Meta-harvest of AoH Belgium '08

Art of Hosting Belgium2
Harvest of the closing circle of the hosting team – March ‘08

The hosting team agrees that this art of Hosting training was extremely powerful and exciting. We had more than 50 participants, and it was the first time in Europe that a training filled so easily and early. We were very much aware of the high diversity of contexts that participants came from, and the high diversity of hosting experience. ...

…How we see each other when we came in and when we left ... it was powerful! ... with long-lasting effects.

Our learnings:

New: Improved training matrix
In the preparation day we decided to build in structured time for the little hosting and harvesting teams. We planned one hour before dinner on the first and the second day. Every team was assigned a client and a host, and we defined these roles quite well. Every hosting team had a clear purpose and timeframe; only the Community harvesting team stayed on for the whole training.

* For the design it was good to allocate time for the preparation of the little hosting and harvesting teams, would like to take this to the next AoH training.
* Allocating time to prepare with the little hosting and harvesting teams was a great advantage. We could have done a little better on that by using the time a little more on harvesting. We have hardly any notes from open space sessions so far.
* I enjoyed the coach and the client.
* We tried integrating the preparations for the participants' hosting teams into the timetable of each training day. We made a start but there is room for improvement; room for calling explicit conversations about it on Nexus.
* the matrix and our own preparation of being client and coach...

* I always appreciate the stress-free, flowing atmosphere at an AoH. In the hosting team there was lots to prepare but once we started everybody seemed to know what we needed to do and it just felt right to be in the flow. I found the “client-coach” system helpful to define my role as host and to create some order in the chaos for myself.

New: Art of Hosting as Community of Practice
In the first Art of Hosting training in Belgium – Oct.’06 – we experimented with a practitioners' day as a fourth day of the training. It was successful as many important projects got some real juice there and came into being. We decided to do this again, as a way of establishing a local, starting Community of Practice. It was a day that really buzzed! Basically we did one big Open Space on that day, and we were hosted at The Hub in Brussels.

* The fourth day, really felt that moving into ... I was surprised at how many continued on, it seemed a very seamless continuation. It was a really beautiful day this fourth day.
Toke did a more bold and courageous session - Speaking the generic design of a "real situation" with a real client and key hosts present, into a field that was hungry for it, was very powerful.
* The connection between the work of The Hubs and the AoH - web of people serving to create the kind of hosting that will connect conversations across the world. Maybe the practitioners around Brussels can have the Hub as our meeting place...
* I didn't think we could satisfy everybody, but I think everybody found each other on the last day - I'm deeply grateful, and excited about continue supporting this field, with Enexus, and what else could be next. Warrior of the Heart training looks it sets to happen by itself. Probably a meeting with caller within the European Commission very soon.

* The 4th day, was the most powerful day for myself. I felt most connected and the connection was relevant for my current work (with the selfHUB but also for Pioneers of Change work). I was just thinking: how about having a global AoH practitioners day with http://www.openspace-online.com/ just before the summer, let’s say in June?
* We will connect in one month time to sit in circle again and looking at what is happening now in this European Community of Practice...

*The day in the hub was a superb ending, needed and deserved full of practise, learning, let it go and sharing.

Art of Hosting Training: Keep a clear purpose and provide teachings
* The Community harvesting team reflected confusion and we stayed clear to the purpose: this is an AoH training, not a community building event and not a presencing workshop.
* Although we felt reluctance, we did the teaching, which helped the very diverse group to get a shared language.
* I sensed that people were eagerly waiting for the teachings, and welcomed it.
* I enjoyed it myself, even if I knew the material already.

* I personally did not feel the confusion between training and community-building. Being in the role of apprentice, the whole AoH was a big teaching for me. Experiencing the teachings again (some of them even new since no AoH training is the same), though felt right and much appreciated from my side.

* I sensed also that the purpose of teaching in the training was adequate and desired. The mates were eager to receive the teaching sessions and so was I. It was so useful to learn how to shape the architecture, the design of a gathering – to state the meaning of the principles.

The training is part of the AoH pattern
The AoH training is so much part of the pattern. It's a built-in feature of AoH, which is hardly named. I was reminded of that as I read Erik's posting on Enexus about how to host transitions. My first thinking was "just train these people and then it will spread". That's something I really want to name.
I was also trying to post the roles of Coach and Client, and put them in the AoH Pattern Language that Chris Corrigan created on ENexus. It wasn’t clear where to post it. Maybe we need a heading in that pattern language called the AoH training, because it's part of its DNA.

Deepening Presence and Embodiment
* Silence was at many points invited in; Toke did lots of little aikido teachings/ showings. - I try to get it under one heading - it's about how to be present and about embodiment. It is spreading throughout the day/days, it's not a separate thing to do in the morning and then we forget about it. It's woven into the pattern.
* Presencing - If I want to be in AoH, I need to be present and embodied. It was very intense and a lot of information; the silence was precious.

* The silence moments were a gift. The embodiment practices should be more but time was short. 

