to be longer than one hour anyhow, as people need to settle in to the task and that takes time - they get quicker as time goes on. I would suggest 1.5 hours for the first round of Café. My suspicion is that the day is a bit top heavy on presentation for a day that is fundamentally about letting people come together and share their ideas and make ideas together. Is there anyway this could be reduced and more time given to those who have come to it for that purpose. So my point is can we be more generous in the time given to those gathered and reduce the 'presentation' time in the morning.

I like the mapping idea, it is something I use in my own work. I think it can work here, but again, it needs to be given sufficient time. A day is so short so deciding on what fundamentally underpins the day and giving that space would seem to be the key to making if work.

Thank you to all of you for your careful considerations and thoughts and for sharing them here. I wish you a good meeting - I hope my thoughts above are helpful in the practical planning for the day - just let me know what you want me to do and I will willingly do it. I look forward to meeting up with you all soon. Very best wishes, Tina