I will be facilitating a session, Using Visuals to Unlock Strategic Processes

In this experiential session we are going to tap into strategic problem-solving capabilities quickly and deeply. We’ll be using photographs as a way to unlock a group’s ability for innovation and creativity. This process is a way to bridge the verbal and visual, the tactical and strategic, and with the added benefit of building stronger teams. This is a low-tech process for getting high-tech results.

A number of my colleagues are facilitating pre-conference workshops.

Tom Crawford, the CEO of Vizthink, is facilitating a pre-conference session. Visualization for Learning: Approaches, Tools, and Applications to Improve Effectiveness. Here is a podcast with an interview I did with Tom.

During this one day workshop, we’ll explore what visualization approaches exist, how they can be applied, and what tools can be used to assist in the process. Visualization approaches can be used to improve the entire learning development process. Regardless of your specific development approach, visualization techniques can provide dramatic improvements to your analysis, design, development, implementation, and even evaluation processes. During this session, we’ll explore a variety of techniques that can be applied to each step of the development process. We’ll even put several of them to the test both on paper and online. No drawing skills are required.

Michele Martin from The Bamboo Project is also doing a pre-conference session with Janet Cleary, Social Media Jumpstart. Here is a podcast with an interview with Michele.

This pre-conference workshop is for those who want to maximize their conference experience by exploring the social Web before the conference begins. The workshop will introduce you to social media like blogs, social network sites, wikis, social bookmarking, photo sharing, Voice over IP, virtual worlds, instant messaging, videosharing, microblogging, etc. Delegates will be exposed to applications like WordPress, Facebook, Ning, wikis, delicious, SlideShare, Flickr, Skype,SecondLife, YouTube, Twitter, etc. Each media will be presented Pecha Kucha style followed by a brief, hands-on trial or demonstration. You’ll leave with the skills to explore each of these social media applications on your own while at the conference and later, at your workplace.

Gary Woodill and Anya Wood are doing a pre-conference workshop, Emerging Learning Technologies in Healthcare Training. Here is a podcast interview with Gary.

The use of technology in healthcare education has increased dramatically over the last decade, and none too soon. Because of rapid change, providing meaningful access to learning opportunities for both practitioners and the general public has become increasingly important. With the advent of the Internet the general public has become more knowledgeable and, in turn, demands access to healthcare education in a variety of different formats. Practitioners continue to experience time constraints and a need to relate training to practical, real-world experience, making accessibility and application to real-life top priorities.

I presented at this conference last year, and it was great. Not only were the sessions high quality, but the other participants were also very engaging. Here are posts I wrote about sessions last year:

• What is innovation in learning? This was the session I did.
  
• OilSim: Learning to explore for oil in an hour This session was facilitated by Olavur Ellefson who will be doing another session this year.
• Five Worlds of Learning 2.0 This session was facilitated by Lance Dublin, he is one of the keynotes this year.

I hope you will consider joining us in San Jose!

We covered a lot of material in the session.

• things to consider when setting up the room
• who is your audience?
• what outcome are you looking for?
• creating a question to bridge the audience and the outcome
• what we see in the visual language
• how the visual language gives us clues about the person creating the image
• what changes when people make images in a group
• adjusting questions, images, and process for different audiences

An interesting challenge arose

A VisualsSpeak user dropped by and presented an interesting challenge. How do you convey the results of a VisualsSpeak process to people who weren’t part of it? For those of you who have never been part of a VS session, a tremendous amount of information, ideas, strategies, etc are generated in a very short period of time. The challenge is not getting the input you want but what do you do with the data you get. This is an area that we have been working on and have a few ideas for you to try.

But first, let’s take a look at the kind of raw data that you get from doing a typical VisualsSpeak process. This is a condensed version.

Group images

We created group images exploring the question:

What makes facilitating diverse groups successful?

Here is what the groups came up with.

