I had the lovely honor of stuffing myself in a car with @bear (and some Point A collaborators) and driving down to Central Virginia to attend the Twin Oaks Communities Conference.

The conference (or con as the cool kids say) brought together a number of intentional communities from around the world. It takes place each year at Twin Oaks a nearly 50 year old egalitarian income sharing community. Both @bear and myself think that intentional communities are very important allies for ALC as they typically already have experience in creating and maintaining the kind of culture at the heart of ALC.

On Sunday we hosted a info sharing session in the “Open Spaces” portion of the conference, which was basically like our daily intention setting and offerings practice.

Our session had about 10 people attend. We structured the presentation around a big kanban board with the column headers what we could do, what we will do, what we are doing, and what we have done. As questions came up or new topics emerged we would add them to the board. I love using the kanban to organize these kinds of meetings because it allows me to organize the meeting in a dynamic way while also modeling the tool.

We also used a Game Shifting board to facilitate the meeting space (and model the tool).

It should be said that Bear and I didn’t really “plan” very much of this event, we just shot from the hip and it was awesome!

We covered:

• Played a connective game
• What is ALC?
• Tool: Kanban
• Daily structure
• Weekly cycle
• How do we use this stuff in RL (Real Life) – i.e. how Bear and I used the tools and practices in our daily lives.
• ALC & Experiential learning
• Tool: Set the week
• Tool: Change up Meeting and Community Mastery Board
• What is an ALF?
• Tool: Game Shift

I started by explaining the Kanban, then we moved into a connective game where bear had everyone mill around the space, make eye contact, then start saying hello, then stop and share with a person what you intended to get out of the conference. We then moved into playing “yes lets” where people suggest something to do then everyone says “yes! lets!” and we all do it. Our group stretched, jumped like a kangaroo, stood still in silence, sung a song made up on the spot, touched our toes, and sighed.

After the games we dove into what ALC was and then went over the tools and how we use them in real life. The Game Shifting Board was use to manage how we all interacted fairly successfully. We lead a real life Change Up Meeting using issues with the dish line as an example.

I felt like all this information went over very well and that overall the presentation was great! Later in the event I even stumbled upon a Kanban that someone else had made:

Always the sign of a great success. I got this feedback on Facebook today as well:

I made a kanban today to handle the tasks I needed to accomplish. and I’m hooked. I love it. I can totally see parenting using the whole system…and my children and I using the CMB to bring up with citing issues and providing solutions. I can’t wait to learn more. Please keep me in the loop for any trainings or visitation days. Thanks!!