calling the circle (was Fabulous Facilitators - stammtisch in San Francisco Bay Area)

Fri Jan 13 09:41:00 PST 2006

  Hi Lisa, thank you so much for the sharing !! There was a time when I thought, "oh my, she is not going to answer...." and I imagined you being busy like a bumble-bee or not feeling good and deciding to be off email for a while. But the acess trouble for the Acess Queen explains everything :) I have (maybe only know?) very little facilitators living close enough but this idea of hosting a circle for meaningful conversations is with me since quit some time (since last August when I participated in an Open Space hosted and facilitated by Robyn Berkessel close to NYC to be exact ~ hello Robyn, it has been sooo inspiring!) and it's forming itself more and more. At the moment I am reading "Calling the Circle" by Christina Baldwin and from all the different sources I experience being pointed to something I can't see quite clear, yet. But I trust it's going to become clearer soon. So if anybody else on this list is hosting a circle in whatever way with whatever people I would love to hear something about your experiences. For example: Who did you invite? How did it start? How is it going at the moment? And so on... Greetings to all people meeting in circles at this very moment all the round the world,Marei  
  "Lisa Heft" <lisaheft at openingspace.net> schrieb: Hi, Marei and all – (I have had an interesting time being able to access
and not
email in the last two months – so here I am catching up on some older messages you have sent
Yes, it is cute that Access Queen has trouble with accessing email sometimes
but not being able to get or send emails for periods of time is certainly a lovely reminder to spend more time with loved ones
    ;o) To refresh your memory, Marei asked: <as I have let myself be inspired by so many of the things you shared I am not astonished that I like the fabulous facilitators meeting very much, too. My coming to San Francisco and join you there will take a little longer. But I still have the intention !! In the meantime: Would you be so kind to explain what "pot luck" means? Everybody brings what they feel like and you eat what is on the table?And are there any other suggestions and experiences in hosting this that you feel like sharing out of your deep wisdom? Greetings from Bielefeld, where next year a "fabulous facilitators breakfast" might take place
>  Ms. Marei – I see you in our Fabulous Facilitators circle, even though you cannot yet make it in person.  Elena Marchuk came to visit us once, all the way from Siberia, as have other facilitators on their travels.  So there will always be a place for you.  (This month’s Fabulous Facilitators breakfast meeting is Monday, January 23, 9:00am-11:00am.  If any of you reading this will be in the San Francisco Bay Area during that time, do contact me directly and I will send you details of how to drop in for the meeting.) “Pot luck” means exactly what you thought it did (you are so amazing with the US vernacular).  I provide coffee, tea, plates and napkins and set up a circle of chairs and a large table for whatever food people bring.  We had started in a café but that soon proved too difficult to hear each other or to set up a circle – a long line of tables seems to shift the dialogue into duos instead of full-group conversation/listening.  So for the last few years the meetings have been held in my home in Berkeley.   The crazy thing about pot luck is that some Fabulous Facilitators breakfast meetings all we have is yellow and white food (bread, pastries, bagels, cheese).  One breakfast everyone arrived with either cantaloupe (melon) or blueberries (!).  And some other times there is a full complete breakfast-y meal. The whole idea behind the design of these meetings is to be non-burdensome (to me, to those attending).  So the food is what it is, and nobody ‘rsvp’s’ to say whether they are coming or not (you just drop in
or not).  I expect others to clean up after the meeting rather than leave the burden to me.   Other suggestions and experiences in hosting from my deep, deep, said-with-a-twinkle-in-my-eye-as-Tree-says wisdom? This group was established for *face-to-face* contact, specifically.  So we have a Topica announce list (to make it easier for me to post notes from our previous meetings or announce dates of next meetings) but that is specifically not a conversation/discussion listserv.  Other listservs exist for that. Fabulous Facilitators post job, project or workshop announcements on our Topica list.  If somebody has not shown up or contacted me behind-the-scenes in quite awhile, I contact them to ask if they wish to remain on our list.  Because face-to-face, connection and community is the cultural norm and expectation of this group.  We meet Monday mornings because that seems to work for most people.  These meetings are not held in Open Space, but are more of a lightly facilitated conversation with topics generated as people feel the passion – no pre-set agenda, it goes where it goes.  As the purpose of this meeting is for deep conversation and sharing of thinking regarding tools, approaches, design, puzzles, discoveries and challenges around group process and facilitation, my light facilitation happens when the topic goes away from the focus and purpose of our meeting.  To assist with that, I have made little files of handouts to answer questions that (for example) people new to the field of facilitation always ask, including a list of some methods, some listservs, plus a survey of some members to answer those questions of ‘how did you get into the field, where did you learn what you know, do you have to have a university degree, what books does a person new to facilitation read, does being certificated get you jobs’ and so on.  Because we do not learn new things if we start ‘making lists’ (of books, of schools, of methods) instead of conversing.  I take notes during each meeting and send out those notes to everyone.  We do not go around the circle for introductions (as doing this can absorb most of our 2 hours together) but instead have nametags and another handout lists contact information and self-descriptions.  As someone talks you reach for the list to see more of what they do and how to contact them for further conversation.  We reserve the last 10 minutes of our time for workshop or other announcements (again so we can spend the most time in deeper-level conversations); people also bring flyers announcing their workshops, and ideally they give discounts to fellow Fabulous Facilitators.  The choice of location was to have a site easily accessible by public transit and by car, for people from all across the San Francisco Bay Area (people come from all directions).  Hence my home.  It is only an inconvenience when I have a last-minute need to be elsewhere, in which case some Fabulous Facilitator who I know very well continues the meeting and cleans up / locks up my home after the meeting.  In this way, Fabulous Facilitators has been going strong since 2002.  It is an amazing source of mutual support, potential collaborators, learning, feedback and affirmation.  And what can I say? It’s Fabulous. Cheers from not-so-rainy-right-now Berkeley California USA, Lisa ___________________________L i s a   H e f tConsultant, Facilitator, EducatorO p e n i n g  S p a c e2325 OregonBerkeley, California94705-1106   USA+01 510 548-8449lisaheft at openingspace.netwww.openingspace.net 

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