From the top left, we enter the concept through windows with many panes. Some we can see through more clearly than others. There are different colors of fabrics, different money, doesn’t matter, there is a variety of people who are different than Western culture. The woman is proud of her fuchsia hair. There is a yin/yang in the arms with interesting bandages where the colors are reversed. Different hands hold objects. There is a man doing yoga, children marching. There are multiple different colors, diversity in images. In some you can tell the ethnicity and culture and some you can’t, just a feel. Really builds us together in the natural world, salad, different bird feathers. Function in the farm metaphor of team working together to provide food. When all is said and done, all people looking all different, all the same, yin and yang parts together. The child in the water is looking to young people for inspiration for the need to take risks. The money shows the governments of the world meeting to build coins, far away, but similar. It is more attractive with all the colors, one would be boring.

In the center there is an underlying spark, creativity with new things coming from it. The salad bowl diversity, bounty coming together. The chocolates are all different, but all chocolates are neatly organized. Overall people, metaphors all together, but different. Windows of opportunity. We see some commonality in diversity like the celebration of family ties. Building bridges isn’t easy, fraught with challenges, so this bridge has different bushes and thorns. Different faces, not necessarily ethnicity, but different ideas in some communities. Overall perspective is the giraffe. All different kinds of beads, different but strung together. When it does work, and comes together, there is underlying conflict that can’t be ignored. At the same time you have to leap and hope to survive. Find a team with common things to bind. Doors of opportunity. Diverse looks. Beautiful by coming together with one objective. Bring down the fences, together sign universal cultures, commonalities like currency. Several windows, doors, labyrinths facilitators are aware of when working with diverse groups. A maze of confusion and challenging with pitfalls we can fall into especially if we aren’t partnering with partners in other cultures to help us find the pathways around them. The spider web of connecting. Eggs are the nurturing process, hope for new life bringing diversity together. The balloon has different colors but blended together which makes it interesting and able to take off.

Now the challenge

Here is where one of our VisualsSpeak customers dropped by and asked about sharing the results of a session she had done at her company. She has been using the VisualsSpeak ImageSet for strategic visioning and the team participating had to help others in their organization understand what had happened. She had tried a number of things to convey the outcomes of the session such as making poster prints of the images and having people tell the stories that emerged. It was OK, but didn’t really convey the power of what happened in the room.

The reports from the groups above have the same challenge. Magic happens in the room. People connect deeply. The process of offering your ideas and working through the negotiation to come up with the result is where much of the value lies.

The results seem like they should be more finished than they are. If instead of using photographs we used sketches to record these initial ideas, it would be clear that the sketches needed more work to become conveyable ideas by the very nature of them being sketches. Since the photographs look good, and many of the assembled images are attractive, they seem like they ‘should’ convey a message. And to the people who were there they do. Because to them, the images are like notes, they remind the participants of the experience they had. For someone who was not part of the process, this is more like raw assessment data.

How to communicate the results of a VisualsSpeak process

There are a couple of options. Using the example above, we have two groups who have created images and stories.

You might ask the group participants to create a summary;

• What are the common themes?
• What are the images both groups used?
• How can you arrange the images and concepts to make them easier to understand?

The other alternative is to create a summary yourself to help convey the messages more clearly. In this example, I did not participate in the group discussions since I was facilitating the whole session. If I was facilitating for a business or organization and knew I was going to have to create a report, I would be listening to the process as it unfolded and taking notes. I would also ask questions in the debrief to get input from the group about what they thought the most important points were to include. Remember the wisdom of the group.

Don’t strip out the creative juice

One thing to watch in this summarization process is not to lose the minority input. Part of what VisualsSpeak is all about is giving voice to everyone. Sometimes the most important idea will be spoken by one person. Creative sparks and insights that can open up whole new possibilities most often are not the common themes. Often it is the combination of popular ideas with a minority spark that reveals new possibilities.

For more on using the VisualsSpeak process

You can subscribe to our upcoming posts by RSS feed, or by email.

You can also get more ideas and tips about using VisualsSpeak by signing up for our e-newsletter.

