FacX
be part of the exchange…
This is our community of practice for emerging and seasoned facilitators interested in deepening the impact of their work by drawing from collaborative inquiry and aesthetic processes. Its origins date back to 2003 at the Banff Centre (history). Its design emerges from an understanding that helping people and groups to make sense of their realities, which is what facilitators do, is a layered and often complex endeavour that requires preparation (foundations).
Since 2008, informal weeknight sessions have been held in Banff or Calgary with up to fifteen participants. Across nearly 40 sessions, we have shared ideas and practices in group facilitation ranging from creative ways to warm up a group of strangers, to an exploration of what horses and dogs can teach us about interpersonal communication, to an introduction to the tool kit of “liberating structures”. Browse through the session write ups to get an idea of the range topics covered. And see what facilitation related content we are surfacing on the internet.
What have we learned so far?
“Good” facilitation means paying attention to the context and culture flavouring the moment, and to the techniques and tools that encourage discovery or respectful challenge.
As facilitators, we need to be alive not only to the methodologies of our practice but also the epistemologies that shape its use in society today.
The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged us to rethink the way we facilitate and retool.
And now, the advance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is doing the same.
Spring 2023 Session - “What is it to be a facilitator in an AI world”
April 12, 26, May 10, 24 online - 6pm to 7:30pm (Mountain)
As facilitators, we can easily be nostalgic for those pre-pandemic days when to facilitate a group almost always involved: participants in the flesh, chairs in circles, flip charts and markers, open floor space, and lunch. Happily, as we move beyond Covid, some of us are coming out from behind our screens, at least some of the time, and many of us are newly kitted to facilitate groups on-line if we have to. Heck, some of us even love the experience.
But now, there is a new phenomenon out there to further shift the ground under our facilitator feet. With the new AI chatbot technology becoming publicly accessible through applications such as: ChatGPT, GPT-4, Bard and Bing, AI is making a serious entry into the realm of “sense-making”. What are we to make of this entrance? How might facilitators use the technology to enhance group process? And what are the traps?
Join us for a new season of Facilitation Exchange. Over four sessions we will share what we know about AI language models and how their applications intersect with the facilitator’s craft. Boldly, as ever, we will play with the open source applications, testing their limits and potentials for settings relevant to our facilitator roles.
For on-line participation register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0qce-qpzIjGtN0YbtYr2qGLjot7178BAGQ
Connect with us on LinkedIn, contact Philip Cox for more information.
