Patterns & Metaphors
Image development
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Image creation attempts to create for an organization as a whole, as well as for the body gathered in a conference, shared jargon, experiences, mental pictures and assumptions. This "common memory" serves as a basis for continuing dialogue and communication.
Image creation aims to develop for any group a "common history". This simply means that the group has, in addition to their varied experiences of the development of the effort in which they are engaged, some threads of common understanding of the origin and intent of this effort.
Image creation steers between several tensions. First, images are both based in real facts but they are also a motivating interpretation of the facts. Avoid trying to create motivation on the basis of something other than the objective data about the situation. Even the most dreary state of things can be articulated in a way that allows the group to grasp it and move on into the future.
Secondly, images must be both applicable to the whole group, but also specific. Beware of both the universal abstractions which mean equally little to anyone, and the glorification of one local example at the cost of everything else.
Thirdly, images need to be complex enough to hold the reality which people experience: simple black-and-white divisions have little impact in the present period. At the same time, they must be simple enough to understand easily.
Image creation is presently being explored widely in advertising, but is often strangely unconscious in the process of conference design. Conferencing is however an image-transmission process for which values of simplicity, brevity and clarity are most important to honour.
