Welcome to the fifth newsletter from fireside.rs, ‘unlocking creative productivity by gathering humans effectively.’
This past month, I had the good fortune to facilitate the first ever fireside.rs workshops (in Wellington and Christchurch).
This is a learning experience designed to expose participants to a multitude of collaboration shapes / models of gathering in an attempt to ignite their imagination to the array of possible ways to work and create and be together.
For me as a facilitator it was also an attempt to ‘sketch with humans’ and observe how others interact with the curricula, to deconstruct how to improve, what to drop, where to add etc.:
As illustrated above, the first and last shape participants experience is the conceptual fireside, where darkness is used as a design element to engender safety, trust and reflection. What happens in between is a myriad of human forms which can be adapted / adopted into future cooperative ventures (beyond the simple ‘meeting’ shape).
Deep gratitude to those who entered the space(s) with curiosity and kindness, thank you for your presence and contribution.
Here’s what a bunch of people said about it:
“Thank YOU DK!! Such a treat of an evening – all the gathering experiments you did on us all sparked so much connection and insight. My data-driven-nerdy-gathering-mindset absolutely loved how your creative flair hosted and created the spaces for everyone to experiment widely. THANK YOU!”
Antonia Milkop, Leadership Coaching & Facilitation + author of Team Spirit: the power of purposeful gatherings
“Invigorating evening DK. Thoroughly enjoyed the experience.”
Ian (Harv) Harvey, Founder at Collective Intelligence
“This was a great evening. Was so different to anything I’ve done before and really brought me out of my comfort zone. Thank you DK.”
Cory Hay, LLB/BCom Student | Social Innovator
Big thanks to host partners Goodlife Collective (Wellington event held at two/fiftyseven) plus Unchatter (Christchurch event held at Mt Pleasant Community Centre).
If you’re interested in bringing this unique offer to your community whilst it’s still a ‘no-fee’ workshop experience (just cover my expenses), please do get in touch and I look forward in collaborating with you in the future,
DK
fireside.rs Founder and Creative Gatherer
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
Where we feature, celebrate and learn from those who craft spaces for humans to actively belong and be, introducing:
SHOW NOTES & PULL QUOTES
- Elena de Kan LinkedIn
- Steelcase website
- Steelcase Research & Insights (blog) + Blueprint for a Better Office (article cited)
- Steelcase podcast
- Steelcase Learning and Innovation Center, Munich, Germany
00.55: “That means that we are trying to be a good, I would say, companion and guide through transformations in the space of professional work and education.”
05.23: “So I think here we went through a period of time that was actually quite long where sort of the extremes were tested and where this became a topic that was raised, I think, above the usual smaller crowd and maybe design, real estate, facility, strategic team to really a topic that CEOs were talking about, the press was talking about, the newspapers were talking about.”
06.11: “And now the most disruptive thing that is happening is certainly artificial intelligence and how that might shape and change further how we are working. That then I would say has quite an impact on things like attention, well-being, some fears have for sure sparked again both individually and collectively so I see a little bit of a parallality to what happened to the pandemic and again it raises questions around well-being and with that I come to the to I think the biggest topic and that is underlying of the other trends that we see around privacy, around working from home, around the collective coming together, everything that happens on a social sphere is that element of well-being and how much that aspect that we all rely on heavily, physically, emotionally, cognitively, being well is something that we all have an interest in, companies that we work for and we ourselves.”
08.40: “And if we think about modern workspaces, often we have, especially in open offices, we see rows and rows of desks. So here there’s a lot happening, of course, in front of you, behind you, next to you. And that also means that a part of your brain is always going to scan for danger from where you can’t see it. So that in return means we don’t have a lot of brain capacity left to actually, first of all, relax. Second of all, have our default mode network working well and then be able to actually form and articulate a thought and work well. So I think sometimes it comes down to those very basic aspects of what do we need physically to be safe.”
12.13: “I would say trust by default happens when vulnerability is possible. So only when people and systems at large are able and willing to be vulnerable to share something that feels a bit risky, maybe, to themselves, only then can you create trust, right?”
13.35: “So environment can never solve for everything that happens sort of on an emotional and cognitive level, but it can nudge you into different modes. It can nudge you to write something on the wall. It can allow you to actually see other people in the office. So if you have only built walls and all you see is a hallway and separate rooms, it’s hard to be, it’s hard to connect with what’s happening on the other side…”
16.49: “Now, we will always have some tensions because there will always be some people, some brains that really need impulse, that they need color, they need light, they need change, they need texture. And there will be other brains that really need the absence of all of this. So how do you decide, right? How do you design one space? I think there’s a few things, a few general principles that can help to not overcome this tension completely, but at least to mitigate that and make a lot of space. And one of them is biophilia.“
17.51: “Everybody feels good when you have a mix of texture, when you have biophilic elements. We need less medicine, less painkillers. When we look into nature, we learn better when we are in a biophilic or natural environment. So there’s lots of fascinating data, actually, how impactful this can really be. So when you design with nature as your role model, you cannot really go wrong.”
27.04: “Also, the representative aspect of a space is, I think, not to be forgotten. If you think about law firms, if you think about doctor’s offices, if you think about professor space, their office has a function that goes beyond the individual work that they do, that has a function also in shaping that identity and representing a certain role that is taken by them in the spaces that they operate in.”
30.42: “But think of an intern maybe or somebody who’s new in a role, sitting next to someone, they might have ideas, questions, wonders that they might just be able to ask in the space, like, “Hey, what are you doing here? Can I have another look at your screen, at your table at whatever you’re doing, they might never have the idea to even ask that question when they never share the same space.”
37.16: “I hope that as humans, we get strong in understanding where we actually need to defend space from AI. Where does it actually cost us more than we can gain from it?
Podcast music attribution: All I Did Was Wait For You: The Upbeat and Positive Track for Podcast or YouTube by kjartan_abel — https://freesound.org/s/543781/ — License: Attribution 4.0
Some creativity, productivity and gathering related content for the brain / heart:
“He once said that his aim was “to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress” and even in 2013, just before his retirement, he was arguing he still had much to do: “People say, ‘Sonny, take it easy, lean back. Your place is secure. You’re the great Sonny Rollins; you’ve got it made.’ I hear that and I think, ‘Well, screw Sonny Rollins. Where I want to go is beyond Sonny Rollins. Way beyond.’””
Sonny Rollins, colossus of jazz saxophone, dies aged 95 | Sonny Rollins | The Guardian
“Globally, the number one reason people say they go to the office isn’t to do their best work — it’s because they’re required to.”
Blueprint for a Better Office – Steelcase
If you’re a music artist check out Subvert as a cooperative-owned marketplace to sell directly to listeners (the platform itself is owned by the community who use it).
Some wicked Artemis II Mobile Wallpapers – NASA.
Thank you again and please do get in touch with any ideas / comments / insights / suggestions etc. plus encourage others who care about ‘unlocking creative productivity by gathering humans effectively’ to subscribe also: