Hosted By: Jeder Institute Members.
Date: Thursday 26th & Friday 27th Apr 2018
Who: Dee Brooks, Michelle Dunscombe, Kerry Hartigan and Denise Bijoux with Pere Chiara, Natalie Healey and Vanessa Alexander joining us via Zoom. (Apologies: Michaela Kennedy).
OUR WONDERFUL GATHERING PLACE: Kerry’s place, Fauklands via Gloucester, NSW, located on Worimi land.
The Jeder Institute Community Building Gathering started with welcoming members, framing the days together and acknowledging the traditional land we were meeting on, Worimi land.
UNDERPINNING FRAMEWORK
The framework we followed to give us a good start, some deeper/reflection time when needed and outcome work in the afternoon was:
- DEC Thinking
- Overlaid with Theory U
By doing this each day, it gave us opportunity for:
- Divergence/download to get stuck into it in the morning
- Groan zone/emergence/reflection during the potential rest period
- Convergence/prototyping/crystallising to end each day feeling accomplished
IDEAS FOR THE FLOW CONTENT:
This list was started on Loomio, before the Gathering, so all members could view, add, amend what was needed during the time together.
- Creating a gathering ‘harvest how to” and re-look at Pere’s “farvesting” doc
- Community planning toolkit
- Unconference calendar
- Review proposals from November gathering
- Cultivating a Jeder just culture (linking into Olive Branch)
- AoPCB
- Combuild partnerships
- Jeder communication platforms (Rich Bartlett Pattern 5)
- Combuild handbook/principles
- Social media
- Skills audit
The live Harvest was updated throughout the 2 days via this Dropbox link:
FLOW OF THE DAY
We started by reviewing the “ideas for flow content” from Loomio and used the draft DEC/Theory U framework to diverge, rest and converge. This gave us a generous flow, decided upon by present members and started our day with co-creation.
WHO ARE WE?
There was a question posed before the day actually started which started an organic discussion that was not originally part of the Flow but started us thinking about how we present ourselves to others. Some of the plays with words were:
- Combi’s
- ComBui
- CoBu
- ComBu
- CoBui
- Com Build
CoBu was mentioned most throughout the day; hence the Harvest from here on will speak of the Jeder Community Building team as Cobu!
CHECK-IN
Question/s: What are you leaving at the door? What are you bringing in?
- Feel the embodiment – without judgment
- Default to my head, listen to my gut
- Where do I fit in? How do I feel?
- Bringing curiosity and openness
- Leaving my celebration planning
- Leaving busy-ness and exhaustion
- In: hope for bridging – deepen relationships
- Out: bad juju re: Jeder disconnect – frustration
- Collecting the Collective
- Judgement and frustration
- Starting again and sense of collective
- Bringing knowing that we can’t do it all in 2 days
- Bringing mindfullness
- Bringing “big ball” of years of stuff
- Leaving sadness and worry and concern
HOW TO HOST & HARVEST
Post-discussion topic: Principles of how to host and harvest collectively?
This discussion was based on past gatherings and experiences and the desire to trial ‘live’ Harvesting, for this gathering, based on Pere’s “farvesting” doc. We also wanted to be able to share our learnings with the Cossie Gathering team before they meet in May.
- Being mindful of hosting and harvesting at the same time
- Nimble harvest
- Make it visible; i.e. photos, drawings, docs
- Plan to harvest: Why? What? How? Who?
- Share it around – bite size pieces
- Ask for what you need, offer what you can
- Provide an opportunity for the harvester to contribute and reflect
- Build time for harvest into the flow
- How do we harvest convo’s when we all need to be fully present
- Don’t throw out hard copies until harvest is photographed, shared and finalised
WHY?…
are we here…
is this important…
Before we got into a more community building focus, Denise, as a Collaborative member and a Board member asked Kerry, Michelle and Dee to share with her why we were here, from an individual and organisational perspective.