* …seeking to bring in the dojo aspect ...

More conscious about Holding space – sensing into the field
* There was more explicit talking and naming of 'holding space', some hosting teams named this as a specific task for one of them. They came to me to ask what it is about.
* Holding space is part of AoH - part of the team building. I could sense that the participants really grew together during the days, it was like Ravel's bolero.
* I felt the power of "sensing into the field" as very special for the AoH, how we were ready to let go of part of our design and adapted to people's needs especially on the last day.

* For me it was magic to see us as a hosting team holding space without having regular meetings at the end or beginning of the day. Designing a clear process at the beginning helped to be consciously present that supported us holding the space together.

The quality of the hosting team: Walk our talk
our preparation, our presence, walking the chaordic path ourselves
* Although it was an extremely diverse and complex group, maybe in our design we took care for both the individual and the group, and it seems to work well.
* How incredible it is to be part of a good functioning hosting team! I felt supported and carried when I had to drop out because of being ill. Gratitude for the wonderful carrying.
* Thank you for the experience of being in the hosting team and being carried.
* I felt I was in chaos –beautiful chaos - when I called the hosting team together to enquire into the training versus community building. The clarity we gave helped us deeply in having the clarity at the right moment. The gathering (at Lieven's before) – about how we are holding this work - helped us have the clarity at the right moment. We traveled through the chaord collectively. Dance between the pattern and the people - some of us see it a lot more because we live this work every day.
* We were diverse as a hosting team. We are just a platform of what is happening.

* Hosting Team: The beauty of not much internal talk and lots of walking together on the bridge while we were building it.

 

Art of Hosting as a practice of living Oneness
* This is continued learning: this is a practice. Training and the pattern: the artful and skillful holding of the space. When we practice it is as if I am practicing aikido...
Interconnectedness between the trainings and the pattern - everything I don't need in that moment disappears. When I'm in the practice I don't care about the other techniques, I just observe.
* We are combining so many things in these few days!!! We are bringing together an enormous amount of powerful techniques. I will remember this AoH training for a very long time, because it was the integration of diversity.
What about oneness? Integration took place to a very large extent. What about oneness??? It can hold an enormous amount of diversity. When I try with the intellectual mind, I can't. Danger of falling into judgment if we hold that diversity with the intellectual mind... we came to a deep sense of oneness.

We asked ourselves: Can we name what made our hosting team able to hold that rich diversity or that oneness? Here are some answers:
* There was diversity in the hosting team itself. Balance between intellect, embodiment, the different pieces of our intelligence/capabilities were present. We were able to cooperate and hold a field.
* We had done our homework: we had a good pattern for the days, despite our different levels of experience. The step we took around strengthening the experience and how people could step up to host.
* There were people comfortable sitting in deep consciousness and held us as we held the process and the design. Deep practitioners of the fieldwork: pouring love into the centre.

* Everybody who came, came with real work. Everybody lived in the fire - either where they were in their own life or combination of that with the big challenges - in deep conflict - we all brought real work and our real selves into the centre.
* We were very aware from the beginning – from the first calling – that this training would be about diversity, because of the many different circles that would be invited in.

* The training was composed by new and old practioners. I felt that this diversity was enriching everybody and I felt the sustainability from the oldest to the new. The level of the participants was high and I could feel the vibrations rising from day to day.
* My own experience - apart from being extremely conscious of the holding field - was a very great surrendering: no need to try to control, or no attachment to any particular outcome. An absolute trust.

* The power of diversity, I currently see it everywhere around me: in the Hub, at the Conversation Café that we had during Conversation Week, at work, etc. I believe AoH practices create the perfect room for openness, sharing, and mutual understanding while celebrating diversity and respecting differences.

Start of: Harvest out to the bigger AoH community and building memory
* More than 50 people created an energy field and 20 people signed up for ENexus, this is the first time this happened.
* I started looking at the video footage, and will start editing that in the coming weeks.
* Concerning the beautiful pictures that Helen took maybe it would be also useful to group it by theme – the flipcharts ones, the mindmap ones, the café ones, the open space ones that we can link to the comments/harvests. I experienced that it is helpful when I have to show and illustrate AoH > pictures are so explicit and need less words.

Learning points:
More harvest after the training from the stakeholders
Harvest after the training from the stakeholders, from the open space - better harvest from everybody, and the sequence of the days. What was the harvest of the knowledge gardening - the marketplace harvest?
Integration of the process - it sometimes takes time, and another outcome can come further than this - a double check-out after the circle is a possibility.

More feed-back
*As an apprentice at this training I would love to get some feedback from the more experienced practitioners and I am sure others would like that too.

* I would like to share the integration process from the mates after the training – to me I can feel that I am integrating the training little by little and deepening in another way at a distance of 2 weeks. In which way did it change my vision of AoH and my practices? Such a lot happened at different levels. The rhythm of the training was very intense and constant. The mates contributed a lot to the rhythm.