Yes, I have multiple roles. I am also a trainer, entrepreneur, business owner, coach, artist. Underneath it all, I am a facilitator. It’s so easy to forget when I sit in the office operating my business on a daily basis. I remember when I get around other facilitators and recognize the ease with which I can converse with them.

What makes a facilitator different?

While I hesitate to make any sweeping generalizations, something I notice in my facilitator colleagues is an inherent faith in the wisdom of the group. We focus on the process of the interaction more than trying to control the content.

On Whitespace, Daniel Rose noticed:

When designing large collaborative sessions with complex topics it is almost always the case that there is a big variance between the few people who know a lot about the topic and a few who have little to no context and everyone else falls somewhere in between. Sponsors are generally very anxious to do a lot of “education” around the project so that everyone gets up to speed. Usually this results in a desire to do a 3 hour PowerPoint presentation.

He goes on to talk about the difference between instructional learning versus constructional learning, and how part of our role is to help our sponsors have faith in the group. When I talk with someone who has been facilitating for any length of time there is an almost automatic assumption that the group is wise. Just help the members surface what they know.

Done well, facilitation looks so easy

Not that facilitation actually is easy. There are so many factors that effect the success of the meeting, from the flow to the environment, to the way people are invited and prepared. However, the better the execution, the more seamless and effortless it appears. Do a good job, and the details go unnoticed. The focus shifts to the content, and getting the work of the session done.

Some of the things I appreciate about the IAF conferences

• the opportunity to participate in large group processes
• seeing how various methods work
• three hour breakout sessions, so you can really get deep into the material
• advanced level tracks
• reflection built into the design
• half hour breaks so you don’t have to run from one place to another
• colleagues who do amazing things around the world
• people with passion to make a difference

In the days ahead, I’ll be writing about some of the session I attended and the one I facilitated. I always think this is going to happen faster than it does, forgetting about all the things to catch up on from being out of town. I continue to be amazed by the people who can live blog, and work toward accepting that I’m more reflective and need more time. More soon.

Christine Martell, Principal of VisualsSpeak LLC, will be presenting at the Society for Intercultural Education Training and Research (SIETAR) USA Eighth Annual Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. The Conference is being held November 7-10, 2007 at The Westin Crown Center Hotel.

Christine will be facilitating in three sessions.

Thursday, November 8 from 3:15 – 4:45

Exploring Multiple Perspectives on Conflict Using Photographs

Christine Martell

This session will explore the meaning of conflict, conflict resolution, and conflict management in personal, professional and global contexts. Using photographs and the stories that emerge from them, we will explore the similarities and difference in how individuals and groups interpret these concepts. When we see multiple perspectives clearly, we will begin to seek avenues to come together in new ways.

Friday, November 9 from 8:30 – 10:00 am

Community, Collaboration and Conversation: The Art and Practice of Blogging

Michele Martin, Christine Martell, Rob Pusch

There are more than 15.5 million active blogs around the world, with some 1 million new posts per day. The best of these are fueled by passion, authenticity and immediacy–elements that also feed our most courageous conversations. In this session, you’ll learn how this new medium is transforming how we communicate, collaborate and connect with one another. We’ll examine the the six pillars of blogging and what makes blogs unique as online communication tools. We’ll also explore the continuum of ways to participate in the blogosphere and how you can use blogging for professional development, to create community and to forge a personal or organizational brand. By the end of the session you’ll have a new perspective on the world of blogging and a host of practical tools and tips for becoming a “conversation architect” using this exciting new medium.

Christine is joined by Michele Martin from The Bamboo Project and Beyond the Glass Ceiling and Rob Pusch who will be the person leading the Communication effort for the board starting at the conference.

Saturday, November 10 from 3:15 – 4:45 pm

What Makes A Culturally Competent Professional Association?

Christine Martell ,Andy Reynolds, Peggy Pusch, Ann Marie Lei

This session will explore the factors that contribute to organizations becoming more welcoming and inclusive. Using photographs, participants will explore how we can collectively create more effective associations.