CoBu (circled in yellow on the sheet):
- Gathering totally focused on CoBu
- Explore further how CoBu team could develop
- Strengthening and lifting CoBu profile
- Principles for working together – co- create, face to face, deepen relationships
- Explore together what our work together is
- Common understandings – cocreation of principles underpinning and informing practice
- At Kerry’s cause she’s a bridge across other aspects of Jeder
- To grow
WHY?… continued…
Jeder (for broader conversations):
- Our understanding of process and desire to share/bridge
- CoBu team geographically spread out
- Collecting the collective passionate about Jeder culture/principles TEALISH
- Beyond Cossies and CoBu and a “new job”
- Same check-in question? Some consistency
- Mindful not to split collective info
- 2 smaller gatherings (May)
- 1 larger (November)
- Needed to “lift” CoBu space in Jeder… swamped by Cossies – taking more space
- Essence of Jeder not always clear to members
REVIEW JEDER NOVEMBER GATHERING PROPOSALS
Kerry spent some time compiling a table, which included the 3 proposals from the Hunter Gathering and included some of the missing ones that she remembered. We managed to talk to a couple of proposers and confirm the actions and have left some of them blank to be updated in the future. The updated table reflects these changes.
FARVESTING TIME
Or… Nimble Harvest
Keeping to the principles we had developed early in the morning, we kept the “nimble harvesting” up to date, all day by making sure it was part of the Flow and investing in that allocated time to update the document before lunch and after check-out each day.
(See Pere’s “farvesting” doc for more information)
ZOOM TIME
We invited other members in, to meet and get to know each other. Most of the people who joined on Zoom had not met each other or other members. Natalie attended the first day’s Zoom check-in.
Dee hosted the call and asked Natalie to introduce herself and then offered 10 minutes with each person here. After Natalie’s introduction we decided to all stay and hear from each other. This was a fantastic experience as we all heard new things about each other, as well.
Each person, without prompting, gave a personal story about their background, their past/current work and why they felt they were with Jeder now?
REST & REFLECT
Allow spaciousness; go slow to go fast
Rest by design. After the Zoom call, the physical members went for a walk to the local river near Kerry’s place to refresh, rejuvenate and rest and prepared lunch together.
CoBu HANDBOOK DEVELOPMENT
We were going to cover the following topics:
- Principles
- Skills Audit
- Social Media
- Communication
This day, we ended up only working on the
Principles and agreed to review them for refinement tomorrow. We decided to explore how Jeder’s 4 Pillars informs our community work to see if they offered a foundation for our community building principles, and… they did! The CoBu principles need refining and we will be seeking broader feedback from all members.
Note: for clarity purposes, the following is the discussion from both days and the highlighted sections are the clarifications from Friday’s discussion.
CoBu Principles:
To underpin and inform practice that is process focused (Friday’s clarification: “process focused” means; as CoBu we bring processes to assist communities to come up with answers)
How does Jeder’s 4 Pillars inform our community building work?
Pillar #1 – Generosity of Spirit:
- readiness to give, open sharing, reciprocity, receiving – step into our own vulnerability – willing to explore and change what works well in this community “adaptive leadership”? Access to wealth of resources and experiences — need an agreement (Friday’s clarification; giving away resources needs agreement across CoBu) – honouring the source – teaching/learning organisation
Pillar #2 – Cocreation:
- illuminators, name, connectors, nourishers (Friday’s clarification; what do these principles from Berkhana mean to CoBu?) Willingness to be disruptive and disrupted (Friday’s clarification; we have the tools to do this) – (Friday’s clarification; instead of “disruptive and disrupted” should it say “willing to work with disruption and adapt – good enough for now – safe to fail?) more than the sum of the parts – better together – collective design (Friday’s clarification; g. have tools like consent, not consensus)
Pillar #3 – Self-organising:
- fit for purpose – more of an internal principle (Friday’s clarification; members are not a “island”, -> Collective – but have autonomy/agency)
Pillar #4 – Participatory Leadership:
- those who benefit are part of decision-making (Friday’s clarification; sentence structure change: “decision-making benefits those who are part of”) – create conditions for communities’ people to shine – capacity/competency – building – leader in every chair – not about us without us
(Addition: invite Cossies to explore how Pillars manifest in their spaces – operational principles of Pillars. This is added to the cross-over offerings further in this Harvest.)
FARVESTING TIME
Or… Nimble Harvest
(See Pere’s “farvesting” doc for more information)
We kept the nimble harvest up to date, all day. This works! We also plan to reflect on why and how this works, what might we change and how we might do things differently.
