​​Harvesting Pad 17: Mark Spain
​​Part of "DandDTrans," a community of inquiry and action regarding the role that dialogue and deliberation can play in addressing the mega-crises of our time
​​Image courtesy of www.NewStories.org
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​​@Mark Spain​
​​mark@globallearning.com.au
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​​Please use the this space to share your thoughts now about Tom’s original question and what occurred for you over this past month of involvement: What do we, as members of the dialogue and deliberation community of practice, have to be and do to enable our most positive transformational impact in the face of emerging global crises which fundamentally challenge our business-as-usual habits and systems? 
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​​Use the queries below if they help but don’t feel bound to respond to them or be in any way limited by them. Tell the stories and give the details that will make your ideas and experiences come alive. 
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​​Please write your post in the "My DandDTrans Story" section below the three prompts that follow:
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​​What you gained:  What new insights, challenges, ideas, inquiries, or actions came up for you from your participation this past month? What possibilities have opened up or been further reinforced?  
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​​What you experienced: How did you feel or change at different points in this process? Which processes did you participate in? Which were new to you? For processes you’ve experienced before, what was it like doing them online? What worked for you, and why? What didn’t? How might you use or change these processes on another occasion? What about the web tools used? Maestro? Hackpads? Zoom (if you experienced that)? Any others?
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​​What next: What are you doing, will do or might do as related at least in part to the question that brought us together and/or as a result of what we have done together? Who else would (might) you involve? 
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​My DandDTrans "Story"

​​New insights for me have been the value of Zoom as a simple, easy to use and reliable platform for hosting personal and connecting dialogue sessions. When dialogue is structured and hosted well with clear expectations for rules of engagement virtual dialogues with people all across the planet can be as effective as being in the same room. There is some loss of quality when those who call in by phone cannot have their face visible and they cannot be seen to be muted or not. The mute symbol is like a talking stick and is a helpful way to determine who is speaking or who wants to speak.
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​​Another insight is the large commitment of the dialogue hosting and support team and especially Ben Roberts in holding a friendly and supportive space on hackpad and maestro to encourage a culture of safety and ease to engage in being open to sharing and emergence. It is not clear to me if this support can be designed into a business model in the old economy or whether it can only work in the new gift economy. Further experiments in this space would benefit from making the assumptions behind this workload and commitment  transparent.
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​​I also appreciated hearing lovely authentic stories from Sharon Joy and Suzanne about their work http://theconnectionpartners.com/resources/ and http://theconnectionpartners.com/people/
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​​Although I am unavailable to help with the harvesting I am appreciating some of the methods the harvesters are using to make meaning out of all the text on hackpad. Collecting all the questions that were asked in the dialogues is helpful.
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​​I feel the crucial next steps to create dialogue projects using this virtual technology are very dependent on capacity of key support people to gift their time to supporting these proposed projects or skilling up others to do the same. I think this is the key constraint.
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​​I participated in Bohmian Dialogues, World Cafes and Open Space events and had very positive experiences in each of these formats. The key to each was creating a safe place for open hearted sharing and listening with respect between participants. Once this starts to happen and other participants open their hearts and communicate naturally emergence and a unique experience begins to happen and it the whole process can become more self managing.
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​​I am currently running a face to face dialogue project in my community called Voice of the People - Kitchen Table Conversations where in the first round 24 hosts use a host kit available at http://see-change.org.au/votp-kitchen-table-conversation to recruit 180 people in groups of about 10 to have two conversations using respectful listening and a talking stick over several weeks. The question in the first conversation was “What is important to you?” and the second conversation was ”What needs to change?” A record of each meeting was taken and confirmed with each of the participants. The whole collated result is being put into a report and will be given back to participants and also launched in my community as a model of citizens being about to make choices about wise action.
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​​As part of this project and others I will advocate for Jim Rough’s three social innovations that would transform representative democracy in local, state and federal government operating systems
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​​Social innovation #1: Choice-creating
​​Social innovation #2: Dynamic Facilitation
​​Social innovation #3: The Wisdom Council Process
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​​Jim Rough describes clearly and succinctly these three key social innovations in a paper from the Centre for Wise Democracy called To Facilitate the Essential National We the People Conversation at http://www.phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/To-Facilitate-a-National-Conversation.pdf
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