A year in review with Exhibit Change

Dear 2013,

It has been a fantastically great year of learning, growing and sharing. We are spending time this week thinking about all we have done, what has come of the year and where we are headed. Looking back at how we were Ringing in 2013, it is nice to see that the resolutions we made stuck and now we are ready to say goodbye again and bring on 2014.

This year, we have had the extreme pleasure of working with some fabulous collaborators, convening spaces for conversation, working to really embrace and celebrate failures as learning opportunities and having way too much fun.

As the final weeks of 2013 speed by, we are trying to tie up lose ends and working to do it with flare and perhaps put a bow on it.

Thanks for bringing us these highlights:

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[section title=”AMAZING CONFERENCES”]

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[section title=”FACILITATED WORKSHOPS”]

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[section title=”PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT”]

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[section title=”DESIGN THINKING TRAINING”]

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[section title=”AND…”]We moved, did Strategic Planning and Colin came on board :)[/section]
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Phew!

What an amazing year, I will remember the network of collaborators, educators and friends who have supported us through, a focus on learning to get to failure and beyond, and ultimately that we are connecting the dots in ways I could never have imagined. I am so excited for what 2014 is going to bring.

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[section title=”IN 2014, WE RESOLVE TO”]

  • celebrate our failures
  • commit to being a learning organization
  • practice our craft
  • live the process
  • make meaning of our work

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See ya later 2013, we will remember you fondly!

Jenn

c/o the Exhibit Change team

EC birthday party

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spending some time on us

This fall we embarked on strategic planning for Exhibit Change with our new core team, Colin and I, and our Makers, Terrence, Emily, Clara and Nisha to spend 1.5 days thinking through where we are headed. This is something we have tried to do before and always stumbled after the initial steps. This time around we felt like we needed to invest in a different way to get the most value out of the process. It was a pleasure to get to spend these days with some of my favourite people, focus our brains and not surprisingly I learned a lot about what it is like to be facilitated. 

After a few failed attempts at facilitating ourselves, we finally brought in Natalie Currie to help us out with our strategic planning. Much like a hair dresser trying to cut their own hair, we would have missed the hard to reach spots and only been able to see one perspective. Having a facilitator in the room let us concentrate on the content and not on the process (which was new for us) and such a relief. Natalie was fully warned walking into the room that we are a silly bunch and that her job was to keep us focused and reduce the number of tangents we went on – of course a few still got away from us.

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Natalie used a few different sneaky facilitation tricks on us to get to some of the stuff below the surface. We designed a movie script for 10 years from now, an empathy map of our clients, ranked our priorities and came up with an intense 90 day action plan. Each day we left completely mentally exhausted. 

Moving forward, I am so proud of all that we have accomplished this year and totally “scare-cited” as Natalie would put it for next year. We have big plans for 2014, we are turning 5.