NODE is attending the IAF conference in Oxford 18th-20th September at Keble Colleage

The International Association of Facilitators was formed by a group of professionals desiring an avenue for interchange, professional development, trend analysis and peer networking. A formal association was proposed and adopted at a networking conference in Alexandria, Virginia, in January, 1994. More than 70 people signed on as charter members. Since then the IAF has grown to over 1500 members in more than 63 countries. Each year there is a conference organized be the European IAF members.

The IAF conference in Oxford was a great opportunity for the members of the NODE network to gather and to meet old and new friends. There was lots of learning at the workshops we attended and good conversation around the social activities. We found many workshop topics to be inspiring for our own working groups:

Some of the workshop topics:

• Bringing 270 people to consensus
• The facilitator as Coach
• Lessons from a Dog whisperer
• Enjoy work- Laughter workshop
• Stimulating co-creativity
• Decicion making in health care: The challenge for Facilitators
• The secrets of visual information management
• Building resilence
• Enhance your online facilitation with storytelling

Virtual training and demo workshops

 Our first virtual training took place!

4  virtual sessions and small group work to practice between meetings. Goal of the training: to become a virtual facilitator and learn more about different types of meetings and what process is required. We had a lot of fun and in our last Module celebrated a virtual party!

Training description:

More information: Juliane.neumann@grapepeople.de

Feeback from Participants:

Training in September 2009

The training was well planned and organized. Especially I liked the fast answering which was available almost 24/7. This was only possible because of virtuality and due to the possibility to be where ever (California and Berlin) and utilize the time zones ;-) The openness of the facilitators was also encouraging.

Very interesting demosession with participants from Europe, USA, Australia and India. Extremely costeffektive way of exchanging experience and knowledge and thinking together. Great way of enhancing collaboration!

Fantastic workshop! I enjoyed very much the interactive tools and got new ideas how to become a better virtual facilitator as well as a virtual participant. Many thanks to the organizers