Christine is joined by Andy Reynolds the incoming President of SIETAR-USA, Peggy Pusch the Executive Director of SIETAR-USA, and Ann Marie Lei from the SIETAR-USA advisory board.

Design Instant Online Flash Games

Raja Thiagarajan’s session was hands down my favorite of all the technology sessions. Why? Because Raja’s session was designed with the learning first. The technology merely served the learning objectives. I learned:

• How engaging simple flash games could be
• Which type of game to select for what type of content
• How to login and access the software
• How to create games through the admin interface

I immediately saw how I could use this to aid stickiness after a training by emailing a link to participants to play a game around the key points. I could see using them in a webinar, or other online engagement.

It was an interactive session about an interactive method. YES! I know it took a lot of effort for Raja and the others behind the scenes to get the software running on all the computers, but it was totally worth it. People were highly engaged, clustered around the computer screens.

I have played the shell games on the Thiagi group site in the past, but I never thought I could create them and use them. Now I know how easy it is.

Playmotion

I missed the keynote session on Playmotion, since I got talking with a colleague. I did see the demo of it before the evening auction. It appeared to be some kind of interactive projection system. You could stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling screen and interact with whatever was projected.

Some examples were that smoke would respond to dancers, puzzles that could be solved by hitting the letters into the boxes, balls that would bounce. The possibilities for interactive full body learning were huge. I just kept seeing all the little kids in schools being freed from the confines of their desks….and actually engaging the way most kids like to engage.

This is the type of technology that would be great for VisualsSpeak. The ability to move the images around is so vital to the process for many people. I would love to be able to create huge interactive vision maps.

NASA’s Distributed Observer Network (DON)

Even the title of this session is an indicator of it’s complexity. This session was in two parts. In the first part, Tom Cuddy described a bit about the challenge of creating a simulation environment for the complex process of taking care of the shuttle. Allowing engineers to explore on the computer and especially try things out, makes a lot of sense. Particularly after the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

I did learn there is some kind of core code you can purchase from game developers that you can use as a head start for a simulated environment. What that is or what it really means is lost to me as a non-programmer. Being married to an electronic engineer, I am accustomed to nodding and saying un-huh as I listen to complex descriptions of the inner workings of electrons and the codes that command them.

Despite a moody electrical system, Tom and Tate Srey were able to get the simulation running on computers and we were able to play with it. Being able to move part of the shuttle’s tanks around and look at them from different angles was interesting. Why I would want to do that is a bit lost on me, but I’m not the target audience of engineers. I certainly can imagine my husband and his software guys spending hours analyzing and creating any number of theories to test using this simulation.

Ian Bogost: Future of games in learning

Ian spoke after dinner, before the silent auction. As a professor from Georgia Tech, he had a well constructed argument laid out. It started with assumptions people make about the value of games, possible ways of looking at the value of games, and moved to propose a new set of assumptions.

Clearly, Ian has worked to develop his presentation, and it was engaging to listen to in the moment. The slides were well designed. He did not read them to us.

I remember the overall message, that games can be engaging and educational. I remember he plays a lot with his kids and they love the Animal Crossing game. I remember persuasion being a key to these new designs his company is developing.

I can’t remember any of the details. Why? No handouts. We were sitting in a darkened room after dinner and I wasn’t prepared to take notes. Notes for me are a way to convert audio to visual. I many never look at them again, but they anchor learning for me in the moment.

Another thing that happened was Ian showed screen after screen of visuals from the games. They were well done, but in fairly rapid succession they became a form of visual overload. I remember thinking they were compelling in the moment, but the concepts didn’t stick.

I enjoyed Ian’s presentation and I remember enough of it to feel I got value from the experience. He was a good speaker, his content was developed and thought through.

