The Art of Convening and Organising conversations that matter “What if the reason for all the war and conflict in this world is all the conversations that were never held?� Queen Margaret of Denmark
W hat i f i t wa s e a s y to org a n i s e a l ar g e st rate g i c conve rs at i o n ?
What if you had all the tools and templates you needed to organise a training, conference or strategic conversation in one place? What if you could get the help you needed to realize your dream of bringing a certain group of people together around the issue you find most important? Ever wished you did not have to build everything from scratch when organising a training, strategic conversation or any other participatory process?
background
Idea summary We make it possible for you to hold those conversations that really matter, to make sense of the content and to act on the outcomes. We support event callers, event organisers, facilitators and hosting teams to take ideas from conception to realisation, execution and reflection.
Need A successful training/gathering requires a convener or hosting entity who is responsible for the process; preferably one with the understanding of what is involved in organising such an event. This is often absent, leading to frustration, a failure to hold a successful conversation or to reach a desired outcome.
Solution We have distilled the collective understanding of hundreds of experienced practitioners to offer a complete overview of what is involved in convening conversations. Based on this knowledge, we also offer a range of generic and customised tools and resources to help save your time and streamline the planning of your event.
For whom? This is for anyone planning to gather people together around questions or conversations that matter; anyone from local community groups, to municipalities and government organisations, to experienced, international conference organisers.
T h e Co n c e p t We are developing an integrated tool that helps a convening/hosting team navigate the planning and logistics involved in the organisation of any event. It currently consists of two parts.
PRODUCTS
Services
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A pdf guidebook which gathers together the collective wisdom from hundreds of experienced practitioners within our networks. This will be freely available for download and will link to some of the services/resources that we offer.
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• Creating a budget • Managing payments, invoices etc
• Written guidance/material including FAQs
• Providing contacts to local hosts or calling together a hosting team
• Suggested timelines with key milestones and checklist for preparing a training
• Co-hosting of the training itself
• Budgeting templates, spreadsheets
• Harvesting/social networking platform for continuing the conversation and maintaining the community virtually after the event? • Templates for invitations, emails and invoices • Database of photos and images that can be useful for creating invitations etc.
• Clarifying the call and writing the invitation, • Marketing and promotion
Convening tools.
• Website templates for generic website linked to a payment platform
Support for convening events/conversations
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Bespoke consulting
Who are we? Rowan Simonsen Entrepreneur, father, Kaospilot, educator, nature guide, host and organizer of conversation that matter. James Ede Educator and learning host, explorer, gardener, sustainability practitioner and organizer of conversations that matter Contact Us Email: info@convening.org skype: jamesede or rowan_francis