CC Some rights reserved by Mundoo on Flickr I’m not a big fan of "training" — it feels like something we do "unto" others. But something from this Fast Company article on training at Google caught my eye. I’ve highlighted the bit… Once a quarter, the company tosses a larger training at the staff, called SalesPro, which takes a deep dive into one particular strategic issue, like display advertising or the mobile business. The soup-to-nuts program takes about six hours, but rather than delivering it all in one fell swoop, or even through a series of hour-long, do-it-yourself modules, Google breaks the information into bite-sized chunks lasting no more than seven minutes each, so agents can download and peruse them at their desks, on their commutes, even on their cell phones while watching Little League or waiting in line at airport security.Online games help agents dial in their knowledge. Leaderboards foster friendly competition. And quizzes following each training make sure the agents are absorbing the new information."This is a new, complicated, and very fast-moving market," Dennis Woodside, who took over as President, Americas, in 2009 when Tim Armstrong jumped ship to become CEO of AOL, tells Fast Company. "The challenge is: How do you get a comprehensive overview in a short period of time?"Google’s new tack is a far cry from the traditional methods of corporate training, that of corralling staffers into classrooms or having them click through tedious online modules. via Training Secrets From Inside The Googleplex | Fast Company. I’ve been doing a lot of online events and I’ve been trying to break things down more or less in seven minute segments to try and alternate information delivery with more intentional group interaction (shared whiteboarding, polls, chat, etc) If nothing else, it is a good reminder for me to shut up for a bit! It seems to help quite a bit in my experience. Now here is another interesting segment on the Google efforts that resonates "People learn best from experts," Newhouse says, "but they learn best from experts who are not droning on and on." The secret to the Product Spotlights, she says, is that rather than relying on product managers to dream up a course, the moderator simply guides them to the aspects of the product most relevant to the sales staff. Woodside says the new training method probably costs about the same as the old approach. Its more investment, he says, than cost. I’d replace the word "expert" with "practitioners." And really work hard to help those practitioners know/see/feel/hear how important their knowledge is to others. One of the things that always amazes me is how often people think what they know isn’t valuable to others. Most often it is. (Funny, there are also a few who think they are the center of the universe. And they probably aren’t!)

This is brilliant from TEDX Edmonton. Green. Social. Creative. I’m going to steal- um- borrow this idea! Thanks for blogging about it, Mack Male! Lunch was next on the schedule and as with the rest of TEDxEdmonton it was anything but ordinary. Instead of individual lunches, groups of five or six people were given a wooden box filled with sandwiches, salads, drinks, and treats and were encouraged to eat together. Most groups ended up outside where the sun was shining and the streets were packed for the Edmonton Pride Parade. It was great to see discussions happening all over the place. Kudos to Elm Café andDuchess Bake Shop for the delicious food and the creative presentation! via Recap: TEDxEdmonton 2011 - MasterMaq’s Blog. Photos from MasterMaq on Flickr.

Via Howard Rheingold, Face the Rear: An Illustration of Social Influence rings true like a bell. I love playing with "elevator etiquette" by not standing the way the group is. Last month at eLearning Africa in Dar es Salaam, our hotel had one elevator out, and tons of people moving in and out of their rooms on the same schedule. Yup, crowded elevators. I was on the 7th floor of my 13 floor hotel and each morning as I sought to descend, the door would open showing me a packed elevator. Overpacked according to standards here at home. Body to body. But everyone seemed quite comfortable, if hot. But I had to switch my tactics (because the lights were burnt out on the stairs, so that was a tricky option as well.) I hit the up button, got on as the car was going up in the morning and rode down 13 to 1 on the ever filling car. In the back. In the corner. Watching — you guessed it — how people behaved. How they accommodated a suitcase. What Africans did vs colleagues from Europe or North America. So when I saw this video, I was hooked. Watch the video. Then one more comment at the end… When I think of group dynamics both face to face and online, there is this dynamic of conformity. It is stronger in some cultural contexts and in my experience, stronger F2F. But it also exists online — despite all the talk that people act with less inhibitions online. Some people do. Not everyone. And for my US friends, Happy Fourth of July!

