I’ve just been in an Art o Hosting workshop convened by @osb, an interesting learning experience, giving some more structure and tools for hosting conversations. Here’s an illustration of the “8 breaths”
In the breakout sessions I presented our intention to set up a series of periodic events. A companion suggested to have a look at this mutual aid network. Below I’ll try to write down a concrete first version of how it could look, let’s see!
the call What’d be the purpose of this cycle of events? As Mickey brings up:
Clarify Maybe we could frame this as a general purpose for the series of gatherings/meetups? The Community.circle would take responsibility for curating the programme of events, which can be each session with a different host(s) + member presenter + key topic. E.g. FoEI might want to discuss the challenges of simultaneous translations, with their specific cases to which other members may want to add.
And define Before, some minimum ingredients for each meetup to have settled and communicated in advance? like:
- date: every X weeks on this or that day and time
- host: at least one member should take responsibility for hosting the session, it could also be co-hosted. This could be very formal or we just see how it emerges? How can we make sure our different member bases join the process?
- presenter: one member that will highlight their usecase and a key discussion topic
- prior to the session it will be announced at least in the forum in its category, and member organisations may feel inclined to sent it through their channels as well, at least for those topics/sessions that they might feel more connected with?
During:
- default room, with recording option on, every one moderator by default,…
- basic respectful code of conduct, at the start the host gives a welcome and check whether everyone is comfortable, maybe a brief intro to the online space is useful?
- evolve a shared practice, of checking in who’s in the meeting and what they want to contribute to the topic, highlighted member presentation, feedback from all participants, discussion, if the group is bigger, a breakout session might be beneficial, suggestions for next host/presenter/topic
- shared notes are stored before closing of the meeting
Afterwards
- we harvest the results and connections between people, make the recording public (this will result in a long list of recordings at the Greenlight entrance to the specific room
- people follow up actions, the community circle keeps an eye to facilitate where necessary
- we’ll want to reflect upon and improve the event cycle and generate a positive feedback loop
How does this look? Just a few thoughts to go concreting our community gatherings 