I run training for people in a lot of different areas and one thing that consistently comes up is the importance of facilitation in just about every area of work.

I like to think I am a really good facilitator and that you will get real value for money by getting me to facilitate challenging meetings and workshops for you.  Yet I still have to admit that most of the important facilitation happens within your own team.

So how do you become a better facilitator?  There are some really good training courses around that I am happy to recommend.  But a large part of learning to facilitate is just practicing and paying attention as other do it.  And the problem with practicing on important projects is that it can be embarrassing when it all goes to cactus.

So another approach is just to turn up with this group:   http://facilitatorsnetwork.blogspot.com/

You turn up with no RSVP (or ditch the meeting and go for a beer with friends with no feeling of guilt).  When you turn up they hit you for $5 and then you hang around.  There is some networking and there is always a facilitation by someone who wants to demonstrate some cool techniques.

The next one is on 9 November and came with this blurb:

Graphic Facilitation with Nancy White

Is there more to visual facilitation than the occasional use of a flipchart? Can we listen with our eyes and fingers as well as our ears? This session explores how images and drawing can help with the facilitation process.

Whether you are an artist or not (especially if you think you aren’t), we will be painting, drawing, smudging and crayoning. We will be getting our hands dirty please do not dress in your nice work clothes (or at least bring a big shirt to cover up).

Nancy White has worked with organisations as diverse as the World Health Organization, IBM, IEEE & the International Labor Organization. She is the co-author of “Digital Habitats” with Etienne Wenger & John Smith. Her graphic facilitation gigs have involved the Dalai Lama. More details on Nancy’s Australian visit here: http://nancywhiteoz.wordpress.com/

Venue:  University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Jones Street, Ultimo corner Thomas Street.  Room 5.580 Level 5, Building 10,  Take the lift to level 5, cross the atrium foot bridge, walk straight ahead to room 580.

Time:  from 5:30pm to 7:30pm sharp | No RSVP – Just turn up

I have been quoting my grandma in Agile workshops recently.

She probably thought that “lean” was fat free meat and that “kanban” was probably a type of cake.  But she did understand one of key concepts in successful projects:

“Never mistake activity for progress”.

In other words, writing and deploying a lot of code quickly is not the same as solving business problems or improving the assets and capabilities of the organisation.  So I am basing my talk on her insight when I speak at the  Software Development Conference.

I believe that on many projects there is often a gap around:

• Handing over knowledge at the end of the project
• Maintaining knowledge during the project
• Linking the overall solution into the existing business culture, strategy and processes

Having found these gaps, I also think it is relatively easy for members of the team (particularly testers and business analsysts) to step up and fill them.

I will probably test some of my theories in blog articles in the meantime.  So please let me know what you think of them – not just for me but for the poor audience who will be expecting more from the talk than just my Grandma’s favourite Date loaf recipe.

It’s a scary concept when you think about it, but advertisers and others are spending a lot of time and money to understand how we make choices.

It’s scary for two reasons.  The first is related to the evolution of predators and prey.  Every ecosystem continually evolves as the prey learn to evade the predator in new ways and the predators learn new ways of capturing the prey.  So the advertisers are seeking new ways to influence us as we build up immunity to older tricks.

The scary part here is that advertisers are spending millions of dollars to get better at influencing while most of us only spend a little effort becomming better at making decisions.

The other that I find scary is the concept that we might be able to be broken down to a mathematical formula.  I like to think of myself as a spontaneous (sometimes deliberate) decision maker, not a series of factors to graph that make me predictable.

So I went along to a talk with the Ultimo Science festival to hear what scientists think about how we make choices.

I learned a little bit about how we make choices.  For example, we can be predictable statistically, but there is still an error rate.  So whether you call me an individual with a high error rate, or you call me highly individualistic, I am happy – at least I am not a deterministic model on a graph.

More interestingly, I found out there is a whole centre at the University Of Technology in Sydney that is dedicated to studying the choices we make.

This must be an unexploited resource for anyone on projects, anyone in change management, or anyone hoping to out evolve the advertising predators to continue to make choices on self interest rather than cool ads.

I will let you know if I find out more, or you can choose to research them further and let me know how you go –  http://www.censoc.uts.edu.au/