shift and share

We explain our approach to facilitation as coming from the roots of the word: to make easy. This really runs back to the roots of the method, which is grounded in part by the writings of Christopher Alexander and his concept of patterns in architecture which either encourage or inhibit a natural flow. It’s a […]

This week we wrapped up a session in Detroit working with New Paradigm, IBM and an automotive client to help put together Enterprise 2.0 enabled solutions for their enterprise and partners. Leading up to the session, there was a good deal of thought back and forth as to which tools we should use to put […]

Maybe it’s just me, but I derive a lot of inspiration from food, and do some of my best thinking in the kitchen. And so it was, on the weekend, when I found myself trying out a new mortar and pestle (much different from the other two I own!) that I started thinking through what […]

In whatever spare moments I can muster, I’ve been reading Christopher Alexander’s brilliant book, The Timeless Way of Building. I find it overwhelming. Brilliant. Most of all, it has raised my appreciation of environments and how they affect interactions. Needless to say, then, I have had Alexander’s words ringing in the back of my head […]

If you’ve maintained a steady pulse over the past few years, you have – no doubt – heard a bunch about Web 2.0. It slices, it dices…it enables mass collaboration…etc. But what if you wanted to actually do something with this nebulous thing we call the read/write web? That’s exactly the challenge we have for […]

I knew the DesignShop process was patented, of course, but it’s eye opening to see the actual patent itself. If you’ve got the time, this is pretty much the most lucid description of the process and its components that I’ve seen.

We know that having time to sleep on something often gives us perspective, but this article in the New York Times goes a long way to pull together some of the research on why that is. It offers a lot of specific insight into the idea that a good deal of information sorting takes place […]

It’s very easy to get into a pattern of how things are done, and I’ve found that especially applies to graphic facilitation. It’s easy to get spoiled by our six-foot-tall whiteboards everywhere…what happens if you need to give a “scribing experience” in a boardroom? While I’ve used butcher paper in the past, I’ve settled on […]

I’ve been reading Jeff Hawkins’ book On Intelligence, and have been itching to put up a post about it…trouble is, that a quick review really wouldn’t do justice to all that’s in there and all the touchpoints the book has with our process. One of the concepts in the book that has gotten me thinking […]