This two-day workshop is organised by Tobias Mayer and facilitated by Francis Laleman. This page describes the online implementation of this workshop. For the in-person version click here.
Workshop Abstract
By all means, facilitation is a gentle activity. To be honest, nobody is really sure what it means to facilitate or to be a facilitator, but most certainly it has something to do with making stuff easier.
Most surely, of dictionary definitions, there are many:
What isn't said, is that facilitation is a job for the humble. Decidedly, a court jester is very present and conspicuous, but he is the last to deem himself funny. What isn't said either, is that one cannot facilitate and manage at the same time. Or that facilitation does not mean leadership.
The programme of this workshop will follow a gently facilitated baseline.
And of course there will be plenty of facilitation done. By everyone. Making stuff easier for ourselves and for each other.
The Online Experience
In earlier (in-person) versions of the workshop, the methodologies, techniques and activities discussed and practised were uniquely for in-person workshops, where participants are together in three-dimensional space.
In this online version, we will focus on those kind of activities and approaches that take shape in an online environment. Perhaps, we will discover that the "new" facilitator, who is taking at least some of her work online, does not need to fall back on a series of daunting digital hat-tricks. Perhaps we can stay reassuringly human—and facilitate with a genuinely human, tactile touch.
Who knows, we will see how the remote space is just another type of space in which human beings are together and have the ability to really connect and learn with, from and among each other.
Takeaway
After these two days, expect to have explored a kaleidoscope of cooperative learning. Expect to have become stronger in your facilitator's job—but also more gentle, perhaps more kind.
Expect to have stepped away from the myth that online facilitation means fooling around with digital gizmos. Expect to have explored and practised "live" online facilitation techniques, involving analogue activities that can be applied in any kind of conversational space.
About the Facilitator
Francis Laleman started in the 1970s, travelling, researching, writing, storytelling and teaching Sanskrit, then moving on to working with the downtrodden in the urban slums of Northern India and spending extended periods of time in Buddhist monasteries.
Ever since, picking up inspiration from a variety of sources (from Helen Pankhurst, Mieko Kamiya and Rabindranath Tagore to Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal) Francis has been looking for novel methods and new meaning in the fields of education adult learning, and the facilitation of transformational dynamics—always preferring cooperative models over teacher/student duality, and practical implementation over theory and documentation.
Today, Francis keeps being on the move, from India to Japan to Europe and vice versa. He mainly works as a designer and facilitator of cooperative learning processes and learning cultures, and as a gentle facilitator of (Agile) transformation processes, all the time sourcing ideas from educational philosophies, (Zen) Buddhism, the shuhari learning process in traditional Japanese craftsmanship and other weirdly connected frameworks of thought.
Most probably, however, you will find him in a garden.
Organiser Note
This is a rare opportunity to learn from a seasoned facilitator, whose deeply human-centric values have touched many in the Agile community. Highly recommended for scrummasters, educators, and anyone who works with groups, in any capacity.
Date & Time
8th-9th June 2021
10.00 - 17.00 (CEST)
There will be a two-hour lunch break from 12.30 - 14.30.
Cost
This workshop uses a pay-what-you-can model.
Workshop limited to 16.
Location
Zoom. The access link will be sent on registration.Contact Information
Image: Cover art from Rokto Kobori by Rabindranath Tagore
Content: Francis Laleman, 2019/2020
Page last updated: 02/09/2020