Essential Arts - Blog - What is a Community?. What is a Community? from Essential Arts on Vimeo. Here are some visions of New Orleans and Seattle, plus a critical question that Essential Arts is addressing through our program Bilocal, which also pairs NOLA and Seattle writers and artists. Support us this month via Kickstarter!. (Nancy’s note - I never posted this till months later. Sorry!)

The  Leadership Learning Community, a group of people dedicated to the practice and learning around non profit leadership, host a series of webinars. August 23rd they have June Holley and I’m up October 10th. Here are the deets… Presenter: Nancy White, Full Circle  Associates Topic: Communities, Networks and Engagement: Finding a Place for Action Date: Monday, October 10th 11:00AM-12 Noon PDT 2:00PM-3:00PM EDT We have so many online tools at our disposal to theoretically connect and activate engagement with others. But what happens when we say "were building an online community" but few engage? When is it worth the work and effort? What are our options? And if we build it, what are some starting points to help us work towards successful engagement? Join us as we explore our options and practices with Nancy White of Full Circle Associates. Nancy has been engaging in and facilitating online groups since 1996 - with her fair share of successes and failures. Registration here. via Nonprofit Leadership Webinar Series | Leadership Learning Community.

via Discover Your Twitter Character on Visual.ly | Visual.ly.

Nancy’s Note: In July Michelle Laurie and I ran another graphic facilitation workshop in beautiful Rossland, BC, Canada. In summer mode, I still haven’t written up my reflections. When I saw Sylvia Currie’s great post on her blog, I begged her to let me reblog it as a guest post (only the second in FullCirc history!) here. So THANKS Sylvia! I will follow up with my reflections and pointers to more of Sylvia’s great workshop videos.  Sylvia came to the RosViz 10 and returned this year as our social reporter. FABULOUS!!! Reflections on a fantastic workshop What happened at the 2011 RosViz Graphic Facilitation Workshop? I’m not sure where to begin! It was 2 1/2 days of pure fun, intense learning, lively networking, and the occasional emotional tug. I created this little video in an attempt to capture the experience, which of course will be most meaningful to the participants but hopefully will also give others a glimpse of what the workshop is all about. Following the introductory evening session and graphic jam we launched right into some activities aimed to, in Nancy’s words, "L O O O O S E N up", create the unexpected, and most importantly, raise questions in our minds about how this all feels. I mean, how often have you started a drawing with a sopping wet tea bag? Comments after viewing our gallery: I would have never created this if you had just given me a blank piece of paper and markers. Tea Bag Drawing Exercise Tea Bag Drawing Exercise Giving a starting point, a tea bag splotch, we started to see potential — familiar images formed in our minds from the shapes we saw in front of us. It was a very quick exercise, and aside from some drippy canvases we were ready for a gallery walkabout within minutes. The same principles were applied in another exercise which can best be described as musical chairs but without the chairs, and with markers and chalk. As soon as the music stops markers are lifted and on you move to the next canvas. By the time we were finished rotating through each station we had a collection of stunning art that, in most cases, was quite different from what the original artist envisioned. Questions continued to emerge through participation: What did it feel like to draw on someone else’s work? Musical Drawing Musical Drawing In keeping with Nancy’s approach to just dive right in, more challenging activities were interspersed throughout the workshop. Sure she was careful to lay a bit of foundation, but rather than gradually build up to the big crescendo (live graphic recording without any clues about the topic), these experiences felt more like check points. Wow, that was way more difficult than I thought it would be! And neat, look what I created in just 6 minutes! What really stood out after several practice sessions, debriefs, and plenty of opportunities to network (the power of the snack table!) was the comfort level in the room. We had evolved into quite the uninhibited group! Looking back on the graphic recordings of Matt Cutts’ Ted Talk: Try Something New for 30 days it’s astonishing to think that these images emerged from a talk that was less that 3 1/2 minutes long. (Violette Clark