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.
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, the first week of May was busy. I spent two days in Miami facilitating a Data Modeling workshop. It was difficult but enjoyable. It’s always difficult because I find that Data Modeling really helps a business think through how they’ll manage their business – much more so than process modeling does. It forces the business to think through policies and scenarios more thoroughly. This one, in particular, was tough. It was the culmination of a 3-day workshop in January and two WebEx virtual workshops so the group was finishing the model. They are the type of participants who really think things through – which was great, but required a lot of pushing to get it done. What they ended up with was very good and well thought out. It is especially gratifying because the group had never worked with a Data Model before and was now fully engaged and supportive of the modeling technique. It’d be great if groups took this kind of ownership.
After facilitating the Data Modeling workshop for two days, I came home and then drove to Des Moines, Iowa to speak at an IIBA conference for the Central Iowa IIBA Chapter. I gave two presentations – one on Data Modeling (apparently a theme for the week) and a keynote presentation about why BA’s should be facilitative. The conference went well and was well managed. There were almost 200 attendees. I gave the Data Modeling presentation before lunch. It was well attended, the attendees enjoyed it, and I may have converted some to use Data Modeling more. My keynote presentation on why BA’s should be facilitative was at the end of the conference. It went very well and I think that we’ll see more BA’s using facilitative skills in the future. I have to thank the Central Iowa IIBA Chapter for putting on such an enjoyable conference.
