News

Seattle participant John Inman posted this blog entry about his experience with recent GPLP events.

As a lead-up to the March 28th Group Works Pattern Language workshop (more about that here: http://groupworksdeck.org/news/seattle-workshop-invitation), we're having an open-to-all informal games session & potluck the previous evening. Here are the details:

WHERE: 1320 W. Barrett St Seattle WA 98119 (NW corner of Queen Anne, just off Dravus, just south of the Ballard bridge). 

Directions or questions about venue please call Sue Woehrlin at 206-390-5807.

WHEN: Friday March 27th, potluck dinner 6-7pm, games 7-9pm

WHAT TO BRING: One potluck item (ideally with ingredients labeled), vegetarian or fish.

WHAT WE'LL PLAY: First hour we'll play one or more of three simple, easy-to-learn, proven fun games using the Group Works card deck. You don't have to be familiar with the deck or be an expert facilitator to play! Come and learn and have fun! Second hour you can continue with the simple games or participate in testing some new ones. If you're curious, full instructions on the games are here:  http://groupworksdeck.org/games-using-cards .

If you're planning on coming, please RSVP to dave.pollard@gmail.com. 

Look forward to seeing you Friday March 27th!

Cheers,

--Dave Pollard, Sue Woehrlin and the Group Works gang

November was a busy month for the project, and we're just catching up with sending out news of our latest round of events. The core team of Dave Pollard, Tree Bressen, Daniel Lindenberger and Sue Woehrlin convened once again in Eugene, Oregon—where we've met many times for work sessions over the past six years as it's the home of Tree, our project founder—and indeed, our "corporate headquarters" for business purposes. But as Tree had been increasingly pointing out, we'd never done a public workshop in Eugene! … so we figured it was past time to right this situation.

The energizing intensive launched Friday night, November 16th, with a rousing Group Works “Games night” at Tree's, preceded by a delicious potluck. Dave, game designer and gamemaster extraordinaire, led some 15 of us through multiple rounds of play at three game tables. In and amidst the play, laughter, learning, some serious consultative help and community building, refinements were made to some games, even as other new games were envisioned.

While we've incorporated Group Works games as educational components of public workshops a number of times in the past, this was our first try at a whole event just comprised of games, and the feedback was a resounding thumbs up. OK, so perhaps not every social circle would have been so open to having fun on a weekend night playing with notions of good group dynamics, but if you have some process oriented friends and associates, give it a try! Certainly Group Works games are a great way to introduce reflection on groups in a more playful manner in your facilitation or training work.

You'll find detailed instructions of play for a growing list of games on our website. Note that most of...

There were so many highlights from our trip. Sue and Tree have expressed a lot of the learnings beautifully, so for now I thought I would just share a snapshot from a great conversation. During our Friday "Deepening Facilitation" workshop it turned out that the two other folks I was sitting with were also Jungians. We got to talking about the relationship between Jung's description of the structural nature of archetypes and how it paralleled Crowley's description of the underlying nature of Tarot and my experience with Group Works. 

I won't give a full schpiel on the archetypes, but will say that Jung considered them to emerge from the collision of fundamental and inherited organizing principles in the mind on the one hand and experiences on the other: it's not that the "Mother" archetype would fully appear garbed in the rich imagery and symbolism in a vacuum, but rather than our minds have core organizational structures that will inevitably channel a host of our experiences in a way that takes on a familiar pattern as the Mother Archetype. (parallel to the way random points created based on probability distributions will form beautiful, complex and infinite patterns in IFS fractals (http://vlab.infotech.monash.edu.au/simulations/fractals/ifs-fractals/)).

Similarly, Crowley talked about the way that Tarot cards came alive the more you used them - the more your personal experiences were associated with the cards, the more the underlying structure represented by a given card would get fleshed out.

With Group Works, this is deeply true, which makes sense: The origin of each of the 91 patterns is story-based: folks came together and shared what in their experience...