invites you to participate in her 30-day challenge — a portrait a day for the month of August!) TED Talk Graphic Scribes There were some surprises as well. For one of the graphic recording exercises Violette Clark told her story and for all workshop participants this proved to be the most difficult exercise. I wanted to honour Violette and her amazing story, and I was afraid that I wasn’t doing it justice in my drawing. During the debrief, Violette talked about how overwhelming it was to see her life story represented in all the the incredible drawings around the room. Through this exercise we all experienced how emotional this visual practice can be; I think most of us were fighting back tears at that point! Another useful practice session was the icon jam. It’s amazing to me how often I can think of the perfect icon while I’m listening, but the right image just won’t form in my brain. Oh! The recycle symbol would go perfectly in this spot. Then my mind goes blank. Others in the workshop shared this same experience. Nancy led us through a couple icon jams to tap into both sides of our brains. Here are some creations from a "throw out, throw in" activity. Nancy also offers an open invitation to contribute to this icon collection. We weren’t holding crayons every minute of the workshop. Our circle of chairs brought several debriefing conversations, a "fish bowl" activity, a chat with Susan Stewart from California via Elluminate (recording here) about her experiences using an iPad, and a final reflection on the entire workshop experience. This sounds like a lot over a 2 1/2 day period, and believe it or not I’ve left out quite a bit! Other reflections on the Graphic Facilitation are continuing to pop up: Graphic Facilitation Workshop 1 Graphic Facilitation Workshop 2 Workshop ends…community begins Also, the RosViz10 Facebook Group is bubbling, and you’re all welcome to join us. (Advance apology — we can’t seem to flip a switch to make this group public so you’ll need to wait for one of the admins to approve your membership.) Next, while the experience is fresh in my mind, I plan to write about social reporting. But for now I’d like thank Michelle and Nancy for the opportunity!

From the inimitable Howard Rheingold! A mini-course on network and social network literacy - howardrheingold’s posterous. I’ve become convinced that understanding how networks work is an essential 21st century literacy. This is the first in a series of short videos about how the structure and dynamics of networks influences political freedom, economic wealth creation, and participation in the creation of culture. The first video introduces the importance of understanding networks and explains how the underlying technical architecture of the Internet specifically supports the freedom of network users to innovate.

Sometimes I am a silly goose. I help sponsor a great aggregation site, the Communities and Networks Connection, but I lose track of it on my own radar. I do get the highlights via an email subscription (look at the right side of the page) and thought I’d offer a little glimpse, a temptation, if you will, to the site. Best of Communities and Networks Connection Week of July 30, 2011 Google Plus and Twitter How They Work for Me Hand in HandELSUA|MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2011 It’s been over a month since I first started making use of Google Plus. Yes, me, too!, I still can’t believe I have been there for that long already! But I am back to Twitter. No, I haven’t given up on Google Plus either. Quite Quite the opposite! So what’s happening then? Yes, indeed! Of course, who wouldn’t, right? 24 Tweets Twitter: when less is more. Tips for (not) getting unfollowed.EMODERATION|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011 The news that @barackobama has apparently hemorrhaged 35,00 followers in the past few days has set the social media world sniggering with schadenfreude. These were the followers who presumably didn’t appreciate being spammed with 113 tweets in the space of a few hours, exhorting them to tweet-lobby (twobby?) their local reps in Obama’s support. 12 Tweets Vertaisrahasto.fi (Peer Fund)P2P FOUNDATION|MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2011 Vertaisrahasto.fi (literally Peer Fund&# ) is a new way of collecting and allocating funding for research. The idea is very simple. There are two roles for volunteer participants: donors and applicants. Everyone is invited to donate to the fund, the minimum sum is 10 euros. Donations are piled up during a predesignated time. 7 Tweets Made by Many teams up with Good for Nothing to support the East Africa famine crisisMADE BY MANY|THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011 Made by Many is partnering with ethical innovators Good for Nothing in a rapid and collaborative response to the East Africa crisis. One child is dying every six minutes, and fundraising efforts are struggling to keep up to fund the relief effort. And we count you all in that network, so please step in and get involved. We need your ideas. 