What’s Working?

June 21st, 2008 at 04:05pm Randy Engstrom

This marks my first ever foray into the world of BLOG…Please pardon any typos, as I am still a practitioner of the ‘Raptor’ typing technique, utilizing 3 fingers on each hand…ironic I know being a Seattlite, but I digress.

Yesterday I facilitated my first panel, and it was a great experience.  Perhaps the best part was being able to spend most of the day with my collegue Anne Corbett from Cultural Development Corporation in DC.  She’s such an inspiration, and I’m glad the conference gave us so much time to connect personally and professionally.  We were sad that 2 of our original panelists needed to cancel due to tragic circustances, but our stand in, Matthew Kwatinetz, stepped in admirably.  As is turns out, having to ‘wing’ the panel more than expected worked in our favor, as we had WAY more people show up that the room was capable of holding.  I arrived early and started setting up chairs in a circle; our vision was to host an ‘UNpanel’, where we went without Power Point and instead tried to facilitate a conversation amongst all the people in the room…we planned to have each attendee talk about who they were, where they were from, and why they came; we listed ‘Partipation’ as one of the rules for the session.  And then all the seats filled up, followed by the floor, followed by all of the standing room at the back, and into the hallway…with over 100 people in the room, our vision of ‘going around in a circle’ would have taken more than the allotted time.  So instead, at the suggestion of an attendee, we solicited volunteers;  we asked them to say who they were, where they were from, and their most hated ‘buzz word’, which all three presenters then agreed not to use for our discussion.  We got people to laugh, which is an uderrated aspect of group facilitation.

Overall I was really happy with how the discuission went; my only regret is that when we lost Eric and Jason (our other panelists), it narrowed the scope and diversity of our ‘New Models’ concept, and we wound up more focused on facilities issues.  That said, much of that focus was a result of people’s specific questions, and I think for the most part people were engaged.

Our best wishes go our to Eric, Jason, and their families…You were in our hearts and thoughts.

NEXT YEAR: A view from the Emerald City…

I can’t tell you how excited I am to host the conference in our fine city next year…and yesterday’s experience really drove that home.  I have 2 immediate ideas to throw into the AFTA cyberspace:

1 - An adapted version of our ‘What’s Working’ panel, modeled after the TED Conference in LA, or the Pecha Kucha model:  you give a bunch of people who are doing interesting/innnovative work about 5-10 minutes, all in a row.  Then each of them moves to a table where they are avaibile for discussion and feedback.  Sort of an open space cafe model.  It would really be cool if we could do this in a manner that blended the Emerging Leaders, Civic Engagement, and Economic Development tracks.

2 - We need to produce the ‘People’s Guide to Seattle’: Cafes, Galleries, Museums, Bars, Nightclubs, Public Art, Architecture…I feel like the Hotel Consierge won’t do it justice.  I really want to people to see and love Seattle the way I do.

More soon…

Randy

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