CoLAB Planning for SDKE: Sonoran Desert Knowledge Exchange

You can't believe how many people and organizations are working on advocating, educating, researching and sustaining the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and Mexico. The University of Arizona Libraries brought some of these folks together to explore the possibilities of connections and leveraging of assets.

It doesn't matter where we live or the subject of our life's work: creating communities of practice is the wave of the future for a variety of reasons. We have more information than ever before, but we are missing the in-person connection that gives us quick real-time information and an indication of mutual interest. If I had all the time in the world, I'd just be interested in interviewing people about their passions, interests, learnings, wisdom, assets, networks, and more. I'm wondering if all of this information is making us more isolated? The conversations are what spark creativity, especially if you have the right people in the room. These are the one's who self-select participation. If they show up, then that's the first step toward discovering the hidden potential in the room and community!

CoLAB Planning Team Collaboration Activity

What you see in these images is the team building activity that requires CoLAB participants to build a newspaper sculpture. One of the participants on the team observes and takes notes. This activity illustrates how participants choose to plan or not, communicate or not, laugh or not, work or not, etc. These choices are then analyzed in comparison to the production of the sculpture. You have to remember, these folks have never worked together in this way. They may know each other but by working in this activity, collaboration theories must be applied to be successful. Needless to say, this was a BLAST! The energy was focused and productive. We learned so much about how different people approach a challenge based on the combination of assets at the table, communication and planning processes.