Anecdote: The Prato Dialog

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8/10/06 |

The Prato Dialog

By Shawn. Filed in Communities of practice.

I'm on route home from Florence (at Heathrow) and I just wanted to get down some thoughts about the Prato Dialogue I've just attended. Eight CPSquare members met for 3 days and we engaged in sustained conversation supported by the bare essentials: a couple of flips charts, chocolate, good food and wine and plenty of humour. It was a real joy. Think about those times when you've attended a conference and you had great conversations in the corridors or at morning and afternoon tea. Well Prato was that without all the boring powerpoint presentations that keep you away from the conversations. Actually, we talked a lot about conversations. I proposed that conversations were waning in organisations and we pondered why and what might be done to turn the tide. We recorded and documented every session so expect to see the details over at the Prato Dialogue blog. Our major theme, understandably since it was a CPSquare event, communities of practice.

I think we were blessed with an excellent group of people. All were great listeners, with an array of practical experiences and theoretical knowledge. There was also diversity with each one of us coming from a different country, some were old mates while others, like me, were new to the group. And despite being a new comer I didn't feel like an outsider. Some of the guys are now heading off to the communities informatics conference in Prato to run a workshop based on the ideas that were covered during our conversations. I believe they will be running a Most Significant Change session to show how this technique can be used to evaluate a community of practice.

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