The Next Idea 2004 Program Descriptions

Program Index (in alphabetical order)

1. Beyond PowerPoint: Developing Presentation Skills That Rock (Amy Swisher)
2. Consciousness and Sound Vibrations (Laraaji)
3. Corporate Creativity: An Oxymoron? (Paul Westgate)
4. CPS: A Creative Problem Solving Primer (Tim Hurson)
5. Creative Facilitation Through Improv (Michelle James)
6. The Creative Side of Conflict (Charlotte Kells)
7. Foursight: The Breakthrough Thinking Profile (Amy Shanahan, Sarah Cook)
8. Innovation Theatre: Achieving Mastery In the Wild and Wonderful World of Innovative Change (William Sturner)
9. Inventive Thinking: An Introduction to TRIZ (André deZanger)
10. The KAI of Facilitation (Bill Olsen)
11. Listening Creativity into Being (Leslie Becknell)
12. Living Your Style (Judith deZanger)
13. Low-tech Facilitation Skills That Achieve Hi-tech Results (Sean Brady)
14. The Modern "Socratic Method" (Win Wenger)
15. Networking on Your Feet (Bill Olsen)
16. Metaphorical Mind Maps (Charles Markert)
17. Process Mapping (Robert Bick)
18. Quantum Thinking: How to Figure Out What's Really Going On (Tim Hurson)
19. Recharged... Resilient...Relaxed: Stress Management (Mary Ann Smorra)
20. Remembering Who You Are (Adam Marx)
21. Salon: Restoring the Lost Art of Conversation (Newell Eaton, Allie Middleton)
22. The Shamanic Traditions and Consciousness (Michael Madden)
23. The Tao of Creativity (Judith deZanger, André deZanger)
24. Team Building (Ted Callisto)
25. The Unseen Executive: The Internal Critic In Management Decisions (Jeff Olma)
26. What's my EQ? (Starr Cline, Jerome Cline)

Program Descriptions (in random order)

The Creative Side of Conflict
Charlotte Kells M.Ed. MS
The Chinese symbols for Conflict represent both "Danger" and "Opportunity". When we are deeply engaged in a challenging interaction, it is often difficult to see the opportunity at hand. We rarely identify the cause of conflict being our own perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes, about the other person and ourselves. This workshop will offer us a new, creative perspective on the other side of conflict management. It will provide us with some practical tools and strategies for reframing conflict and for reaching creative collaboration in our most challenging relationships. Participants will identify their own perceptions and mind sets which interfere in resolving important conflicts in their lives. They will learn tools and strategies for reframing conflicts in order to generate true win-win resolutions.
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The Tao of Creativity: Spontaneity, Beauty and Nature
Judith deZanger Ph.D.
André deZanger Ph.D.
"Just as Something and Nothing combine to become More / We are helped by the Void to create the Form." --Lao Tzu
Discover what's really important to you and how these values shape your Tao, your "Way" or "Path" in life. Explore the ideas of Lao Tzu (600 BC) and the Taoism of Creativity. Lao Tzu wrote 81 poems about finding your "Way" or "Path". They emphasize Listening to Your Own Voice, Being in the Moment, Effortless Action, Enjoying the Journey rather than the Destination, and the Importance of Nothingness. Explore these ideas as they apply to your own creativity and your purpose or path in life. We will experience these ideas through art, nature, and poetry. Learn and use the Empathic Metaphor, "becoming one with", for gaining new insights and exploring your intuition. You will leave this session with a purpose statement in haiku form, a deeper appreciation of your own beauty and creativity, and an understanding of the Tao philosophy as it relates to creativity.
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Networking on Your Feet
Bill Olsen CPF
You'll meet a lot of new people this weekend. Will you remember their name? What they do? Will they recall yours? We will learn how to effectively yet creatively network, on no notice. This is a fun, interactive workshop to become an effective, networking communicator. We'll cover some differently creative principles. This includes no-notice networking and deliberate techniques that make you memorable to others. We will practice these techniques, laugh, recall names and maybe create some business. As a result you will become more confident when meeting new people, or when bumping into bosses, clients, sponsors, and others. You'll learn names, fast. And you'll present yourself so they remember yours.
Note: Bring business cards, if you have them!
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Remembering Who You Are
Adam Marx
Nelson Mandela has said that we are all children of God, and on good days we know the truth of that. However, we often forget our greatness; we get caught up in our every day concerns, and let even small setbacks and critics fool us into thinking that we are less than we are, personally and professionally. In this session, we will first reconnect to our higher selves (a worthy goal in itself). We will then explore the situations where each of us forgets about our greatness, and finally we will each create personalized "reminder strategies", so that even in our darkest hours we will remember who we truly are, and act from there. Participants will come away with a personalized process to access their highest self, any time and anywhere.
