We held our first IAF Chicago Chapter Event on December 9th. I want to thank Gerald Haman, of Solution People for donating the space – Thinkubator in Chicago – for our first event. Those of you who attended, I’m sure, found the space to be a wonderful experience – not to mention having amazing views of the Chicago Skyline (see photos that follow). I also want to thank:
• Kelly Ross and Margaret Sullivan for their efforts in setting up the event.
• Paul Collins and Dan Heck for getting the word out via the Midwest Facilitator’s Network. Paul also got us in contact with Gerald Haman.
• Lee Crumbaugh and David DeWitt for their help in setting up the IAF Chicago Chapter – legally and fiscally so that we could pay for the event.
• Sean Rush and Alvaro Rush for taking care of the venue, food, and logistics.
• The Solution People for their help with the logistics, etc. at the event.
• Everyone else for attending, participating, and bringing their colleagues.
We had 34 people attend the event. The event ran from 4:00 until 7:00 and people networked until about 8:00. I kicked it off with an exercise to gather ideas on how to ensure appropriate solutions – both from the Facilitator and from the client. Rocky Romero guided us through Business Modeling. We concluded with discussion about what we learned and about our next event. Some items of note:
• Our next informal meeting is on January 20th.
• Our next event is March 23, 2012. The topic, time, and venue are yet to be determined – we could use volunteers to help set this up.
• We will hold elections in March for the positions of President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Events Director. Send me your nominations and we’ll plan for the elections in February. All positions are for a one-year term.
That’s about it for now. I’ll keep you posted about our upcoming meetings and events. All y’all have a wonderful Holiday Season and a very Happy New Year. See y’all in 2012.
The IAF Chicago Chapter has its first event coming up on Friday, December 9th. The event is from 4:00 pm until 7:00 pm. It’s being held at The Thinkubator Innovation Center on 312 N. May Street, Suite 6D, Chicago, IL 60607.
This event should be very exciting. The topic of the event is Creating the Appropriate Solution to Ensure Success. We will begin with an exercise to draw out ideas from the attendees about what they’ve encountered and/or done about creating appropriate solutions. After that, Rocky Romero will step the attendees through the use of Business Model Canvas to design solutions to enable you to help clients create appropriate solutions. We’ll finish with an Open Space exercise to explore the topic in more detail. This event will be totally interactive and attendees will be experiencing ideas more than just hearing about them. Join us for this exciting event.
I’ve been busy – settling in to our new apartment and working to establish the IAF Chicago Chapter.
We first met at DePaul in Chicago on July 26th. Nine people attended and we defined our Mission, began work on our by-laws, and our first event – for this fall. We also decided to hold three major events – that last up to a day in length – and hold monthly informal breakfast meetings. Initially these breakfast meetings are to establish the Chapter, but later on, we’ll have specific topics to discuss. The breakfast meetings are open to anyone.
The initial meeting lasted 2 hours and was very productive. We have a great core of members – all of whom took work to do. I’m thrilled that everyone stepped up – thank you.
On August 26th, we held our second meeting. We met at Au Bon Pain at 7:30 am in the Chicago Loop. We had 10 people attend the meeting. Our by-laws are looking pretty good and should be approved soon. This meeting lasted 90 minutes and was very productive. Our fall meeting is tentatively scheduled for early November and it’ll be a 3-hour meeting, most likely from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. I’ll keep you posted when we have a specific date, time, and location.
I’ll keep you posted about developments as they occur. If you live in the Chicago area or are near enough, join us. The people involved are excited about the opportunities with the Chapter – it looks to be a great group.
Here is a video of the Community Outreach Award that I presented to Gil Brenson-Lazan from South America. Gil has been a member of the IAF for many years and we’ve known each other since about 1995. This was a special award for Gil’s contributions. The award was accepted by Gil’s good friend and colleague, Lenny Diamond of Global Facilitators Service Corp (GFSC).
Well, I spent last week at the IAF North America Conference in Chicago. It was a very busy week, but met a lot of people and accomplished a lot. It was also great to see people who I don’t get to see very often.
We had our board meeting on Monday and Saturday. It was a lot of work, but we managed to make some significant progress in transforming the association to position it for the future. I’ll add more as we make the information public.
I also had the opportunity to watch, participate, and facilitate in three “Fishbowl” sessions. This was a new concept this year – live action, real client, observed workshops.
Jo Nelson facilitated the Logan Square Neighborhood Association – 8 women from Logan Square in Chicago. They developed internal guidelines about how to conduct their meetings more effectively. It was interesting watching Jo – she has been facilitating for quite a number of years.
Gary Austin facilitated an “IAF Flipchart on the Future” – a workshop with 14 past and present board members developing ideas about how to make the association more relevant to organization who hire Facilitators. What made this special is that Gary was stuck in London because of the Iceland Volcano. He had to facilitate via Skype with Nadine Bell being his “avatar” in Chicago with Bernie Fredette and Tammy Adams being the mechanical parts to move the laptop so Gary could see and to hang flip charts. It went remarkably well – both the workshop and the last minute use of technology. It will become a pattern for future conferences. The ideas from the workshop were brought to the board and will be incorporated into our planning.
Then I facilitated the IIBA chapters from Wisconsin in developing a plan for their 2010 Business Analyst Development Day (WI BADD) in October. I had 15 participants (all business analysts) define the purpose, audience, expectations, tracks, and potential topics for the event. All this in 2 1/2 hours! It was quite a session and all enjoyed it. It was also the first time that my parents were able to watch me work. I also had Sean document and Alvaro and Millie watched with my parents – just a bit of pressure! I wouldn’t have missed it.
Well, off to continue working. By the way, if you have any old pictures you wish to share, please email them to me and I’ll post them on the blog .
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