2023 Day 2

Flow of Day 2

Welcome and framing
Morning Meta Harvest
Check-in
Teach: Foundational Patterns
Solo Walk
World Café
Lunch
Teach: 2 Loops
Collective Story Harvest
Village News
Check-out

Gallery

Story of Day 2
by Daniel Pargman

The day 2 check-in asked us to be silent, to close our eyes, to breathe, to relax, to turn our attention inwards and to focus on and move our bodies slowly and with small deliberate movements. For a very verbal persona like me, it is always nice to be reminded of the fact that I have a body and that my body has other functions than just to carry my head around from one place to the next!

This was followed by a walkthrough of David Snowden’s Cynefin framework with the four quadrants Clear/Simple, Complicated, Complex and Chaotic.

For me (being a researcher and a socially clueless nerd), it felt natural to place myself in the complicated quadrant. It also felt like AoH practitioners are “supposed” to stand in the complex quadrant, but I have definitely been complicated for the most part of my life, but have personally moved closer to the complex quadrant since I took Art of Hosting to heart a few years ago. It was a bit hard to get an overview, but I do believe the complex quadrant was most popular followed by the complicated quadrant. My own contribution here is a quote by computer science guru Alan Kay who said that “simple things should be simple, difficult things should be possible”. He was talking about computer programming languages but it’s equally applicable to writing a textbook and to many other situations in life.

The Cynefin framework then morphed into the Chaordic model with Order, Structure, (creative) Chaos and (destructive) Chamos. I think things moved a bit quick in that transition, but it just so happens that you can see my one hour long “docent lecture” on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGTSv6zw7P4) where the Chaordic framework is the leitmotif/theme that holds the whole talk together.

The first 10 minutes of the talk is however about the Homo Colossus concept that I’m going to write a popular science book about this summer. The remainder of the talk is among other things also a practical demonstration of why I started to do stand-up last year (answer: because I can not not have fun and make jokes even when the topic is supposed to be serious).

Before lunch we also had a solo walk and did a World Cafe exercise where the point of departure was the question “How are we playing our part in the thriving of life?” My favorite take-away from the third table was “Live your life. Fertilize.”. Explanation: strive to fertilize the world with your ideas and your actions to the best of your ability - and then complete the cycle of life by fertilizing earth with your (hopefully poison-free) body.

The glorious 90-minute lunch break was followed by Helle’s Two Loops about how the old paradigm over time is overtaken by the new paradigm and by the Collective Story Harvesting and the calling question “How are you working towards the future you want to see”. There were eight designated storytellers and I listened to (and witnessed) Mansi’s story but there were several other stories I wish I could have heard… There were seven “lenses” that people used to listen to concentrate on particular aspects of the story and my favorite was “magic” and the (for some) easier-to-accept paraphrase “unintended outcomes” (coincidence, chance, fortuity, serendipity etc.).