There has to be a better way

There were a number of other technology demo sessions. Not just at this conference, but at a number of others I have attended recently. Here is the formula:

• people sit in rows of chairs or at tables
• presenter tells audience how cool their new interactive engaging e-learning or game is
• show screen after screen of what some of the screens look like
• if the audience is lucky, there may be a branching choice the audience gets to call out for them to select

Now I realize most conferences aren’t in computer labs. Even those that suggest bringing laptops suffer from unreliable wireless and slow connections. I know handouts with a lot of images are hard to produce and quite expensive to print, especially in color.

Still, there has to be a more effective session design. Even when I was interested in the product being showcased, very little stuck. About all I remember is that it was interesting. I can’t even remember why.

This leads me to some questions for those of us making presentations:

• How can technology sessions about interactive designs be done interactively?
• Can you get beyond the technology challenges?
• Can we apply the interactive principles in the products to the demos and the sessions used to showcase them?
• How can we manage the visual overload of showing multiple screens of visual interfaces?

What have you seen work?

Technology Overall

I really appreciated the inclusion of all the technology at the conference. There was learning in all the sessions, even if it wasn’t exactly what the presenter intended.

Peggy Pusch joined me to facilitate a session where we mined the wisdom in the room. We worked in four table-groups. Each table had a VisualsSpeak ImageSet that contained 200 images.

To start out, each person had a 12 x 18″ piece of construction paper. We asked:

What makes games and simulations magic?

Each person selected images that spoke to the question. After looking at some of the visual language displayed in the arrangement of images, each person had the opportunity to share the story of their image.

Each group was then asked to create an image together, making sure to include wisdom from everybody. They could use a larger white piece of paper, or the construction paper for a background. Markers were available for those who wanted to add words.

These are the notes from each group as they were explaining their process. Here is what they came up with:

Group 1

General reaction words
CHAOTIC, ALL ENCOMPASSING, LIGHTHEARTED

Bottom: the complexity and the patterns, using simulations and games to simplify the process we are trying to understand.
Process is to the left, stepping into someone’s shoes, process that you are trying to identify with, different perspectives coming in, pattern of the game to demonstrate what you are trying to address–like walking into someone else’s shoes.
Process at a different level: Learning–everywhere, everyone,–trying to understand, stretching.
Strive to reach the stars and clouds and to have a whimsical, magical approach to an uplifting experience

Process: Decisions on the use of the color were unanimous and then they started placing images; some were linear and some were floating, an organic process that ended up with the final picture. (I expect the left brain people will sneak in and sort it out and get it organized.) This has been a very balanced group, going from left to right brain.

Group 2

End result: it gets people out of their comfort zone and changes them, puts them in a new role, looking at themselves differently, successful results but also having fun.

Tied it together: gaming is a spiraling process and it is an outward movement that has a core…we started with fun and engagement and moved outward . Other growth happens. Some of the dynamics are similar whether they are connecting individuals or large groups of people, leading to uplifting thoughts, and ideas and perpetuating growth to your company environment and co-workers, The picture flows from the center through the spiral.

Inspiration: Training will still have impact down the road. Whole metaphor is a spiral “life is like a box of chocolates,” you are never sure of what you will get. it can spiral out of control as well as lead to deeper learning. Tried, in building the image, to eliminate the distractions, the games and simulations focus your attention and there is a need to avoid the distractions.

Went through the chambers of achievement.

Group 3

Looked first at the process: simulations and games start from the trainers and facilitators who work them through. We are hoping to take something from here to use as we climb up the hill. We see that old and broken things can be fixed and new things can emerge from them. Always good to have a trick up your sleep.

Link to the organization. Conflict between the people who are going through the training and those who did not when they bring back what was learned to the organization. With all training, there has to be a way to measure it. This allows people to work through an alternative experience. Simulations can clean up the messes that have been created. It is fun, It is diverse. There is a bottom line impact and variable success. Trainers/Facilitators only start people down the path. There are wide horizons and you/they do not know what you/they are going to get but they will discover what that horizon is.

Group 4

Only group that did not come up with a pattern, an organization of space.

Process: We started with where we were before we started the individual assignments. We had lots of stuff around the side, everyone put something in and then we “edited” and it was not until the end that it became a cleaner space. Very chaotic at the beginning…did not know where it was going to go.

Interplay of themes, different ideas that mixed in with other ideas. Simulations and games provide an opportunity to have a much closer look at the common and ordinary to grasp the extraordinary. Juxtaposition of lots of things to reach some order. A process of enjoying and learning. Variety of experiences, always provides surprise and engages all the learning styles. It needs a safe environment and individuals have to trust each other. Starts out as a closed flower and opens us.

Group engagement in a good group means people come together and join. Have to play different roles, sometimes contrived and others real, have awe and wonder that gives value.

The unexpected, sometimes we think that what happens is unexpected but can link to things that are familiar so it is not always unusual and strange.

In the center, the ooh and ah of the experience.

Conclusions:
Very possessive about my original images and then I had to give up things to the interest of others. Hard to let go but it got more creative. Have to put it in play with other people

Expected to keep and add on to what we have but we ended up ditching a lot of the original pictures because while I liked what I had on my own, it did not fit with the group.

Looked for themes that they all carried out and picked each others’ pictures that they liked.

So what is the magic for you in games and simulations?

ASTD

Increasing the Cross Cultural Effectiveness of Your Chapter

Christine Martell and Kelly Orehovec

What makes a professional association culturally competent? How do you attract and retain a widely diverse membership? ASTD-Cascadia is finishing the second year of a multi-year initiative exploring diversity in our chapter. This session invites you to share our collective experiences and explore what we need to do as chapter leaders to ensure we are welcoming to all workplace performance professionals, while developing competencies within the chapter’s leadership.

The second day began with Yael Schy using Improv to explain systems change. We’re all facing organizational change on a continual basis, so she told us about how we can encourage people to become more flexible. We then got to watch audience members in Improv Action. My favorite was the demo at the end where four people got up and took turns leading each other through a variety of dance explorations (more like getting each other to do strange but wonderful things).

Morning sessions

Access the Magic Through Photographs

I presented a session with Peggy Pusch, which I will be writing a post about soon. Peggy left for Cyprus two days after our presentation, and I can’t open the file she left for me with all the notes from our session. So after Peggy returns and I get another file, you’ll get to see and hear about all the great things we discovered together.

Creating Unbeatable Volunteers

I really wanted to clone myself so I could also attend Matt DeMarco and Margee Wolf’s session Make it Magnetic: How to Attract and Keep Unbeatable Volunteers. I do a lot of work with professional associations, so I know what it is like to work with groups of volunteers. As a newcomer to NASAGA and a volunteer in the form of a presenter, I was warmly welcomed by Matt. He made sure I had what I needed, knew where my room was, and he told me what to expect when I got there. He checked in with me again after my session to see how it went.

The game helps people to realize it is these seemingly little things that make a big difference to volunteers. Set up as a board game, designed for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the gameplay is designed to show both the helpful and not helpful behaviors coordinators can use with their volunteer workforces. I heard Matt talk about the possibility of creating a version of the game for a more general audience. Matt, DO IT. Most every organization that utilizes volunteers needs help with this!

Afternoon Sessions

Understanding Systems Thinking through Interactive Games

Ron Roberts from Action Centered Training, Inc shared a new game he has designed that helped us explore competitive versus collaborative gaming. It’s a slide checker game, where the rows on the board slid, and there were four teams with checkers. A triangular die controlled the movement of the checkers, and a square die controlled the movement of the board.

In the first round we were in four teams of two playing competitively. I was really lucky to be matched with a math wiz, since I don’t think quickly enough to play a game like this well. We were able to not only play for the benefit of our own team, but to create set-backs for the others. Because the board pieces could slide each term, you couldn’t really strategize ahead of time. You had to come up with a solution in the moment of your turn. One team won after 20 minutes or so.

In the next round we played cooperatively. This was much more fun. We worked together to get all the pieces off the board, which we did in a little over half the amount of time.

A couple of things were interesting in this process. Three out of the four groups accomplished the task faster working cooperatively. The other group suffered from analysis paralysis in the cooperative round.

I was also really interested to see how the people at my table were able to switch from competitive to cooperative almost instantly. Even though it took a totally different strategy, they could shift their behavior in a moment. I suspect this is a result of playing a lot of games, but it’s also a skill that is very helpful in cross-cultural communication. It got me thinking about the value of adding games to some of the cultural training programs I do.

Another thing I greatly appreciated was although Ron is a college professor and very much wanted to share the theoretical understanding of our experience, he was very realistic about the NASAGA audience. He knew people just wanted to play the game, and kept his slides to a minimum. At the same time, he had detailed handouts for those of us who were interested in them.

Hammer it Home: A Metaphorical Toolbox for Trainers

Brian Remer from the Firefly Group facilitated a session using three different ways to engage participants through metaphor. Each table had a stack of index cards. Every person was asked to list one idea per card to answer what makes learning magic? After gathering a healthy stack, Brain redistributed them so each person had three. We ranked them by how much we liked them, then walked around the room trying to trade for ones we liked better. After returning to our tables, we then worked as a group to identify the three ideas we liked best from all of our options.

During the next segment, each of the three table groups in the room focused on learning one technique and demonstrating to the rest of the groups. We all focused on displaying the themes from the first exercise.

My group received a bag of disparate props, which had to be used for something other than what they were designed, in a skit. Every prop and every person had to be a part of it. We got there, but it really stretched our abilities to make connections and associations.

Another group got to select from a whole table full of objects which would represent the concepts they discovered about the magic of learning. The third group did a similar thing, but used comics as the vehicle for association.

Brain created a great handout for the session which includes much better and more detailed descriptions of these activities, as well as a number of others. It also includes worksheets for exploring why you might use metaphor, when to incorporate it, cautions in using it, and ranges to consider in the strategic use. The packet finishes up with a bibliography and resource suggestions. You can download this handout from the Firefly Group site.

Other posts about the conference:

NASAGA 2007: Pictures everywhere, NASAGA 2007: Games, games everywhere , Game night at NASAGA 07 nasaga2007

After the concurrent sessions ended for the day, we took shuttle buses to a local training facility, the Knowledge Development Center for a reception. There were people eating, talking, listening to music and playing games. Everywhere.

Later in the evening, the organized gameplay started. I chose to play Lifeboats. We played on five boards with up to six people per board.

The game has wooden boats and crew, along with cards that are used for voting. You vote to spring leaks in boats and to move boats forward toward the destination islands. Your crew is divided up between boats, and one person has to jump out to swim to a new boat every turn. You have Captain cards you can use to try to get control over a decision. But if someone else plays one at the same time, both lose the card without getting to decide. All in all, it is a very effective set-up for conflict.

This game isn’t about conflict resolution, or conflict management, it’s about getting to experience conflict in action. Lots of opportunity to experience power.
I played with five men. They seemed nice. Several had ties to the Peace Corps. I have a tendency toward cooperation. I assumed I was with others who were be similar.

Yea, right sure.

They ganged up and started killing off my crew members. Suddenly, it seemed more desirable to be a bit more aggressive. By the time they had systematically killed off all but one of my crew members, I wanted to kill things. And do things like randomly sink boats for the revenge factor.

Les Lauber facilitated the games. He taught us how to play and made evasive and therefore somewhat evocative comments to us as we were playing.

Some players were wondering how the game could be used for training. Les was particularly effective at debriefing and helping us understand how to call out the various parts of the game and link them to common experiences in organizations. We looked at several factors:

• How well we separated the people from the problem
• What were the sources of conflict
• How we could reframe the problems

We also got a list of principles reflected in Lifeboats. Here is mine.

People who feel they have been punished unfairly often react aggressively.

Hey, I didn’t know I’d want to kill little wooden pegs before!

