Writing a sound project proposal is not easy, and getting project funding is becoming more and more like winning a lottery. However, once you do win that lottery not all your problems are over! Why not, you may wonder. After all, getting money for something you want to do is not a bad deal at all. Well, to a certain extent that is indeed true. However, project proposal writing has [full post]
Communities are formed by persons – even if they represent organisations. So if you want to support a community in its development, you have to focus on the needs of the actual people involved. This is for me one of the eye openers of the webinar Digital Habitats of Communities with Nancy White, organised by En nu online on 21 February 2012. So what are those communities that we spoke [full post]
I recently had the pleasure of reading the book “Social Media for Trainers – Techniques for Enhancing and Extending Learning” by Jane Bozarth (published by Pfeiffer in 2010). It is a wonderfully practical and concrete book that I can warmly recommend to anyone working with groups in the capacity of a trainer, coordinator or leader. The main tools presented in the book are Twitter, Facebook, blogs and wikis. All of [full post]
It looks like just a nice blue-coloured piece of cloth that is sticky on one side. You tape it to a wall with the sticky side on the front, and there you are. Well, not quite. It’s a tool that has never let me down so far. So what’s so special about it? First of all, the sticky wall is a tool used in the Technology of Participation (ToP), as [full post]
Is it possible to organise a transparent, truly participatory meeting with, say, 500 individuals and to come to real consensus based on literally everyone’s input? With an Internet connection for all participants, one or two good facilitators and a budget it is. At the IAF Benelux Conference Facilitation as (2nd) Profession I participated in a workshop on Synthetron, led by Paula van der Knaap and Jeanette Kalthof. Synthetron is a [full post]
If you’re not sure why you should want to be on Twitter in the first place, you might wonder why a post on twitter chats could possibly interest you. Well, maybe because a twitter chat is one of the interesting features of twitter! In a twitter chat a lot of Twitters useful characteristics are brought together: sharing, building relationships, networking, getting to the point, to name a few. Last week [full post]
Improvisation theatre and facilitation & training jobs share a few common traits. I had no idea about this, until I had a chance to try out improvisation theatre a few months back. While the improv trainer was explaining the basics I found myself nodding at almost every turn. For instance, training & facilitation is also about “accepting” – taking what is being said to you as a given, and basing [full post]