Held over from today’s Flow:
- Jeder “Just Culture” Olive Branch
Other actions that came from today’s review/discussions:
- Proposal about mini-gatherings dates
- There was discussion, as follows, to take to a broader Jeder Loomio discussion
- The mini-gatherings are worth it for the community building team as they felt they had focussed time to spend with each other on community building in Jeder and their work
- At the last full Jeder gathering, a proposal was put forward and passed, to have 2 gatherings a year in the 2nd week of May and the 2nd week of November
- The CoBu team discussed that the 2nd week of May might not work every year because in the future there may be more than the Cossies and CoBu teams and an individual might want to join multiple mini- gatherings
- We had further discussion about how to word that, as a proposal, e. mini-gatherings are held in May by agreement of the team members or mini-gatherings are held mid-year to be decided by members before it was decided by the CoBu team to take the discussion to Loomio for all Jeder members to participate in the discussion
- Offer GSuite feedback from CoBu team to Pere for proposal review on May 4th
- Feedback given to Pere through Flow doc on Google Drive: None of the CoBu team were ‘official’ trial users although, a few of us have been using it more often and have moved documents over from our personal google drives. Our discussion was that GSuite seems worth the time/effort it will take to move over to from Dropbox but it will take time and probably needs a broader discussion now that the proposal review is due from Pere
- Dee to check-in with all Collective members on Jedi name proposal review on May 4th
- Kerry to share Connecting Up outcome with Collective members via dissemination of full proposal doc
Check-out
Question: What am I holding for tomorrow?
- History/background
- Change multiple times
- CoBu principles
- Skills audit in Jeder
- Emergent – now more hope
- What do I add?
- Grateful for why are we here (session)
- What is my fit?
- Is every Pillar necessary every time
- Keep Pillars in mind
- Slow and local ideal – how does this fit
- Can I take this home?
- Underneath support above
- Energy and respect for each other
- Maintaining our energy and valuable input from all
- Building on these strong foundations
- Share ideas across Jeder
FRIDAY 27th APRIL
FLOW OF THE DAY
After the check-in, we went back to the Principles we had developed yesterday and refined them (see clarifications on day one’s Harvest), developed more community building documents, created new processes, had a round of consent decision making and welcomed other members into a Zoom call.
CHECK-IN
Question: What were your thoughts overnite?
- Self-organising / internal principle?
- Do funders need to know?
- Reaching out – what could that look like?
- Self organising – how do we support each other
- Close to home work
- What future work could look like?
- Future work possibilities
- Didn’t stick to process re: farvesting – Dee just did it
- Put us out there with a clearer sense of who we are
- Not just for me to do Farvesting; pay attention to that today
- Internal principles and teal transparency
- Future of work – want/need more for self not just financially
- Share work stories
- Need to focus on generating work
- Yesterday was energising
COMMUNITY BUILDING HANDBOOK
We discussed the other sub-headings of the Handbook, as follows:
- Principles; including yesterday’s
- Clarifications were added to Thursday’s harvest
- Skills Audit
- Held over to November gathering (see updated Flow). Dee to talk to Jason re: further development of online tool
- Social Media
- Communication platforms
- Both these topics were allocated to broader Loomio discussions (see updated Flow)
ZOOM TIME
Michelle hosted the call and Natalie joined us again today along with Pere and Vanessa (Ness). We had a check-in question round: What brought you to this call?
… which wasn’t physically harvested but was electronically harvested by Zoom recording, as was the whole call.
Pere and Ness had some topics they wanted to cover so, we all responded to them, where necessary and Pere and Ness harvested onto the live document:
- Interest in Art of Participatory Community Building
- Ness – somebody who is a learner in AoPCB space. A lot of energy to be part of what is growing there
- How we can contribute to building a stronger art of hosting community of practice in Sydney
- Ness has coworking space in Glebe, beginning of a sense of place, somewhere to gather, foundation energy to cultivate a sense of community around AoH especially in Sydney. Running Transforming hierarchies session this afternoon after Rich and Nati workshop
ZOOM TIME… continued…
- How Ness could be more involved in Jeder as a collaborator
- Ness – Going through notes from yesterday’s harvest still not sure what that means (to be a collaborator/collective member). Like to let things germinate and explore, be inducted into Jeder, also has outside perspective.
