Category Archives: DwD Session

Information about our monthly community sessions.

September DwD 09.08.10 | Large Group Decision Making

Written by greg. Posted on September 1, 2010. Filed under Decision Making, DwD Session, Graphic Facilitation. No comments.

September’s session on large group decision making will be hosted by JasonDiceman, Senior Public Consultation Coordinator for the City of Toronto and author of the Dotmocracy Handbook.

Dotmocracy is a transparent, equal opportunity, and participatory large group decision-making tool. It is a simple method for recognizing points of agreement among a large number of people. Participants write down ideas on specially designed paper forms called Dotmocracy sheets and use pens to fill in one dot per sheet, recording their levels of agreement. The result is a graph-like visual representation of the group’s collective opinion. Note, this is not sticky dot voting like you may be familiar with.

Dotmocracy has been proven to:

  • Recognize collective priorities and direction from all participants.
  • Engage and empower diverse groups of people.
  • Recognize agreement on unique and specific ideas, as well as general and thematic ideas.
  • Give an equal voice to even the quietest of participants.
  • Help avoid verbal debates and “soap box” style speech-making.
  • Support friendly discussions while efficiently leading to practical conclusions.
  • Provide fully documented results that can be easily turned into action plans.

We will learn the details of facilitating this technique and apply the tool in a real life scenario, discuss approaches to various challenges and hear stories from Jason’s experience in Venezuelan communal councils, Canadian co-operatives, un-conferences and public consultations.

Jason will be selling b/w copies of his Handbook at a 50% discount of $5. You can download a free PDF of the Handbook and learn more about Dotmocracy at www.Dotmocracy.org

Please join us on September 8 from 6-9pm at OCAD’s sLAB for another lively, engaging and educational session and forward this invitation along to anyone you know who might be interested in attending.

Information and registration at our eventbrite website.

August DwD 8.11.10 | Strategic Dialogue

Written by greg. Posted on August 2, 2010. Filed under DwD Session. No comments.

Join Design with Dialogue from 6-9 pm on the second Wednesday of every month at OCAD’s sLab. We are a community of practice who learn together how to lead conversations for meaningful action through participatory design, strategic dialogues and the co-creation of emerging facilitation methods.

August’s session will be hosted by Kaleem Khan and Peter Jones based on the design-friendly practices of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and World Café. Due to interest from last month’s participants, we will move forward with our group’s scenarios (for a near-future Toronto) as triggered by themes from our experiences of recent G20 events.

To address the concern for “What should we do now?”, we’ll use AI to create a positive framework for working together and then gather in a World Café to generate new possibilities for action.

Improv play and drawing are rumored for this session. For newcomers to visual thinking, we introduce approaches to structured and informal sketching to enhance the dialogue with a graphic representation of our conversation.

Please join us for another lively, engaging and educational session and forward this invitation along to anyone you know who might be interested in attending.

Register here at EventBrite.

July DwD 7.14.10 | Dialogue & Framing Reality

Written by dialogicdesign. Posted on July 14, 2010. Filed under DwD Session. No comments.

July’s session was Framing Reality and Scenarios of Social Meaning, hosted by Greg Judelman and Peter Jones.

In each session this year we have explored a pressing issue or question from the group’s experience, or brought to the sessions as a concern for dialogue. Reality handed us a good question after the recent G20 meeting.

We explored ways of framing the concerns we sometimes call “problems.” Impelled by the urgent and messy mix of issues we saw emerging following the G20 security event in Toronto, we inquired into the framing of the situation. What are the opportunities inherent in the problem as constructed? How do we establish and pierce through a problem frame so that the true concerns we share in common might emerge?

Our deck presentation:

Framing and Scenarios – Design with Dialogue – July 14, 2010

View more presentations from deltasounds.

A visual reflection from Patricia Kambitsch reveals impressions of the dialogue leading into scenario formation.

June DwD 6.09.10 Appreciating Appreciative Inquiry

Written by dialogicdesign. Posted on June 3, 2010. Filed under DwD Session. No comments.

In June’s Design with Dialogue we go in-depth with Appreciative Inquiry, a technique for affirmative conversations that lead to shared understanding about situations or goals. The session will be led by Dr. Douglas Reid, a strategy professor at Queen’s University School of Business and graduate student in OCAD’s Strategic Foresight and Innovation MDes program. Appreciative Inquiry,, developed at Case Western Reserve University in the 1980s by David Cooperrider, was originated as a practice for coordinating positive dialogues in organizations, and it has emerged as a social design approach over the last few years.

AI built on earlier work conducted by action research theorists and is intended to expand a system’s capacity for cooperation and change potential by aligning members through shared affirmations of what is best, desirable, or cherished in a jointly-faced situation. After briefly outlining the rationale and background of AI, Doug will lead the group through an exploration of a sample problem (created and confirmed by the group) so as to demonstrate the AI technique and show how it expands the potential for cooperation through definition of shared aims or goals.

Doug provides a brief article discussing Appreciative Inquiry that may help participants gain an orientation to the practice and its power in design, organizational inquiry, and social action.

Register today on Eventbrite, and introduce yourself if your first time!

May DwD 05.12.10 The Presence Workshop

Written by greg. Posted on May 7, 2010. Filed under DwD Session. Tagged , . No comments.