33 Tweets Traditional Media brainwashing Australians about Social MediaLAUREL PAPWORTH- SOCIAL NETWORK STRATEGY|SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2011 NSW Police have been made aware of a Facebook page that has allegedly made disturbing death threats against baby-faced singer Jack Vidgen. Telephones don t stalk children, Social Media doesn t intimidate them either. People do. Investigate People. Don t blame the online community tools. usually don t bother clicking anymore. 51 Tweets Objections to participation in conferencesCHRIS CORRIGAN|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011 I have great clients. Most of the people who end up working with me do so because they want to work in radically more participatory ways, opening up processes to more voices, more leadership. In conference settings this means scheduling much more dialogue or running the whole thing using Open Space Technology and dispensing with pre-loading content. 11 Tweets Community activist hub: right problem, wrong solutionSOCIAL REPORTER|SATURDAY, JULY 30, 2011 I m puzzled by the recommendation for a central information hub for community activists&# from the Government s Champion for Active Safer Communities, Baroness Newlove. I m sure that Baroness Newlove has good evidence of a demand for information from her work in local communities in recent months so, right problem. 8 Tweets Social Media at Work ELSUA MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2011 Last week, upon my return from my last business trip, I was hoping to be able to resume my regular blogging activities and share with you folks some of the interesting conversations I have been engaging with and other interesting resources worth while sharing across. never ever blog whenever you are upset about something, or someone! 11 Tweets Hot-Desking: Good or Bad for Collaboration?MICHAEL SAMPSON - CURRENTS|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011 New Zealand’s Stuff website asks whether hot-desking is hot or not? : " Once upon a time, an employee’s desk was a home away from home. Adorned with paraphernalia of hobbies and interests and obligatory family photos, it was as much a statement of identity as it was a place to perform a job. But this cosy space is slowly being taken away. 6 Tweets Living "A World Without Email" in Google Plus ELSUA|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011 In the last few weeks a lot has been written about whether Google Plus is the ultimate killer social networking site of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or several others, you name it. still think it s a bit too early to be announcing the painful death of each of those social networking environments. G+ still needs to reach that level. Or not. 12 Tweets Book of the Week (2): David Graeber’s take on the fake economics and their Imaginary Myth of Barter P2P FOUNDATION|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011 Facebook allows merging of community Pages into official Pages EMODERATION|THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011 Help Complete the Intranet-Digital Workplace Trends 2011 Survey PORTALS AND KM|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011 How Come I Can’t Tune Klout? ALCHEMY OF CHANGE|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011 Book of the Week: David Graeber’s First Five Thousand Years of Debt P2P FOUNDATION|MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2011 Network Weaving: The 5 Kinds of Communities JOHN TROPEA - DELICIOUS COMMUNITY|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011 How the internet creates ecological/relational forms of awareness P2P FOUNDATION|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011 Instant Business Guide to LinkedIn THE BUMBLE BEE|THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011 Forrester Groundswell 2011 Awards: AT&T Proving the ROI of Social Media for Customer Service< ANT’S EYEVIEW BLOG|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011 Arab Spring inspires Israeli social justice movement P2P FOUNDATION|MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2011 High Performance Companies Collaborate | Podio Blog JOHN TROPEA - DELICIOUS COLLABORATION|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011 Wheeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!! ENDLESS KNOTS|THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011 Odd names and ordinariness NEIGHBOURHOODS|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011 The snowflake model: Marshall Ganz on how technology has changed organizing revolutions P2P FOUNDATION|SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2011 Uploading to Youtube - it’s a snap (ha!) ENDLESS KNOTS|THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011 Together: a union approach to precariat P2P FOUNDATION|SATURDAY, JULY 30, 2011 Elinor Ostrom on Going Beyond the Tragedy of the Commons P2P FOUNDATION|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011 Police occupy Puerta del Sol #spanishrevolution #nopararemos P2P FOUNDATION|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011 The insuffficiency of efficiency P2P FOUNDATION |TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011 The P2P of Zion (2): Social Economy developments within the Mormon Church P2P FOUNDATION|THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011 From systems of co-determination to full industrial democracy? P2P FOUNDATION|SATURDAY, JULY 30, 2011

My friend and mentor-of-many domains, Barbara Ganley, asked me to offer a guest post related to my gardens sin her Open View Garden blog. This week I finally feel some inspiration — we’ve had more than a spattering of days that an legitimately be described as a warm sunny day here in Seattle. I debated about cross posting… What does gardening have to do with onsline communities, facilitation or technology stewardship, right? In fact at a metaphorical or den spiritual level, these topic have everything to do with each other. They are each about systems, about intent and improvising with whatever you are dealt. They are about finding regeneration, life and beauty wherever we look. So here is what I wrote for Barbara… Gratefulness: August Garden in a Cool Summer In mid July we talked about the number of MINUTES of summer we’d had so far. One of the coldest. One of the wettest. I was still in shock that I kept my poor tomato seedlings squished in the too-short cold frame well into June, stunting their growth and productivity. My pea starts grew slower than a glacier. I was morose and relished my week in the sunny warmth of North Carolina. At yoga class, were we try to practice a more positive, accepting attitude, we could not stop those little comments about the weather. (Have I ever mentioned that as I get older, I crave light, sun, and warmth more than I ever did before? I do. I"ll say it again. I do!) Now a month later I walked out into my garden and realized the abundance is there this year, but in a different way. I was just not looking at it through the eyes of abundance. So here is a little tour from our small garden. For those who don’t know my geography, I live in Seattle, in a neighborhood called Ravenna or Ravenna-Bryant (we are actually smack dab between three named neighborhoods. So identity is always a bit tricky.) Our lot is 50 feet wide and 100 feed deep. Our little house sits towards the back of the lot, so our front yard is both our front yard and our back yard.  We put in raised beds the summer after we moved here in 1984. Over the years, we’ve hacked back the overgrown shrubs, removed most of the lawn and replaced them with plantings, patio and deck, to enjoy "outdoor rooms" even though the weather here doesn’t always encourage our venturing forth. The lot is bracketed by three very large trees - so large that when you fly over the area on the way to a landing at the airport (approach from the North) you can spot our house easily. It’s the one you can’t see underneath the three big trees! To the southeast there is a huge old horse chestnut on the corner of our neighbor’s lot. It drops blossoms, chestnuts (watch your head!) and leaves in abundance. I only wish the darn nuts were edible. They keep the squirrels busy in the fall, burying and losing them. We have, needless to say, many small horse chestnut starts all around the place. To the east, directly behind our house, is a big old maple we estimate to be just under 100 years. It is our air conditioning in warm years, shading the house from the hot afternoon sun. In the cool, cloudy summers, I admit I curse her a bit. The arborist tells us the tree is healthy, but heading towards its natural decline as the trees usually live about 100 years. Ours has a lovely vase-branching structure, so there are no humongous branches to fall and crush things. Thank goodness. On the north east corner sits the sisters: two trees, one on our property and one on the neighbors, but growing root to root, trunk to trunk. Ours is an old Douglas fir which I estimate is about 80 feet tall. The other is a pine that is infected with some disease that is slowly killing it. These two so block the rain that the chicken cook beneath it stays dry unless the rain is blowing vertically from winter’s southerly gales.  