Conversation Circle / Cercle sur les conversations

Hi everyone,
It was an amazing experience sharing a few days with you last week. Thanks to all for the kind and supportive words, regarding the planning and facilitation of the session. In reality, it is incredible what happens when a group of people come together to reflect on something with varied and diverse experience and perspectives.

Since the Learning Circle session, I have not had much time to reflect on the context of the session, despite it being part of my daily life. This afternoon, Jessie Sutherland will be facilitating a public conversation on Aboriginal-Canada reconciliation (http://univcafe.concordia.ca/html/event.html#reconciliation). It should be interesting to host it in a park, with a picnic premise.

Another point of interest relates to the outreach that was pursued for this event. Perhaps this will be of interest. For this event, and increasingly throughout the program, we have been developing partnerships with a range of organisations. This time around, it has involved Worldview Strategies, the Centre de Paix de Montreal, the Wampum Centre and others. The outreach was conducted through the usual cafe and email networks, but also through some of the networks of the different partners. Each of these networks is a different (though sometimes overlapping) community. In the past, the most diverse and well-attended conversations involved this type of outreach, thus attracting people who are specifically interested and involved in the issues, while still keeping the conversations open to the general public. Back to the in-group/out-group outreach, both of which I think are very important to ’setting the table’, as Dave Beckwith (from the Needmor Foundation - US-Based) mentionned and empashised the other day, or preparing the ground/soil, as critically important in the development process…

I have never used the Blog as a methodology and medium of writing. It seems interesting, if it is used. Mike, thank you for setting this up and encouraging its use.

Eric