I'm Langdon. I'm a partner with Innovation Labs that does a lot of facilitation with groups all over the world. With these events we're making a transformation from a conference format to a collaborative format. We're very happy to be here. I was very enthusiastic about having multiple groups here - this is new to us in that we will have parallel work going on. We want you to have an outstanding collaborative experience.

How many of you can say you've had an outstanding collaborative experience in your life at some point? Good a lot of you. What were some of the characteristics of that experience?

Comments

Respect for everyone's ideas.

Fun.

We want this to be fun and we expect it to be - this will be creative.

Brought in new ideas.

If people get together and bring the information just for their field they can be trapped - that's why we have the panelists and participants from different fields. Each of the groups consist of people in the field and outside experts to enrich the process.

Everyone benefits from the effort.

That's a goal and a principle. Part of your job is to get the most value for you. Learning is an important part of collaboration.

There was a clear next step.

That's something I will talk about. That's very important, it leads to action. There's no table to sit around because we want people to be up and working dynamically.

Disagreement, argument, and resolution.

I wouldn't require the last step. This is a very important part of the process. We don't need consensus we need creativity to move this forward. If there is honest disagreement that's a good thing. We want to hear the different assumptions. We can live with ambiguity. Put out your dissenting opinions in a nice respectful way. We want to highlight the differences.

Another thing about the creative process is the notion of being ambitious. We want all the participants to really go for it. That's where the creative process really takes off. If everyone holds back it's no fun.

We need a balance between preparation and spontaneity. We hope that creates a platform for all of you to be spontaneous and to bring what you know and to learn new things. This is an open space. Be candid and speak your mind. We might create a business model, look at efficiencies and inefficiencies. It's about collaboration - working together to accomplish something we probably could not do alone.

How we communicate our ideas is one of the ways we can move our process forward. We're very interested in visual representations of ideas.

Bryan Coffman

Methods and Techniques of Visualization
I want to take a couple minutes and talk about the marker boards. In my 20 years of doing this I've noticed a lot of things about how people work. Let me illustrate something - a lot of us think of the marker board as a big sheet of writing paper. We start out at the top and write downward. Then we learned outlining which was the mother of all list. Later we learned PowerPoint, the father of all list. Instead of thinking of this as paper or as PowerPoint think of it as a map. You are above the earth looking down at it as a terrain. Instead of showing ideas as a list, show them as a relationship. Notice, I started in the middle of the board not the top left corner. When we talk the information comes out of our mouths is one dimension. When we look at the map we have the option of two dimensions. Now you can show the relationships between your concepts instead of just a list. I can't have these conversations about relationships if I just write in lists. You'll find there's a lot more meat to your ideas if you can show the relationships between concepts.

Langdon Morris

Here's an overview for the next two days. This event is organized into four groups. There will be one facilitator for each group. I will be working with the Child Care group. Bryan Coffman will work with CDFI. Michael Kaufman will be working with Charter Schools. And Diane Castiglioni will be working with Investment. And Christopher Fuller and John Colaruotolo will be doing various sorts of documentation so you don't have to take notes and are freed up to think and collaborate. By the way, if you find something wrong on the website please let us know and we will correct it.

The outside expertise has been distributed throughout the four groups. In our design there's an opportunity for cross-fertilization. So you'll get a chance to understand what all the groups are doing. We will work in larger groups then break out into teams. Your work will be done on the walls and that will be reported out. You share your work and then we see if we can improve it. It's an iterative process. By tomorrow each group will be thinking of an action plan around whatever it is you design. You'll be frustrated by the time constraints but that's for the overall process. In that framework we will not have a lunch break, but a working lunch.

Our job is to help you get the most work accomplished in the next 24 hours. If there's anything that you need please let us know. That's all I want to say. Any questions?

Q: What's the difference between a charette and a break out group?

A: For some reason it's a name that a lot of people know. It implies a work-in-process.

So we're going to make a short transition now. You can see your name and what group you're on by checking the lists that are hung up around the space.