SUNDAY LUNCHTIME CONVERSATION

What does a good conversation look like? An odd question, maybe.

Maybe a more relevant question is, Where can a good conversation lead?

Lunch with Tania, Johnnie, Chris and Richard at the Duke. Proof positive that blogging can be more than pointless, incessant barking (who said that?!).

We'd never met face-to-face before, Johnnie and Richard and Chris knew each other via blogging.

We didn't have a plan or an agenda - no intended outputs.

Just people sitting together, having lunch and talking.

Over the course of three hours or so, the following subjects came up: Open Space facilitation, self-organising communities, circles, alternative education, teenagers, brands inside out, the military industrial complex, blogging, Vancouver, passion and responsibility, the war on turrror and vampires in Kansas.

Doesn't convey much as a list, perhaps, but some interesting nuggets were:

- what gives you hope?
- what do you care about?
- if you are not learning or contributing, go to somewhere you are
- one thing about all meetings and conferences is: things will happen, meanings will be made and at the end, people will go home

An overall theme emerged which was, are we conditioned or trained in certain processes (ways of doing things) and these processes then run the show, but they prevent us from achieving what we want to achieve -as a group/team or even as a person?

Perhaps a good example of this is over at Adliterate about the shortcomings of 'brainstorms'. A bigger example, the way MOST business courses, conferences and meetings are run. An even bigger example, the way we educate our children, to produce / to do but not to learn.

There will be much more on this on this blog and elsewhere - if the way we habitually process things may hold us back, what are some new ways of looking at brands and related issues?

Maybe we are too concerned with outputs - action points, results - and not concerned enough about outcomes.

Of course, I may be wrong about this. So just in case, here are five, key outputs from our meeting. One of them has several parts to it.

Comments

[Robert Paterson]

Wish I had been there

[Kevin]

Robert, you'd have been most welcome to join in - we hope the conversation will continue in different forms, stay posted.

[Chris Corrigan]

Fantastic! and such an excellent capture of the key outputs of the meeting - the photogrpah captures the Executive Summary of a dish of olives quite nicely!

[Kevin]

thanks for comment, Chris ... outputs? shoutputs! not forgetting the toothpick action points!

a pleasure to meet you, hi to everyone on the island from sunny (for now) London