- Natalie – keen to understand more, like a firecracker. Want to be part of something that could have substantial change in our world. Opportunity for Jeder to, it is a growth period, there is a collective consciousness going on, workplaces asking how things can be done differently. People are just really wanting this. How do we fill that demand as new practitioners and contribute to new ways of doing things? particularly in Sydney I see a lot of people struggling because environment is so busy and constantly changing. Love to learn more about the terms and practices to help Jeder create that
- Ness – the idea of experimenting and trying new things is a key component of the learning. Something to do with having a practice, a community to connect with, with intention around the practices and that it’s not just training events. Something Kerry said to do with the idea that we all come with a wealth of experience, a journey, to arrive here together. Being able to play the role of steward, learner, apprentice, pioneer and swap those roles is a good thing to be able to hold space for for each other to provide connection, growth and learning opportunity
- Pere: tuning into an internal feeling that this is a way of working that can really shift current approaches – Stewarding – is a conversation to be had, Who is stewarding who? Not coaching, or is it? Everyone gets the handbook, but who actually reads it. That’s not the living organisation – rather it’s the relationships
- Natalie: reading the handbook, easy to digest, a feeling that these are my people. What’s the next step? How do I be an active member? Is it training around AoH and PL so that I understand the pillars?
- Check out: what are your aspirations or desires for this CoBu? What are you hoping to get out of or put into it?
- Pere: there’s a lot of energy in Sydney for this work – that space is ripening. Great to bring what Jeder has into it. The Uni context – more for their toolbox, also an understanding that it’s broader than that. Dee great with bringing clients in, my strength is tech, hearing ideas about what’s possible and what’s needed in the Sydney space. Having a strong sense of community here
- Ness – connection to Jeder through working with Pere in University context. Through connection to Dee and Kerry. Excited to think that that can continue to grow, a lot of possibility there. There is a sense of realness about with the energy in Sydney to be open to what Jeder has to offer, the broader piece of what Jeder has to offer. Excited to be in exploration mode in making connections
- Natalie – when you have a saturation of people it’s hard to ignore the current energy. For me it’s a really strong calling, we’ve come to this moment together to respond to that energy. I’m ready to go. I just need people to say come and help me, willing to put hand up and take any guidance, feel really strong sense of calling. I’ve got some great tools but would like to align more with what Jeder are doing around AI, AoPCB, AoH, ready to give whatever it needs to create a better environment here and in the world. Give to sort out because it’s around us
- Kerry – tools and toolkits, for me there’s a guy called Frank?? Listened to him speak a while ago. Getting the balance right between compliance, operations and being available, human and authentic. Frank said I’ve been around a long time managed to build a toolkit. The bigger the toolkit the more likely you will trip over it. Leave in the background and lead with your heart/humanity
- Dee – that check out was more worthwhile to hear to give me more food for thought. I’ll look at the question and it’s been really valuable to have 3 more voices to add to the harvest. Hoepfully get a more well rounded inclusive harvest
- Michelle – my aspirations for CoBu is that we come together more often zoom, place, connection conversations so that we can develop a sense of team
- Denise – the two things for me would be a community of practice, heart more important the toolbox, to learn and share together through vulnerability. As group gets bigger might be busy, in and on the business and working together
- Pere also shared this link, for interest: Rich Bartlett’s Patterns for Decentralised Organising Full Book
FARVESTING TIME
Or… Nimble Harvest
(See Pere’s “farvesting” doc for more information)
Dee stepped back after her realisation that she had taken over and done the first day on her own. Photos and links were added by other present CoBu members.
Farvesting was followed by a shared meal!
HANDBOOK CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
We did a quick scoping of content/themes by individual, popcorn harvest. Broad themes were:
- How to be a part of CoBu / membership docs / Collaborative versus Collective CoBu member / Not a job!
- Unconference (see transcribed Unconf discussion later in Flow)
- Gatherings – “how to” – add principles of hosting/harvesting – how often?
- List CoBu members skills – give-gets? / how do we work together? Internally and externally / invoicing processes
- Links to other handbooks / links to articles, blogs, videos and community of practices / this has been attributed to the following sources…
- What is CoBu / community building within Jeder / What is CoBu? / processes and methodologies / include Theory of Change
- What CoBu does and how
- Questions:
- Can the admin bucket help pay? / How do we create this – who does the work? / How to offer and ask to be part of this / how are they recognised / how to model this?