Between these three grand dames, you can imagine … I have little full time sun on my garden and it is diminishing by the year. Our raspberries are less sweet. Our greens and peas less robust, robbed of sun. But our ferns and hostas are lush. Thank goodness for shade plants. But I want to talk about the food that comes out of the garden, and the flowers, like the huge, fragrant "Conc’d Or" (sp?) lillies on my dining room table, the raspberries in my freezer and the dozen eggs in the fridge, courtesy of "the girls" — our three urban chickens ensconced in their cleverly overbuilt coop. The dinosaur kale, the amazing Japanese cucumber that has thrived despite the weather. The clusters of small, green tomatoes on the vines in our "Earthtainer."  The few slender green beans that survived grazing by the chickens. (Oh, and the second planting of sugar snap peas totally destroyed by the chickens and my not so clever fencing…) As I look around, I see the horseradish loves the mild summer. That the growth on the apple trees and berries promises good harvests next year. That the hard work I did to amend the neglected soil over the winter DID pay off, even if the bounty is modest. I made two batches of jam this week with the berries, augmented with apricots and some rosemary I had to appropriate from a hedge on a walk, as mine were wiped out by a sudden freeze late last Fall. How glorious the jars look, how delicious the jam tastes. How appreciative friends will be when they receive them in the winter holidays. (If I can stop myself from eating all the jam up myself.) I think of the three rows of potatoes planted in my friend’s sunnier, larger yard north of Seattle, how we weeded and prepped the rows together, and how she has shared half the harvest. The first row is in and I have eaten creamy new potatoes with home made pesto - even if I had to buy the basil from the farmers market. I can sit out on my patio. The wifi even reaches there. Or the deck to the south of the house, where I also relish drying my laundry when the weather permits. It smells so good. I can eat bread and jam, jam and bread. I can talk to the chickens and listen as they talk to me. I can hear the scolding crows (who scare the chickens) and blue jays. Watch for humming birds on the cape fuschias. Holler out to neighbors, now that we’ve hacked down the 20 food holly hedge (not so friendly!) It is amazing what cutting down a hedge will do, or placing some comfy chairs around a small round patio made of bricks reclaimed from a neighbor’s chimney when they remodeled. There are signs of community everywhere. In nature’s community responding to a wet, cold summer. In the human and animal neighborhood. Opening my eyes, reframing my perspective, I see potential where before I saw dark, grey, soddenness. From mud to jam. Gratefulness is powerful. Apricot/Berry/Rosemary Jam Inspired from FoodinJars , Mrs. Wheelbarrow, and   Open View Gardens (for the French maceration approach) 5 cups apricots - sweet, mushy and pitted 1 cup of berries - raspberries, blackberries - -whatever juice of 2 lemons 3 cups sugar 1-3 teaspoons of finely chopped fresh rosemary. Yes, rosemary. Go light if you are shy… Directions Wash, pit, and measure fruit into a large glass or plastic bowl. Finely chop and add rosemary. (Doesn’t everyone like green bits in their jam?) Mush things around a bit and then cover and refrigerate over night. I forgot and let mind sit two nights. (I also made this without the maceration and twice boil method - just boiled the whole lot for 15 minutes. It was good too!) When ready to cook the jam, sterilize your jars, lids, rims etc. (Read good advice from others listed above for all the details!) Drain the liquid from the fruit into a large non-aluminum pan and gently bring to a boil up to 220 degrees F. Add back in the fruit, bring to a boil you can’t stir down and cook for 5 minutes or until the jam coats the back of a spoon thickly. Take off heat, pour  into your nice clean jars, put on caps and rims making sure your jar tops are wiped clean and process in a boiling hot water bath for 10 minutes. (Again, read their recipes for all the how-to’s. They all have great blogs) Take the jars out of the hot water bath (carefully), cool, label, share and enjoy! Full Garden photoset here.