A few weeks ago my family and friends gathered together to celebrate my birthday. One of the people in attendance was my friend, Keith Branscombe and with him he brought a book he made about his visit to Cuba. I was immediately intrigued and asked him how it all came about. To make a long story short he said it was his first one but that he had another couple that he was still working on.
Snowflake Book Excerpt
On Wednesday, November 10, 2010 I participated in a session that dealt with the practice of Positive Deviance (called PD after this). This conversation was facilitated by Erika Bailey who calls herself a ‘Human Systems Consultant’. I have had the good fortune of talking with her in the past but I never had the opportunity to hear her speak.
The Power of Positive Deviance
Appreciative Inquiry was first conceived in 1986 by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva while they were studying an organization. In this study they interviewed half the organization looking for “problems to be solved” and the other half looking for “miracles to be embraced”. What they discovered was that the information they collected was significantly different in each case.
Appreciative Inquiry Cycle
I have been prodded by several friends to showcase my ‘Family Photo Wall’ but I don’t really like the idea of placing my personal life on display. However a good friend suggested that I write a brief instructional of how I accomplished this task because they knew that I documented the whole procedure. (Actually they were politely poking fun at my sometimes meticulous nature.) Of course they were correct and so the following is a brief instructional on my inexpensive, albeit time consuming, family photo wall.
Photowall Snapshot
My initial thoughts about the day were: “Okay so it is supposed to be the first nice day this week and I am going to BookCamp Toronto 2010 to sit inside Robarts Library all day and listen to and participate in various discussions.” I was conflicted, I really needed a sunny day and I wanted to be outside but thankfully the weather wasn’t nice this day as it turned out to be overcast and even threatened to rain.
Welcome to BoockCamp Toronto 2010
