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.

CoLAB for University of Arizona Libraries 2006

This was an experiment to determine if positive results could be generated from running a CoLAB Planning Series within a large organization. It worked! You can tell from the expressions that staff enjoyed learning more about each other; especially those who don't work together. The UAL has 165 employees so you can imagine that there isn't a lot free time to get to know people as this task seems so overwhelming.

CoLAB Planning for Martin County Literacy 2005

CoLAB for Martin County Literacy was really a treat. ASK presented a series of 3 workshops with all kinds of different folks interested in improving literacy within the county. We police officers, correction officers, government officials, school and industry representatives, and nonprofit organizations staff and volunteers. The result was the establishment of an actual Coalition charged to develop some of the ideas that came out of this session. United Way of Martin County was the CoLAB Planning sponsor. Everyone felt they walked away with concrete results.

Website with Information about CoLAB Planning, facilitation, nonprofit management, grants and other services

Take a look at the CoLAB Planning button on the AskBess.net site to see a brief description of the CoLAB Planning Series process and philosophy. Please let me know if you have questions. It is a fun and challenging process where people learn a lot of USEFUL information about each other!

CoLAB Planning Boca Raton + Florida Atlantic University + Jr. League of Boca

These CoLAB Planning workshop participants are engaged in an idea table exercise to mine ideas that are based on existing assets within the organizations represented: Nonprofit Resource Institute (Community Foundation for Palm Beach & Martin Counties); Palm Beach County Resource Center; and the Jr. League of Boca Raton.

CoLAB Planning Broward County 2007

Participants network with each other using a speed dating method that connects people to resources in a large group facilitated process created by Bess de Farber.