The May Design with Dialogue featured The Presence Workshop was hosted by Dexter Ico.

The Presence Workshop is about play and public speaking.  It’s experiential, intensive, and spontaneous; having fun with the serious.  It’s about sensing your self and censoring your self-doubt, because the knowledge you communicate to others is also always felt.  People listen to presence, let’s practice speaking from it.

April DwD session: 04.07.10

Written by greg. Posted on April 4, 2010. Filed under DwD Session. No comments.
The April 14 session will explore the approach of viewing a problem from multiple defined perspectives to expand the possible solution space.

HOMEWORK: 
Participants should come prepared with a personally significant challenge from their work so that we can unpack issues that really matter. This might be a strategic question, a client problem, an organizational or political situation, or a career challenge.

As usual, we’re on from 6-9pm at OCAD’s sLAB. Please forward this invitation along to anyone you know who might be interested in attending.

Register and find directions at our eventbrite page.

Bodystorming Toronto

Written by dialogicdesign. Posted on March 20, 2010. Filed under Dialogue in Action, DwD Session. No comments.

Design with Dialogue invites OCAD and design community participants to a special session welcoming Dennis Schleicher, Director of User Experience for Sears, to Toronto Tuesday March 23 from 7-9:00 p.m. This interim (DwI) event was just made possible by Dennis’ willingness to participate with us again in Toronto, and on this occasion to engage graduate students from the OCAD MDes Strategic Foresight and Innovation program. To register please use EventBrite and add your name.

Dennis’ workshop provides an introduction and practice of Bodystorming as a method for engaging people in simulating experiences and processes by designing them through joint acting and improv of envisioned situations. Dennis writes  about three types of Bodystorming on his noteworthy blog site Tibetan Tailor.  Maybe you can guess which one we will do, and come prepared to play.

Dennis Schleicher is Director, User Experience Architecture at Sears Holdings in Chicago where he builds the teams that build the online brands for Sears Holdings Corporation, mainly Sears.com and Kmart.com. He has worked with American Public University Systems, Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, United States Air Force, Microsoft, Comcast, Dominos, White Castle, Bosch, and Numara.

Dennis uses his background in business and industrial anthropology to design interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives. He is actively involved with the Information Architecture Institute, the ASIST Special Interest Group of Information Architecture, Overlap, and the Interaction Design Association (IxDA).

March DwD Session: 3.10.10

Written by dialogicdesign. Posted on March 4, 2010. Filed under DwD Session. No comments.

March Design with Dialogue explores the purposes and styles of conversation in organized planning and design situations. Ryan Coleman presents concepts from the Focused Conversation method, a process formulated and taught by Institute of Cultural Affairs. We explore a group conversation using the method, and explore the extension of FC with visual reflection, in large and breakout groups. Peter Jones presents Conversational Performance of Design, from the recent Interactions article. Complementing Ryan’s exploration of FC, Jones presents an opportunity to model the meaning and intent of conversation as expressed and received. The session closes with reflection (visual and verbal) on the purposes and practices of conversation as intentional communication.

February DwD Session: 2.10.10

Written by dialogicdesign. Posted on January 25, 2010. Filed under Dialogue in Action, DwD Session. No comments.

At January’s Design with Dialogue Mark Kuznicki and Daniel Rose shared the essential principles and spirit of Peter Block’s book, Community – The Structure of Belonging.  Community presents Block’s theory and practices of neighbourhood development and provides guidelines for organizers to facilitate more effective community gatherings.

We invited members of the DwD community to participate in the design and facilitation of a community gathering called ChangeCamp, taking place in Toronto on February 16th. A dedicated (Interim) practice and planning session is being held at the Centre for Social Innovation January 28th, 7-10, if members of the community are interested.

The Feb 1oth DwD session will be a continued preparation for the ChangeCamp event and everyone will participate to refine the core questions that will drive the process. This is a chance to experience some of the practical advice that Block offers in Community and how it can work in the “real world”.  Mark and Daniel will use our feedback to evolve the design of the ChangeCamp on the 16th.

Everyone welcome, please register on eventbrite.

January DwD Session: 1.13.10

Written by greg. Posted on January 5, 2010. Filed under DwD Session. Tagged . No comments.

Please join us for our first session in 2010, on creating positive social change through civic engagement in community. Our January session is presented by community member Daniel Rose of Omakase Group and Mark Kuznicki of ChangeCamp.

What is the question that brings us together?

An important event in Toronto in 2010 will be the municipal election. It is a chance for Torontonians to have a collective conversation about the city we want, and to make the election one instrument in creating that desired future. In keeping with the spirit of the Designing with Dialogue group of encouraging positive change, Daniel and Mark will guide the group through some of the theory and techniques espoused by Peter Block, the renowned organizational consultant and change maker from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Among Peter Block’s recent books is the profound Community: The Structure of Belonging where he joins his own rich experience with techniques for conversations that we can explore for civic engagement. The session will inquire into Block’s practices through discussion and group exercise.

The presentation file for the session is now available.

We will start the evening by sharing our vision and plans for 2010, and a reflection on the lessons of 2009.  Please join us via Dwd on Eventbrite >