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Innovation Theatre: Achieving Mastery In the Wild and Wonderful World of Innovative Change
William Sturner Ph.D.
Enter the Theatre of Innovation--where you will enact the major roles of the Master Innovator: centered, visionary, motivated, competitor, organizer, team-builder--and a playful person of enormous good will and humor. Test your capacity for these crucial roles through a series of highly experiental and interactive exercises, including drawings, games, mirroring, fairy tales and group theatre. Result: Living and spirited applications to real-live situations, self-monitoring through reflection and self assessment, awareness of one's behavioral repertoire and alternatives for improvement.
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Process Mapping - Discovering what's really going on in order to decide where to go next!
Robert Bick
I find process mapping to be radically illuminating for my clients and for me. Process mapping is a multi-faceted tool that succinctly describes all the elements of a process -- any process (and everything is a process!). It is critical for improving processes at a macro or a micro level. Process mapping is the fundamental tool of my consulting practice. It forces me to ask questions which address the whole spectrum of any issue. This is an interactive seminar where we will map processes as a group to understand the tool and then we will select specific applications for groups of participants.
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Living Your Style - Finding Your Purpose
Judith deZanger Ph.D.
"There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all time, the expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist." -- Martha Graham
We all have a desire to live to the fullest -- to find our purpose -- to follow our "Passionate Path". You will experience several creative processes which will help you discover and energize your Passionate Path. Creative self expression takes us into a domain of consciousness which is the source of creativity as well as of inner wisdom and self discovery. Passionate Path means living a fuller, richer life in alignment with your strengths and talents. It is about allowing your uniqueness to be fully engaged in life. It is living in the world of possibility which nourishes the soul, rather than in the world of measurement. The session will allow your purpose to emerge naturally. In this workshop you will develop a purpose statement in Haiku form which will help you navigate through the world and make choices which will enrich your life.
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The Modern "Socratic Method"
Win Wenger Ph.D.
The Socratic Method is still one of the greatest ideas of all times. The advanced Socratic techniques in this workshop will empower you to be more effective at home, work, and in your personal life. You will realize that you are much brighter than you think. Learn the modern Socratic Method, an accelerated-learning process, and discover how to "Socratize" yourself and each other to gain new insights. Modern Socratic and Self-Socratic methods will help you to facilitate your own and others problem solving abilities beyond one's normal expectations. Experience the "Windtunnel", which may be the simplest and yet most powerful problem solving technique that you have every experienced. Bring a problem or issue you'd REALLY love to get solved. Become a Socrateur for fun and profit. You will come away with a powerful new tool for problem solving, idea generation and a deeper insight into your genius.
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Low-tech Facilitation Skills That Achieve Hi-tech Results
Sean Brady
Groupware such as CoNexus, Concept System, and GroupMind Express are powerful tools for managing large amounts of information and accelerating convergence in facilitated sessions. But what if you do not have access to them? How can you mimic their capability to simultaneously engage meeting participants, maximize participants' productivity, efficiently manage the large amounts of information they generate, and agree on a solution set and path forward? Participants in this interactive session will receive an overview of various groupware technologies and experience facilitative techniques that mimic their effectiveness. Come away with specific facilitative techniques that mimic the power of expensive groupware technologies
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What's my EQ?
Starr Cline Ed.D.
Jerome Cline
Emotional Intelligence is touted to be more important than IQ. Research indicates that its importance in the workplace cannot be underestimated. Emotional intellligence involves knowing oneself and understanding others. Historically, individuals, such as Franklin Delano and Roosevelt and Frank Lloyd Wright have acknowledged the importance of intra personal skills in their lives. Others have written about "smart people" failing because of a lack of personal skills. Brain research indicates that all information is processed through the amygdala or emotional center of the brain. Knowing how to recognize our own emotional states and how to recognize and react to others is critical in the development of EQ. In this session participants will be introduced to the importance of emotional intelligence and begin to evaluate their own personal skills.
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Creative Facilitation Through Improv
Michelle James
Improv takes delivers us into the 'blank canvas' of the Now. As we surrender to the moment, we let go of controls, bound thought systems, and the linear/rational-only mindsets that otherwise inhibit our inner creative wellspring. As we facilitate this for our participants, they experience a deeper level of meaning, learning, and knowing. In this high energy workshop, participants will experience improv and movement-based activities for icebreakers, creating group story, creative problem solving, idea generation and team building to effectively use in business environments. Included will be information and handouts with tips for introducing improv activities in organizational settings, basic principles of improvisation and emergent creativity, 'ways-of-being' for improv effectiveness, and training design guidelines for facilitating these activities and creating receptive, safe, learning environments. Result: The experience of improv techniques to facilitate in business environments, a write up of these techniques, and handouts on facilitating improv for maximum impact.
