Group Jazz hosts and manages the Department of Labor's Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (CFBCI) two-week online forum to engage stakeholders in government, business, faith and community-based nonprofit in creating solutions for the twenty-first century workforce. event website
Lisa Kimball contributes to IAF Group Facilitation Handbook
The International Association of Facilitators Group Facilitation Handbook, published by Jossey-Bass and edited by Sandor P. Schuman, will be released in conjunction with IAF's 10th Anniversary in 2004. This book will provide a broad view of group facilitation including its foundations, methods, applications, and prospects and implications for the future.
The book includes the following chapter by Lisa Kimball, Nedra Weinstein and Trish Silber:
In major universities around the world, in government laboratories, and in interdisciplinary think tanks such as the Santa Fe Institute, scientists have made stunning progress in characterizing the properties of complex, dynamical systems. At its core, this intellectual revolution known as ‘complexity science’ is transforming our understanding of life, its structures, dynamics and its care, while providing new principles for making sense of what is most fundamental in our lives: our relationships with other people and our environment. The focus of this chapter is to connect and apply learning from this new science to the practice of facilitation.
Facilitators often work with complex systems including organizations, large groups, and change processes involving networks of stakeholders. Many of the facilitation practices that ‘work’ – things facilitators have discovered through experience and intuition - can be better understood using this new framework of complexity science. Deepening consciousness of how and why certain practices work (and others don’t) can help facilitators create and choose better processes. handbook web site
How Storytelling Changes Organizations Workshop
April 16-18, 2004 in Washington, DC. Join Larry Prusak, Linda Bickerstaff, Mark Morris, Steve Denning, Doug Lipman, Steve Barnes, Dan Decker, Madelyn Blair and Seth Kahan
for this exciting workshop on organizational storytelling. Group Jazz will support the workshop through digital documentation and a "hot of the presses" daily workshop newspaper. Find out more at Steve Denning's web site.
Lisa Kimball and Amy Ladd Co-Author Chapter
Knowledge Networks: Innovation Through Communities of Practice
Paul Hildreth and Chris Kimble, eds.
Lisa Kimball and Amy Ladd co-authored a chapter titled "Facilitator Toolkit for Building and Sustaining Virtual Communities of Practice." The boundaries of a Community of Practice (CoP) have changed significantly because of changes in organizations and the nature of the work they do. This chapter offers a practical toolkit of best practices, tips and examples from the authors' work training leaders to launch and sustain a virtual CoP including tips for chartering the community, defining roles, and creating the culture that will sustain the community over time.
Now available for pre-order on Amazon
Lisa Kimball Keynotes Conference in Japan
Press Release [pdf]
Lisa Kimball, Executive Producer, Group Jazz delivered a keynote address at the symposium, "Civil Society and the Internet - 20 Years of Networking and the Progress to the Future," held in 4 cities in Japan on 11 - 19 October 2003. Ms. Kimball spoke on “Social Computing: Creating Collaborative Conversations to Support Civil Society Networks.” Based on the concept that civil society is built upon the trust in place between individuals, individuals and organizations, and organizations, the symposium focused on the way to connect people who have like-minded objectives (non-profits, civic organizations, and community activists).
Civil Society and the Internet
Group Jazz sponsors E-Government for All Conference
E-Government for All will bring together leaders in government, the private sector, community activists, academia and civil society to discuss the relationship between e-government initiatives and the need for policy strategies to bridge the digital divide. While e-government presents us with powerful opportunities for making government more accessible and efficient, there are still millions of people lacking both Internet access and the skills to use it effectively. The conference, therefore, will explore what can be done to ensure that e-government initiatives lessen the digital divide rather than widen it. E-Government for All is free and open to the public.
event web site - press release.
Group Jazz and the Central Appalachian Network (CAN)
Group Jazz has been a long-time supporter of the Central Appalachian Network (CAN), a multi-state network working to build a healthy regional economy in Central Appalachia. Click the graphic to connect to their community forums.
Group Jazz webcast with Fannie Mae Foundation's Knowledgeplex
Group Jazz supports Fannie Mae Foundation's webcast and ongoing community of interest on High Impact Community Transformation. See more.
Group Jazz launches Demo Site
Group Jazz launches an e-learning demonstration site that shows just some of the elements that could be included in a workshop, course, or other online learning event. The site showcases Group Jazz's unique ability to manage e-learning environments but also shows new tools, configurations, and design examples that could be applied to any collaboration center. Visit the Demo Center.
