Facilitation Forum

'''
Facilitation Forum ==''' ==

A first attempt to create an ongoing dicussion around the challenges and opportunties in facilitating groups using an ever-increasing variety of technologies available across the globe, across time zones, across cultures.

Perhaps it will become a virtual world cafe where all contributors can add text, images, thoughts or links to help an idea grow. Perhaps it will be a series of questions and answers where those who have concerns or experience can link up.

This idea was given life at the Henley Management College Facilitation Forum on 26 & 27 March 2007 where the group explored, among other things, Virtual Action Learning.

Datacom demonstrated their version of Video Conferencing together with ACT ( I hope!)

I believe there are other methods and ways of facilitating in a virtual world. Over lunch we talked informally ideas around the use of such gaming sites as Second Life and Sims Online to create not only virtual people (avators) but virtual worlds where groups can create entirely new identities and literally grow something - buildings, homes, islands, even pets! here were many comparisons over the two days with Online Dating, so the thought occurs that chatrooms already exist with their own, very definite netiquette, should we be encouraging businesses to create Intranet chatrooms for more informal discussions?

Concern was also expressed that as the younger, more net-savvy generation comes into business they could well become rapidly disengaged with employers who are less able to take advantage of the choices of software and communications technology and even see it as a threat - with the concurrent increasing wish to control. with this in mind, Patricia mentioned reading a book recently called "The Starfish and the spider" about leaderless organisations and Uwe also talked of Chaordic Organisations. How and where does facilitation fit into these models?