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Quantum Thinking: How to Figure Out What's Really Going On
Tim Hurson
Our perceptions are mediated both by the acuity of our senses (some see better than others, hear better than others) and by our patterned responses to inputs (resulting from differing values, education, birth order, etc). As such, no two people can perceive the same stimulus the same way. Because our sense of what's going on ALWAYS differs from someone else's, we often fail to communicate effectively. This can be particularly frustrating for teams trying to generate and evaluate creative ideas. Quantum Thinking provides both the insights and the tools to discover the common ground of shared understanding that can help resolve these difficulties.
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The Shamanic Traditions and Consciousness
Michael Madden Ed.D.
This session will introduce participants to the ancient path of the shamanic traditions. These ancient traditions have powerful ways of entering the world of inner knowing and creativity. Through the use of ritual, drums, and the energies of the chakras we will explore our inner world of creative consciousness. Rituals provide us with a structure to explore what we need to let go of, as well as of what we need to let in, in order to express our creativity. Discover the power of connecting our inner world with the outer four directions -- North, South, East and West -- in order to gain access to our natural abilities and strengths. Through the use of these traditions, combined with the language of sound vibration, we will gather and express our beauty in a community of creative explorers. You will come away with tools for tapping into your inner creative energies.
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Listening Creativity into Being
Leslie Becknell
Listening with true curiosity is the most important daily contribution you can make towards generating more creativity and innovation in your organizations, communities, and families. Our default listening is generally through the often unconscious filter of 'I already know, let's see if this idea is right or wrong'. We don't leave room for a truly new idea to emerge in conversation. In this session, we will uncover some of our automatic tendencies and explore some other ways of listening to invite creative breakthroughs. We will use The Conversation Meter from The Center for Authentic Leadership to understand how to spark creativity through conversations at work or at home. In this session you will get an expanded ability to catch yourself in limiting listening modes, develop your ability to shift to generative listening to generate new ideas, and learn the model of The Conversation Meter to assess professional and personal conversations.
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Consciousness and Sound Vibrations
Laraaji
Come experience sound vibrations and their effect on creativity and consciousness. Laraaji will lead us through a number of experiences using music, ancient gongs, our own yogic breath (voice from a very relaxed state) and the sounds of laughter to expand our state of creative consciousness. This workshop will be full of high energy, music, sounds and laughter. You will come away with joy, laughter and a way to tap into your creative self.
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The Unseen Executive: The Internal Critic In Management Decisions
Jeff Olma
In this session, participants will access their internal critic, portray its nature, assess features of its operation, and explore its gate-keeping impact(s) on managerial decision-making and collaboration. Personal reflection and group learning will be employed.
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Problem Solving using Metaphorical Mind Maps
Charles Markert CPF
This session will take you beyond traditional brainstorming and on several brief journeys of applying metaphors to help generate new and unexpected ideas to solve problems. You will focus on the idea generation by using this tool of non-linear organization coupled with pattern-breaking. Come to see it demonstrated and to practice it yourself. Participants will learn how to apply metaphors using a specific tool and appreciate the simplicity of something that may appear complex and difficult.
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The KAI of Facilitation
Bill Olsen CPF
At Creative Retreats like this, as well as the Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) you'll get exposed to many facilitation techniques for Problem Solving, Consensus Building and Strategic Planning. Some facilitation techniques are mild, some are wild and some are waaaaaaay out on the woo-woo scale. Other courses provide a more direct, cook-book or fill-in-the-blank approach to 'Effective Facilitation'. So what? Different strokes for different folks. KAI (Kirton Adpation-Innovation) is the science of how people and entire organizations have different preferences, and how the problems and challenges they face are different. These people and their problems range from mild to wild, from Adaptive to Innovative. Wouldn't it be great if the facilitation techniques you employ fit the people, their organization and the problem? We will explore this and develop some tools to do just that. By the end, you will understand KAI & faciliation concepts, and have fun applying them into a model you can use to select the right tool for the team, the problem and desired result.
