Olé

In a few hours, Susan and I will depart Duluth for the start of a 10-day adventure on the Iberian peninsula, and we're psyched.

This is a vacation we've been pointing toward for two years, ever since I started recovering from my stem cell transplant for treating multiple myeloma, and it looked like I'd have some extended play after experiencing very dodgy health the front half of 2016.

Being near death helps bring life sharply into focus. Upon reflection, I liked most of what I'd been doing before cancer revealed itself in my bone marrow, but there were nonetheless a few adjustments I was determined to make, principal of which was more time spent enjoying relationships. (I also read more and am less reactive, but in this essay I want to stick with the main line: placing relationships more squarely in the center.)

Some of that is friendships and some of that is family, both of which are scattered all over North America—after nearly 40 years of community networking and process consulting, and the diaspora pattern that characterizes the typical modern family. Thus, when I travel for work (continuing my career as an itinerant process consultant) I try to take the time to visit area friends along the edges of my time with clients—which process is made easier by having a number of clients as friends—double dipping, as it were. And now, after nearly three years in Duluth, I'm developing local relationships as well, notably in the Chester Park neighborhood where we live and among the players at the duplicate bridge club in town. 

Yet foremost among my important relationships is the partnership I'm forging with Susan. That's the one I really want to focus on. She was there for me immediately when I stumbled sick into her home at New Year's of 2016, and almost didn't have the energy or wisdom to make it to St Luke's emergency room at the end of January, where I finally discovered how sick I was.

For the first few months it was nip and tuck whether her relationship to me would more accurately be portrayed as hospice nurse than partner, but now that I've come back from that precipice, we have a chance to create a relationship with room to breathe and laugh and play. For two years now we have been holding onto our upcoming trip to Spain as a marker for where we wanted out relationship to go: I worked on recovering my energy and containing my cancer, and she got ready to retire as the church lady at St Paul's Episcopal, where she had been running the office since 2010.

With both of those objectives accomplished here we are—finally ready for our first major trip together, where we both have the time and energy to enjoy it. To help contain expenses, we're participating in a loosely organized tour through Gate 1 Travel, that provides air transportation, rooms each night, breakfast each morning, a few dinners, and a few tours (think Prado, Escorial, and Gaudi architecture). The rest is free time as we explore Madrid, Toledo, Valencia, and Barcelona. We're thinking about tapas, riojas, and seafood, as well as off-season Mediterranean vistas. Yum.

And this adventure, we hope, is just the start. We also have designs on trips to other places as energy, enthusiasm, and money intersect—Mesa Verde, Quebec, Iceland, New Orleans, and Argentina are at the top of the list. 

It's great to be alive, and have one's consciousness focused on the wonder of it.

Group Works: Nooks in Space and Time

This entry continues a series in which I'm exploring concepts encapsulated in a set of 91 cards called Group Works, developed by Tree Bressen, Dave Pollard, and Sue Woehrlin. The deck represents "A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings."

In each blog, I'll examine a single card and what that elicits in me as a professional who works in the field of cooperative group dynamics. My intention in this series is to share what each pattern means to me. I am not suggesting a different ordering or different patterns—I will simply reflect on what the Group Works folks have put together.

The cards have been organized into nine groupings, and I'll tackle them in the order presented in the manual that accompanies the deck:

1. Intention
2. Context
3. Relationship
4. Flow
5. Creativity
6. Perspective
7. Modeling
8. Inquiry & Synthesis
9. Faith

In the Context segment there are eight cards. The sixth pattern in this segment is labeled Nooks in Space and Time. Here is the image and text from that card:

Incubate creativity and nurture relationships by encouraging unstructured time and semi-private space. Insight arises fruitfully during times of open-ended conversation or in solo musing at the edges of a group. Can be designed ahead, or may arise in the moment.

This pattern is more robust when considered in the context of at least an all-day event or set of meetings. If it's only a single-session meeting, there's not be a lot of wiggle room. When you extend to multiple sessions however, the possibilities and pacing get a lot more interesting. 

The main point to keep in mind is that productivity can flourish in the interstices between the scheduled activities. This includes side conversations during bathroom/stretch breaks, what happens during meals, the dynamism of spontaneous clumpings of participants who linger after a session is officially ended (as in the photo above), the digestion and creative flights that can occur during the evening social time, or even what people experience when they get up and do tai chi before (or instead of) morning coffee.

The key is that people can benefit unpredictably from a change of setting, configuration, size, structure, or time of day—and organizers are smart to take that into account (as opposed to fretting because people are enjoying the breaks so much that they aren't arriving in their seats on time for the next session).

The prize at meetings and events is connection and insights, not perfect attendance or a complete set of notes. This is why it's valuable to have easy chairs, coffee, and confections (or better yet, confessions) near the event bookstore or registration, so that people can sit and chat. They may not go buy a book, but neither are they going "by the book," and good things may incubate in that rich unstructured milieu.

One of the prime directives of an event organizer is not to try to dictate what people will learn; it's to create an environment (and flow) such that learning can flourish. Let the magic happen. Give adequate breathing space between sessions, encouraging lingering and dalliance over rushing and urgency. You want an atmosphere that conveys the message: relationships matter. 

As different people will have different needs for what best promotes relationship and connection, your job is to leave adequate room—in space and time—for people to find what works best for them. If you build it (into your schedule and configuration) they will come.