Waiheke Heartbeat - A community conversation

Many important ideas and feelings were expressed into the circle on Tuesday night, respectfully. As people left the hall to return to their homes and whanau, I sensed a mood of possibility.

Finn MacKesy had come over from the city to facilitate the evening's dialogue, which began with a round of introductions and a quick presentation of global challenges as Finn and I have, along with many others, perceived them. You can view the slides and explanatory notes below.

The three key intentions Finn and I held for this gathering:

• To create a circumstance to support people having the conversations that they want to have with depth of honesty - the conversations were people-led and everyone had ample opportunity to express their views, thoughts and feelings.
• To model and showcase effective tools and processes that support and empower community dialogue - we had a plan to showcase the dialogue process called "Open Space" but the "dialogue Circle" was working and there didn't seem any reason to change that. Next time, we will try another form of dialogue.
• To harvest something that can be shared with the wider community - this article is the harvesting from the event.

To read the rest of this story and view the presentation, please jump over to my blog (I wasn't able to embed the presentation here)