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Foursight: The Breakthrough Thinking Profile
Amy Shanahan
Sarah Cook
The Foursight, an innovation tool that was developed by Dr. Gerard Puccio, Department Chair at the International Center for Studies in Creativity, is a styles instrument that lays out four essential steps to innovation and measures your preference for each one. Unlike most other assessments, the peaks and valleys of the Foursight profile point to clear avenues of growth and development. The presenters will administer the instrument, have interactive discussion about style while offering a Powerpoint presentation about the Foursight, and share resources on how others can obtain products. Result: Learn about personal orientation to the innovation process, how teams can enhance their effectiveness by developing an understanding of their profile. Obtain resources to utilize reasonable tool.
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Inventive Thinking: An Introduction to TRIZ
André deZanger Ph.D.
TRIZ is a Russian acronym for the "Theory and Practice of Inventing". It is:
1. a PHILOSOPHY,
2. PROCESS and
3. a set of TOOLS for accelerated the Inventing process.
You will gain an understanding of Triz which can be defined in 10 words: "All systems EVOLVE towards IDEALITY, resolving CONTRADICTIONS and utilizing RESOURCES".
You will play the INVENTIUM® game and learn the "8 most-used" Inventive Principles of Triz and invent a new product during this session. You will learn a number of Evolutionary Trends which will allow you to see into the future and design for it. You will have the opportunity to apply these learnings to back-home problems (Personal, Professional and Organizational). So, think of a problem that you would like to get an answer to and see what this TRIZ technology can help you create.
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Corporate Creativity: An Oxymoron?
Paul Westgate Ph.D. Ch.E.
Companies relentlessly seek new opportunities to grow and to be more productive. The creativity and innovation necessary to identify and develop these opportunities are often hampered by the organizational structure and processes required to drive performance of the existing business. In this session the need for creativity and innovation within the confines of a global corporation will be examined. We will discuss the techniques that have been developed to capture new ideas based on web-based technologies and review its advantages and disadvantages vs. traditional brainstorming. Participants will explore combining existing techniques or using other creative solutions to generate totally new approaches to idea generation. Participants will hear a successful case study and gain insight into ideation techniques used within corporations. Also they will have the opportunity to possibly help develop totally new approaches.
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Salon: Restoring the Lost Art of Conversation
Newell Eaton
Allie Middleton J.D., C.S.W.
Intentional conversation in Salon is an exploration along the continuum of dialogue and open space. Through small group conversation, participants have the opportunity truly to listen and be heard. Techniques of authentic (deep and multi-level) communication will be practiced. This experience is designed to be a conscious contrast to focus groups, councils, study circles and other structured small group formats. The process enables the building of a trusted "container" that supports and allows for a collective unfolding of ideas through a vibrant and energizing exchange. This experimental, yet ancient, approach of group work can be used as a unique, divergent method to generate innovative ideas or simply for its own sake. We consider it to be an essential technology for all levels of facilitators. Participants will feel heard, better able to listen, learn ways to develop new ideas, feel refreshed, rested or recharged.
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Team Building
Ted Callisto
Why Team? How do you build a team? What is a collaborative Team? In this session participants will experience working as a team (teams). We will explore Team Development and roles people play as members of a team through hands-on activities. Participants will also be encouraged to share their own experience with team building. Participants will have resource materials for future reference. Having the experience of teaming in this session, participants will be better able to apply principles dicussed.
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CPS: A Creative Problem Solving Primer
Tim Hurson
Get a taste of the Osborn Parnes Creative Problem Solving Model, developed by Sid Parnes and Alex Osborn, legendary BBDO ad exec and coiner of the term brainstorming. CPS is an invaluable foundation for identifying challenges, generating ideas, and implementing innovative solutions. Tim will lead you through the six stage process, with plenty of time for questions, discussion, and clarification.
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Beyond PowerPoint: Developing Presentation Skills That Rock
Amy Swisher
Get out from behind that screen, ladies and gentlemen, and give your audience good reason to be here live and in person! Tap your creativity to find the sizzle in your message, illustrate with story, open the field wide for discovery, and let the moment unfold. In this session, we will discuss and practice techniques for successful presentation design and delivery that focus on the live relationship between you and your audience: building your capacity to connect, intrigue and motivate to action. You will come away with a greater understanding of how to make the most of the live connection between public speaker and audience.
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Recharged... Resilient...Relaxed: Stress Management
Mary Ann Smorra Ed.D.
Recharged... Resilient...Relaxed...three words that describe the results of this stress reduction workshop! Take a break and experience techniques that will help manage stress in an individual or group context... whether using these strategies for yourself on a personal level or in a professional setting to be used with your students, your staff or your teammates. Relaxation skills, guided imagery and affirmations will be used to quiet as well as to invigorate and focus!
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