Friday 27 September 2013

Let's all do popup training




People's Summit, Rio+20

I want to run pop-up training. Here today, gone tomorrow. You’ve heard of popup shops, popup galleries, and popup restaurants. Why can’t we do popup training?

Caravans and Castles
I want to run popup training in surprising locations. In a caravan or a castle. Imagine hosting a workshop in one of London’s hidden underground stations. Or one of the nicer airport lounges to help high-flyers combat the feelings of hopelessness in transit? Or on the platform of a new Boris bus. “Hop on, what’s your name? Hop off, nice to meet you”.

Environmentally Friendly and Unsustainable
The glorious thing about popup training is that it is totally unsustainable in an environmentally friendly way. Practically any space will do. No expensive technology or structural alterations required. No discernable impact on the environment, and nothing left behind.

Open Space Rules
I wouldn’t feel guilty about doing training with no lasting impact. Popup training is not meant to last. In fact, the rules are very similar to Open Space:

  1. Whoever come are the right people.
  2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
  3. Whenever it starts is the right time.
  4. When it’s over, it’s over.

Popup Training at the People’s Summit, Rio+20
This is just silly, you say. Well, I can tell you, I’ve done popup training, very successfully, at the People’s Summit in Rio, with a little help from my friends. The training space was a popup tent with a roof and no walls, like those flimsy efforts that make gardens look summery. We had some tables, and chairs, and we staked out our territory with a circle of chairs. We made friends with the local radio station who were doing live broadcasting in a bigger tent. They even lent us a microphone and loudspeaker, so people could hear what I was saying. People came: some students, a lady with a pink bag, and a very young boy. We played a game of catch with juggling balls. More people came to watch, and then joined in. We started a bit late. Three people in curiously anatomical tiger costumes did an exotic dance in front of our tent. Somehow I held people’s attention with the game, until it felt that we were done. Some people stayed to talk. Others melted away. When it was over, I felt good.

Popup Training Satisfaction Ratio
What does this say about popup training? The feeling of satisfaction after, was greater than the size of the event. And I have run large-scale, resource intensive training events, where the feeling of satisfaction was considerably less than size of the event. That's why I want to run popup training in surprising places. The people who come will be the right people. Whatever we do will be the only thing we could have done. Whenever it starts will be the right time, and when it’s over, it will definitely be over.

Sunday 15 September 2013

When I grow tired of London



The house that squares up to the mountains
I’m going to live in a manse in the Scottish Highlands, within striking distance of a Victorian railway station, with glass canopies and pillars with cast iron flowers. I want an honest granite house that squares up to a view of mountains and water. Fit for a minister, his wife, four children, and domestic, the manse has grounds (unmaintained), outhouses (unconverted), and fishing rights (mainly pike). The chimneys lean towards Charles Rennie Mackintosh, but the architect is unknown. The rooms are generously proportioned, and sparsely furnished. There are more bedrooms than a bachelor could need, and not quite enough bathrooms.

The manse is set well back from the road, invisible to traffic on the A9. On rare days when the clouds have lifted, the view of the Cairngorms makes you want to stop and stare. There is no heating to speak of, and lighting fires between March and October is forbidden. There are potholes in the unmetalled track to deter visitors. I am furious when intruders come to picnic by the river. The midges drive them away.

I will have a manservant called Duncan who seldom speaks. Duncan does everything. He runs the house, grows vegetables, chops wood, and fixes the car. Duncan knows what I am thinking before I do. Duncan reads books about the Second World War, and keeps a firearm that he knows how to use.

I will drive a beaten up second hand car, a Bristol, or some classic tourer that has not been driven by James Bond. For entertainment I drive recklessly into Inverness, and drink gin at the Station Hotel. I post letters in the antique post box. Sometimes I enjoy myself too much to drive home. The hotel staff, who all know me, arrange parking for the car, and a bed for me.

I am on speaking terms with my distant neighbours, most of whom could be extras in the Carroll / Donat version of ‘The 39 Steps”. We hail each other at the annual Highland Gathering, and, more often, at Tesco’s in Inverness, when I am stocking up on malts, and other essentials.

People bracket my name with Fitzroy Maclean, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Compton McKenzie. I have Whisky Galore in my cellar.  I write prickly prose and poetry in 72 page notebooks bequeathed to me by Muriel Spark from the stock she acquired from James Thin in Edinburgh. People think I am writing a great work. I will never complete it.

Increasingly, I am absent from the manse. People say I am doing something ‘hush hush’. In fact, I am sailing around the Mediterranean with a troupe of dancers from the Royal Ballet, drinking gin martinis with friends up at their villas. I repay their hospitality with advice on what to plant in a hot border. When it comes to drought tolerant plants, I am a fount of knowledge. Small wonder I never made much of the bog garden at the manse. I’m going to give up the manse. It’s just not a realistic proposition.

Tuesday 3 September 2013

Serendipity at work


Cows discovering their sense of purpose at Buitenwerkplaats.

“What is serendipity?”, said the handsome young Dutchman, opposite whom the waitress had seated me. I didn’t dare ask him, myself, if I could sit at his table. He was too good-looking, too blond, and too alone, to be approachable. It was the waitress who decided I should sit at his table.

Serendipity, I hazarded, “is a coming together of random events that produces unexpected and happy results. Our meeting,” I continued, “is serendipitous, because we are discovering so many things in common, and the chances of us sitting at the same table, in the same cafĂ©, tonight, must have been very small.”

Going with the flow

Have you ever spent time in a Dutch Polder surrounded by water? The cows and the sheep graze on the greenest squares of grass, and the herons flop from ditch to ditch. High above the houses, cyclists and barges sail by. The sound of the water lapping in the canal can be alarming if, like me, you are more used to the noise of traffic. Why does the water from the canal not drain into the fields, I asked? “Our dykes are extremely well built”, said my host. 

Discovering our purpose

Last month, I spent a week living and working at Buitenwerkplaats, an architect designed space for people who want to reflect, plan, create and do. You can browse the books, interpret the art, and lose yourself in the watery landscape. The furniture, like the food, is carefully curated. 

Buitenwerkplaats encourages intimacy. Guests can float between indoor and outdoor spaces. Meals are tethered to tables under the trees, or moored to the boardwalk by the pool. There are no barriers between the people who work there, the groups who come for a week, and the guests who come for a day's thinking time. I connected with the lady who changes the beds, the poets who came to plan, and the couple who are writing their first novel together.

Buitenwerkplaats has a ‘sense of place’ that I believe is key to helping people to connect with themselves, and with each other. And in the process of making discoveries about ourselves and other people, we may discover a sense of purpose. The day after I left Buitenwerkplaats, I went to Anne Frank’s House in Amsterdam. This is a quote from Anne’s diary that I read on the wall.

“I know what I want, I have a goal, I have opinions, a religion
and love.”

Anne Frank, 11 April 1944

Later that day, I met the young Dutchman who asked me to define serendipity. Just like that. 

Serendipity

I didn’t mean to write this blog, today. I didn’t plan to go to yoga, this morning. But I woke in time, splashed my face with water, and went with the flow. And after we had breathed, and bent, and stretched, our teacher read these words to us:

“Water is fluid, soft and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.”

Lao-Tzu, Chinese philosopher (604 BC - 531 BC)

And I thought, serendipity. I need to write this blog today about embracing fluidity and making connections and discoveries that I hadn’t looked for. And I hope it will make sense to all the wise people who, quite by accident, inspired me to write it.

2-3 September 2013


Oxford Online Definition of Serendipity
The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way

1754: coined by Horace Walpole, suggested by The Three Princes of Serendip, the title of a fairy tale in which the heroes ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’