Other posts about the conference
NASAGA 2007: Pictures everywhere, NASAGA 2007: Games, games everywhere
nasaga2007

Beyond 1000 Words: Exploring the Magic of Pictures

This was the first concurrent session I attended. David Gouthro and Crystal Flaman created an overview of different ways to incorporate pictures for learning. They introduced us to a variety of tools that are available, and gave us the opportunity to participate in three different activities.

Expression Cards

The first activity was designed to get to know our table mates. It used Expression Cards, which are a set of 53 playing card sized images. We spread them out in the middle so we could see all the images, then each picked three to describe the following:

• a favorite childhood memory
• something that we love now
• a hope for the future

Each person at the table shared what they picked and why. We then discussed other ideas for using the cards. Our table decided to turn the cards over so we could not see them. We then randomly selected an image and talked about it in relationship to what we hoped to get out of the conference. It worked, the images sparked ideas for everyone.

Vision Board Collages

For the second activity each person got a piece of newsprint, and each table got a pile of photographs, magazines, scissors, and glue. We were instructed to create a vision of what we want in the future. The idea is to create a visual depiction of your dreams, then hang it somewhere so it can help you see your vision.

I’ve been doing this type of activity for many years in one form or another. Usually with a lot of thought, careful placement, and intricately cut out images. I noticed in the session I was able to very quickly identify key concepts, rip pictures out and stick them down in a few minutes. The result seems just as clear as the more labored versions of the past. I fully expect to get that new iPhone in the middle of the image to revolutionize my life.

The Visual Explorer

The Visual Explorer is a tool that comes from the Center for Creative Leadership, created by Chuck Palus and David Horth. It’s a set of 223 8 1/2 x 11 images. David Gouthro spread the images out on the floor down the hallway. We each selected a few images to represent the values of a high performing organization. We found partners to talk about our insights.

David and Crystal shared a whole range of resources and encouraged people to start using pictures for a wide variety of purposes. It was a great introduction to how easy it can be.

Looking @ Leadership: Visually and Interactively

Fran Kick started this session by showing us a video of ‘something’. Over four minutes, it shifted and changed right up to the end when we got to see what we were looking at. It was a great exercise in perception and how our minds make associations and assumptions.

All this time, we had a set of photographs Fran has developed spread out on the floor in front of us. The set was created to teach high school students about leadership. It was created by identifying the key concepts in a number of leadership models, then selecting photographs to represent each one.

The photos are about 6 x 9 with rounded corners. They are placed on the floor randomly. We then walked among them several times to make sure we got to see them all. Then we selected a card that represented the leadership quality most important to us, and talked about the meaning of our choice in small groups.

The tool would best be used for groups learning about leadership theory. It’s a great way to cement the learning and to explore a variety of mainstream ideas about leadership. Using it with young people also gives them the opportunity to claim leadership qualities for themselves.

Other day-one sessions I heard about

Motivation Principles for Game Designers and Facilitators

This session gave participants the opportunity to explore with Thiagi six critical components to foster motivation: connection, choice, competence, confidence, collaboration, and captivation. I heard this session was particularly helpful for exploring the theoretical framework along with demonstrating classic Thiagi.

Poverty Reduction in Molansa: A Simulation

Sonia Riboux facilitated a simulation about poverty reduction. Participants had to manipulate multiple factors that contributed to economic results. Individuals had different amounts of resources to begin. I heard several people say it was very engaging.

Theatre of the Oppressed

While I didn’t get to participate this time, I have attended Stephanie Pollack’s sessions in the past, so I know this one was fantastic. The Great Game of Power was featured in the summer issue of SIMAGES. Many games and simulations address power, but few do it as directly as in Theatre of the Oppressed. Watching and listening to others describing how they see power when it is expressed with a few chairs and a table really shows you how dramatically perceptions can vary from person to person.

Coming soon:

Game night at NASAGA 2007. Day 2 concurrent sessions. What makes simulations magic? Technology day at the conference. nasaga2007