Patterns & Metaphors
Event planning methods
Template:
The most effective design of an event that will allow people to develop new understandings of a topic is one that is consistent with the experience of the topic. Planning may be experienced in communities in the following sequence. First, any community of people have an operating image of what the future needs to be. This operating image is commonly held but largely unconscious. Second, this operating image is blocked from being realized by real social forms and internalized interpretations of social dynamics. These blocks can be discerned and analyzed. Third, the blocks are capable of providing insights to broad social changes required to reach the operating vision. These broad social changes are articulated as proposals for transforming the blocks into possibilities. Finally, the proposals may be broken down into specific small easily accomplished, independent activities or tactics. Tactics may be directly aimed at doing the proposal or be tangential but supportive of the proposal. The planning process follows the thinking of any planning process of a group of people. This consistency between experience and the flow of the planning event enhances the capacity of people to participate creatively.
