When you are a harvester the first thing you need to learn is to be able to hold frustration! More and more we learn that if we want to harvest these big events for the ‘outside world’ – in real time – we need a harvesting team next to the facilitation and organisation team. My frustration now is that I lost the posting that I made this morning… too bad for you readers!
Part of this morning posting was this picture, where you see we are hosted in a 125 year old ballroom that is protected. Actually the hotel of which this is part of now, is build around it! You see also Jeff, who introduced us into the theme of these one and a half day: Inviting Innovation!
What I remember also is his talking about innovate and design these inviting spaces where actually this innovation can happen. Jeff also gave us a puzzle that invited us to think outside the box. Not many people could solve it… We also got some toys, called ZOOB, which have different pieces in different colours. They can connect in different ways. Inspiration was taken from the DNA structure, it are all basic building ‘blocks’. Now you see structures appearing on the tables in all totally different shapes!
Our first question was: What kind of innovation needs do you face today?
What I recall for myself is: Do we see the whole? How can we go beyond our habit of seeing seperate things and persons? Somebody at my first table shared: What should I do how to bring out the new? What also struck me was the question: How do we connect with nature? Not only nature itself, but how to integrate the vital and the beauty in all what we do?
I agree, we need new kind of harvesters. In fact, I once had already employed a reporter at an event that I couldn’t attend, the Nexus for Change conference. Probably we bloggers have to find ways to support us – we need a list of essential events and need to find out who could be there to report. I will think about it and take the initiative…
On the Art of Hosting on Art of Hosting gathering that will happen early June in Belgium this question of: What is the next level of Harvesting? will be a ‘hot’ topic!
Look it up here:
http://www.artofhosting.org
Holger,
These are great questions… many of us are thinking about this whole subject right now, as Ria says above. Another place we are discussing it is on the World Café online community space, here.
Your voice is very welcome!
Amy
Hi Ria,
Perhaps we also need more harvesting time to deepen the harvest. What if we would take the time to set up the harvest as if we were writing a book. A harvest on one question could be the chapter of the book and all the comments could be noted as the titles of a paragraph. It is even possible to remember who added what and have them write the paragraph at home. Added with some torough editing this could be a very fast way to write profound books. I am going to try this when I can…
I agree with you that we need more (collective) harvesting time to deepen the harvest. And using a blog, with tagging and categories, could be a huge help in writing a book! I’m thinking of it myself, as I read through all my postings on my private blog: Seeds for a happy planet (www.vitis-tct.be/blog)
Guten Morgen from Dresden to you all,
I like very much this discussion on the harvesting. For me the harvesting has the same importance like the dialogues. During the innovation café appeared something between us. For me it’s important to bring this on a visible level – the graphic recording is one part of this – and I’m enjoying now to look at the photos of the graphic recording. They are like a wonderful memo. The step, I want to go further, is to give everybody the possibility to transform the elaborated themes – things, habits ecc. – in our daily live. So harvesting content can get from the unconscious to the conscious level by working on the theme. This work need time and space.
If the harvestingpart is to small maybe there is the danger, that what shined out remain in the unconscious. We can decide to change doing what we have conscious…
Sabine & Floris,
You have really captured the essence of my own (and I know Ria and others feel the same way) thoughts about the importance of harvesting.
Conscious harvesting can help take the moments of illumination we all experienced at the gathering or in the local cafés and not only communicate them to others, but if we go deeply into this work as individuals within the group, as you are both suggesting, we can transform them into lasting change and action in our lives.
The experiment with this blog is to use some of the posts as ‘chapters’ as Floris described, or placeholders that we can all add the wisdom of our own harvesting on that subject, or café question, to.
We might experiment with other forms too (the form Floris seems to be suggesting might be a wiki, for example), but whatever we use the trick is participation. When we are able to harvest the wisdom of the collective like that, we have something of value to all who experience it.
Thank you so much Sabine and Floris, for your quick understanding and response to this important piece of our collective work.
(by the way – I wrote a piece on my own blog (the Beauty Dialogues) when I was on my way to Dresden; you might find some of it interesting in relation to his subject.)