Every end of year we retreat and reflect on what we learned over the year’s events and who we are becoming in DwD community and practice. Fifteen people attended to co-create the vision for 2012 priorities, sessions, and direction. An Appreciative Inquiry guided the exploration and reflection, leading to harvests for each phase, as illustrated:

Discovery

Discovery explores the best in our experience, sharing and learning from our past and bringing forward the positive values to be honored in the inquiry. Paired shares led to whole-group expressions of valued experiences and impressions from Design with Dialogue in the 2011 season.

Dream

Dream envisions what might be, and generates a multiplicity of possibilities for the group to reflect and decide. Individuals generated their ideas, shared in triads to review and add more, and posted and clustered in a harvest sheet. We organized and labeled clusters in a following session, resulting in a document shared with participants. The original harvest appeared as follows (not the full image):

Design and Destiny

In concluding the review and vision, people expressed their own hopes and encouragement for the 2012 season. People added their personal commitments to their proposals, which all ensures a rich, diverse, and heartfelt community in 2012.

• Have continuity between sessions, with blogging and conversational support.
• Have workshops to explore the nature of inquiring systems (of which AI, DwD are representative)
• Evaluate the impact of learning from dialogue. Observe and evaluate the forms and outcomes of design. Relate the learning and observations to academic impact.
• Inquiry into experiential modeling and experiential learning. What contributes to enhanced perception in dialogue?
• “Listening sessions”  How to best share what we are learning in listening?
• Continue with “sessions on what’s going on right now.” Capturing relevance as its emerging.
• Holding new types of experiential dialogue sessions (e.g., Joanna Macy’s The Work that Reconnects)
• Continue to connect with conferences and academic groups
• Consider interim DwDs that provide continuity – Hold special interest groups for hot topics
• Develop the practice and “rituals” of dialogue:
  Save 30 min at Pre or Post for continuing topics
  Provide coaching / video in basic facilitation and process skills
  Start Web conferences or online sessions