Tools for Catalyzing Collaboration

From BlueOxen

The purpose of these workshops is to explore ways to catalyze collaboration both within our respective communities and within society at large. What are the tools — both social and technical — that enable us to do this?

We offer two kinds of workshops: Introductory and Practitioner. Introductory Workshops focus on teaching fundamental skills with a specific set of tools. Practitioner Workshops are peer learning events, where you work with other participants on specific challenges designed to elicit deeper learning. Both types of workshops are highly participatory and experiential.

More information is available at the Blue Oxen web site and at the TCC wiki.

Practitioner Workshops

These are regular (3-4 times a year), day-long gatherings of the Blue Oxen community, where people have the opportunity to tell their stories, share their learnings, and reflect on their work together. There are generally 15-25 participants. These participants generally share at least two of the following three attributes:

• Socially conscious
• Action-oriented
• Collaborative

Pricing has traditionally been $95/person, but I'd like to explore other forms of pricing. These are not intended to be big revenue generators, but I'd like to at least cover costs. This includes space, food, facilitation, marketing, and ideally some ongoing investment in curating an ongoing knowledge repository. I also want to make sure that price is not a barrier for the right kinds of participants.

Design

These days would be largely Collab:Open Space. They should be thought of as a continuing series of workshops with some overlap in participants. Some considerations:

• Ritual opening and closing exercises. This, in some ways, is a nod to the ongoing nature of these workshops. I'd love it if the opening were connected to the closing of the previous workshops.
• Experiential activities. I see this space as an opportunity for to try different experiential exercises. I'm interested in having a post-lunch exercise be full-group and centered around some sort of movement activity.
• Documentation. I'd like the documentation to be a central part of the design. Every session should result in some artifact. There is a workshop wiki, and I'd like that to continue to be the central knowledge repository. I see other opportunities to integrate tools (both online and not).

That's way more cleevr than I was expecting. Thanks!