You are invited to . . .

DEEPENING FACILITATION PRACTICE:
DEVELOPMENT WITH GROUP WORKS

One-Day Interactive Workshop

Friday, September 26th | 9:30am-4:30pm

CommunityWise Resource Centre, 223 12th Ave. SW, Calgary, AB

Are you interested in improving your work with groups and communities?

Calling project leaders, teachers, facilitators, public engagement practitioners, coaches, non-profit board members, civic activists, permaculturists and others whose work involves empowering people to participate in groups, workplaces, and communities in a more dynamic and effective way!

We invite you to attend a professional development session where you will have the opportunity to:

• Reflect on your facilitation practices
• Share dilemmas and seek solutions with colleagues
• Get support on upcoming meeting designs
• Identify opportunities for implementing patterns of excellent group process
• Integrate exemplary patterns into your professional and/or community life (and start to speak the shared “pattern language” of facilitation)
• Engage with others who care about these things!

We’ll be using the deck Group Works:  A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings as our lens.  While familiarity with the deck is helpful, it’s not essential—you’ll recognize the patterns from your own practice and pick it up quickly.

When: Friday, September 26

9:00-9:30 am:...

The 4 of us on the core team (Sue, Daniel, Dave & myself) recently spent a few days meeting in person for the first time since fall.  When we do that we like to send out an update so others of you can hear what's happening behind the scenes.   While a bunch of our time gets spent dealing with the nitty-gritty of keeping the website and other functions flowing smoothly, we also enjoyed an evening conversation on complexity science and how it relates to pattern language, and did the personal reconnecting that is so important to keeping our project alive when we operate at a distance.  Here is some recent news.

Deck Reprint
There are less than 100 decks remaining from our first print run of 2500, so i've just finished managing a reprint of 2000 more copies.  The new decks are substantially the same as the previous ones, however there are a few changes you might like to know about:

• improved packaging for better visibility;
• 9 category cards have been added, with new category descriptions that are much more polished;
• small, unobtrusive numbers now appear in the lower right-hand corner, to aid in re-alphabetizing and/or sorting out multiple decks after use;
• the 9 "Keystone" cards (one representative card from each category) are now distinguished by a thin black line around the category icon leaf;
• activities section of the booklet has been revised based on experience since publication;
• new stock has 30% post-consumer recycled content as compared with 10% last time, and the booklet in new edition is 100% post-consumer.

We are currently working on revising the free downloadable version of the deck to keep pace with these changes.  The new free version...

Last weekend we hosted another set of very successful workshop offerings around the Group Works deck—this time in Portland, Oregon (This makes 4 total now, beginning with Seattle last fall, Berkeley this past winter, and Vancouver, B.C. in June).  Some 30 Portlanders (Portlandians?!) not only emerged more engaged by the patterns/deck, but also delighted to forge deeper connections with one another.  They want more!  A number of participants are psyched to continue to meet in some manner so as to continue sharing how the group process pattern language can deepen their facilitation work. (If you missed this event, but live locally and want to join in, contact Keala Young younjust@gmail.com)

Four of us from the project—Daniel Lindenberger, Tree Bressen, Dave Pollard and I— took turns facilitating, sharing application stories, offering historical perspective on pattern languages and our project’s evolution, sitting in on small work/play sessions, and otherwise doing the back ground grunt work (registration, deck sales, preparing snacks and meals, and washing dishes and all) that enables a workshop to run smoothly.

Friday Evening Daniel and I lead an introductory session focused on applications of the deck.  We addressed five of the six loose categories of usage that are emerging as a helpful way to present the infinite realm of possibilities: 1. learning and assessment, 2. planning, 3. mid-stream guidance (stewarding and trouble shooting), 4. Games for play (and learning!) and 5. debrief, reflection and evaluation.  Each area was explored experientially and the room buzzed with activity, learning and excitement.  It was especially fun to integrate games into the mix as a viable way to teach basic engagement with the...