Group Jazz's Chautauqua series draws authors
Group Jazz's Chautauqua series has hosted authors such as Jeffrey Stamps and Jessica Lipnick, Terrence L. Gargiulo, Bill Jensen, and Harrison Owen. Howard Rheingold opened the year with his book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Howard Rheingold was followed by Stan Herman, Jeremy Lurey, Patrick Ahern and other contributors to Rewiring Organizations for the Networked Economy. Each Chautauqua opens on the 15th and runs to the end of the month.
Lisa Kimball quoted in Collaborate - The Magazine for Workplace Solutions article
Access and flexibility
Group Jazz (Washington, D.C.; www.groupjazz.com) specializes in face-to-face or online collaboration. Lisa Kimball, founder and executive producer, stresses that successful new collaboration technology will match how customers want to work.
"We should be looking for new trends in how people are working together in organizations and see where communications technologies can support those changes," says Kimball. "For example, the boundaries between teams, departments, functions, and even organizations are becoming more permeable to include all the stakeholders in a project. That means it no longer works to design collaborative environments that require participants to have proprietary software, because you may be working with people with different brands of computers, different kinds of access, and different desktop environments. It doesn't matter how nifty the features are if all the users can't access them," she says.
According to Kimball, new technologies will not only enable workers to use the access methods that they choose, such as wireless devices, but will also "make it easier for us to move seamlessly between all modes of interaction. It should be a lot easier to write on a whiteboard or a napkin and scan that drawing into an ongoing online discussion or take key elements of an online discussion and pop them into a decision-support structure that can be projected on the wall during a face-to-face meeting. It's not so much that we need new technology features, but that we need the mechanisms to pull the disparate pieces together."
She also says that new technologies will be less dependent on large-scale implementation in the future. "More and more people are working independently and as part of small businesses. So the model where there's a big corporate information technology shop that is supporting a big technology infrastructure is irrelevant to them. I expect (and hope) that will mean more and more services aimed at this market," she says.
Read the article
Group Jazz's Lisa Kimball and Emily Reich attend OSonOS
The Tenth Annual Worldwide Open Space Practitioners' Conference takes place November 9-12, 2002 near Melbourne, Australia. Check out the Group Jazz OsonOS Video Project featuring interviews with Lisa Heft, Kia Afcari, Lisa Kimball, and Amy Ladd.
Group Jazz hosts Organizational Development Network (ODN) Online Pre-Conference
In conjunction with the Organizational Development Network's 2002 Annual Conference "Cultivating Adaptive Systems: The Nature of Organizational Development," Group Jazz hosted an online pre-conference workshop.
The online environment enables attendees to "preview" Conference materials and concepts from the speakers. The virtual workshop includes a facilitated dialogue, interaction with presenters, and the opportunity for attendees to share their own experiences and perspectives. Whether they are looking to get a handle on the basics or get up to speed on what's current, this is a chance to get a jump-start on Conference networking, insights and questions.
For more information about conference eWraps, check out events page.
CivicNet '02: September 18 - October 2, 2002
Group Jazz hosts CivicNet '02, a two week world-wide, online event bringing together the global networks of people, resources, and practices that put information and communication technology (ICT) to work to sustain economic development, enhance quality of community life and engage stakeholders in decisions that matter. Group Jazz's Lisa Kimball co-chaired the event with Richard Civille, co-editor of the Community Technology Review.
http://www.civicnet02.net/
Group Jazz sponsors the Rolling Requiem
In just under five months, hundreds of groups and tens-of-thousands of volunteers from all around the world came together to plan the Rolling Requiem, a world-wide musical commemoration of September 11th. (http://www.rollingrequiem.org) Organizers and supporters gathered with their counterparts from other countries in an online planning space to coordinate activities, share materials and ideas, and offer support.
The online community welcomed all those around the world who added their voices and opened their hearts to this event. We created a "Global Cafe," where people could share some of their sentiments and experiences with this magnificent event and talk about what the Rolling Requiem means to them as an organizer, musician, or fan.
Case Study: Rolling Requiem: World-wide project planning space
Press Release: Rolling Requiem Website Brings Choirs Worldwide Together:Collaborative online environment provides valuable communications tools. August 8, 2002