IDEAS FOR DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK
From the handbook content development discussion, a new ideas for development framework was developed for discussions that needed broader Jeder discussion.
Framework:
- What’s the idea?
- Popcorn round of sticky notes to capture themes/categories
- Popcorn round of sticky notes asking what are the questions for all members? (e.g. Who’s in? What skills do you have? Is there money?)
- Take above notes to Loomio to start broader discussion
This framework was used for the Handbook development, Unconference discussion and will be used for the toolkit, in the future.
ECOCYCLE TEACH
Denise did a quick teach on the Ecocycle framework.
Summary: What stage are we at and skills do we need/ approaches do we use at each stage so as not to burn out. How might we recognise those who contribute and how do we ask for what we need to help things to happen well?
CONSENT DECISION MAKING
Proposed by Dee:
Jeder Gathering funds (admin) cover car and on- site costs for CoBu gathering and for Denise and Dee for the 1st-4th May and Kerry for the 3rd (if event goes ahead)
Passed
Review May 4th 2018
UNCONFERENCE DEVELOPMENT
Using new ideas for development framework
A conversation around what Unconferences are, what they could be, potential themes, what information was needed and whether these are Jeder anchor events.
Suite? (of offerings)
- Unconference – 3 day
- Big Convo’s – 1 day
- Community Conversations
- Unconference Inspired Events
Themes:
- Education
- Death & Dying
- Workplace Wellbeing
- Next Stage
- Disability (NDIS)
- Women in Ag
Documents:
- Proposal examples
- Community conversation doc
- Dee’s “How to Blog”
- Templates
- Unconference guidelines/process
- Include in the Community building Handbook
Website revision (content upgrade):
- How to call
- Partners eg: Women in Ag
- Who do you want in the room?
- Why stories?
- Local lead
- Current experiences
- International/National/State/Regional
- Unique
- Wicked Issues
- Why Yes!
Questions for Loomio:
- Are these Jeder’s anchor events?
- Who’s got the energy?
- Can the admin bucket help?
- What’s the timeline?
DINGO – COMPLIANCE CAPTURE
Kerry and Dee talked about having a sheet up that could capture new ways of working that could also be added to the continuous improvement register.
We talked about those moments, during conversations, where someone might go “ding”, “a-ha” or “bingo” and we settled on using the term “Dingo”
Michelle and Denise were heard to call out “Dingo” by the end of the 2 days – our work here is done!
The Dingoes that were harvested were:
- Harvest “how to”
- November proposals
- Comcap (Dingo) process
- Jedi Process
- Develop CoBu Handbook
- Naming Com Builders
- CoBu’s principles
- Ideas for development process
BRIDGING PIECES
Linking the mini-Gatherings:
These were the pieces of cross-over work that CoBu members think the Cossie gathering could use to bring us together. Most of them are foundational or introductional:
- Share check in/out questions
- Discuss how do the Jeder Pillars show up in our work?
- Are the Pillars enough?
- Communication platforms (usage)
- Capturing Dingoes (compliance capture)
FARVESTING TIME
Or… Nimble Harvest
(See Pere’s “farvesting” doc for more information)
All photos and links were added to the document with explanations and headlines. No transcribing was done though and Dee completed the transcribing on Saturday morning. By Saturday night, the final CoBu Harvest was complete – thanks to NIMBLE FARVESTING!
CHECK OUT
Question: What energy are you taking with you?
Kerry had to leave while Michelle and Dee were on a zoom call so, she recorded her check out and once off the zoom call, Michelle, Dee and Denise also recorded their check out.
The recording is the harvest although, maybe, in hindsight, we maybe should have still grabbed the essence on sticky notes for the Harvest.
We voice recorded the 2-step check out.
In Summary:
Over the 2 days at Kerry’s place near Gloucester, 3 other members converged from Melbourne, Grafton and Auckland to meet online with 3 other members from Sydney to explore and discover how to strengthen the Jeder Community Building Team.
Highlights:
- The CoBu Team was born
- New frameworks were created
- Nimble Farvesting was a success
- Decisions were made
- Relationships were strengthened
- Rest was designed
- Handbooks/documentation development was instigated
- Principles developed
- Methodologies were taught
- Initiatives expanded
- Linkages between mini-gatherings were discovered
The CoBu Gathering was a success as we were able to focus on community building, our principles to work by and explore each other’s work more deeply.
