Franklin University is hosting a Change Leadership Symposium on Thursday October 15, 2009 from 11:30-5:00 on the 2nd Floor of Philips Hall (Main & Grant) in downtown Columbus Ohio.

I’m working with the organizers now to determine if there is a good fit for me to lead one of the discussions. I’ll keep you posted in regards to that. Either way I am registered and excited for this important event to happen. I hope to see you there!

[Full information available here and LinkedIn page here]

Change Leadership on the path to Democratic Governance

Initially, the focus for this symposium started as individual topics at the frontier of change leadership. These topics included complexity science as a framework for understanding change, interconnection of change at different scale (personal, organizational, and societal), building community, and managing a portfolio of change. However, as the topics were evaluated it became clear there was a common theme involving the continuing movement into a knowledge era and how individuals choose to structure their relationships as they organize with others.

Within this shift, “Democratic Governance” is starting to surface as an approach to community governance. This approach seeks to involve more stakeholders in the decision-making process and works to overcome conflicts by addressing root causes. Yet, while Democratic Governance normally involves local governing bodies, the same issues are involved in empowering teams and collaboration among organizational stakeholders with different goals.

Therefore, this symposium will examine a number of issues within the framework of the greater change processes underway today. It will seek to build a holistic understanding that incorporates leading edge thinking about change processes. Attendees are expected to come from a range of backgrounds with expertise in different aspects of organizational change and thereby share their knowledge within the framework of building a sustainable model of Democratic Governance.

Adopting new approaches for organizing diverse groups of people, the symposium is designed to be different from traditional conferences and workshops. Collectively, attendees will experience techniques for building a sense of community around common interests and move to deeper levels of learning. Attendees will be encouraged to be active participants by investigating the numerous issues that arise as you scale from small groups with single focus into larger groups bringing conflicting agendas to the table. It is these larger issues that are expected to dominate the symposium dialogue.

Registration fee: $20 includes lunch, afternoon refreshments, and symposium supplies. Contact Dr. Ross Wirth at wirthr@franklin.edu or 614-947-6128 for more information. Profiles of those attending are being organized at http://www.linkedin.com/e/vgh/1865279/

I have times when I feel my ambitions are leading me in a different direction than my current career is headed. With the economy in the state that it is I haven’t had a great deal of success finding a position through interviewing; however, I’m thinking that might not be a bad thing.

At this point I’m starting to figure out that I may well need to start over on my own instead of relying on an employer to give me that direction. Thanks to the website The Art of Nonconformity, particularly their downloadable manifesto A Brief Guide to World Domination, I think I’m getting my purpose together.

I’m working on a couple of questions posed by Chris Guillebeau that I think are really helpful in this mission.

• What do you really want to get out of life?
• What can you offer the world that no one else can?

I’ll keep you posted as I come up with a good and honest answer to these questions. If you have any input I’m always open to some crowdsourcing; even when it deals with my future. Particularly if it deals with my future.

This week has been a tough one; and that’s a fact of life.

There are times in each of our lives when we have a hard week and we start shutting down, saying “life’s not fair”, and wishing away our troubles until we’re blue in the face. I’ve done that in my life too from time to time. That is merely opportunity lost though.

Opportunities come too few and far between to let them slip away like that.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with some really great community leaders at Experience Columbus to discuss growing the number of “Columbus Advocates” and how we might affect this via social media. Before the meeting my head was a million miles away, full with all of my weeks negativity. Sitting in that room, talking with passion about the community and the technology that I love was all it took for me to remember opportunity.

Experience Columbus provided the perfect backdrop to this mind switch. One year ago this organization invited about 40 local bloggers and social media savvy folks to the premiere of the Experience Columbus social media strategy. While it had some good elements to it the total package did not go over well.

Experience Columbus had spent a great deal of time designing a failure.

Instead of engaging their online networks up front they brought them in on the backend. The message fell flat without the buy-in that develops organically from early engagement and continued collaboration. Experience Columbus, like many organizations, might have walked away from this and headed back into the vacuum. But the didn’t.

Experience Columbus found the opportunity in this failure.

The meeting held yesterday was only one of several being held. Beside the meetings, the employees of Experience Columbus have spent this last year getting personally involved in building their social media networks throughout the region. Along with that development they have been gathering massive amounts of user generated content from the local blogging and social media networks.

What did our group learn at its meeting then?

First of all is that Experience Columbus has an incredible amount of information to share – and do they ever want to share it! Unfortunately all of us at the meeting not directly employeed by Experience Columbus had no idea how much of this info was already available because it wasn’t convenient to find and the Experience Columbus site (and story) wasn’t compelling enough to get us to search it out.

Experience Columbus continues to learn.

The Experience Columbus team had amazing questions and insights to offer as the discussion moved on. Seeing how committed they have been to learning from the failure last year I expect this interaction will only spur them on to even greater work. I really appreciated being asked to participate in this important community effort.

Want to help by being a Columbus Ambassador? It’s easy, just keep spreading the good word about Columubus and look up the folks at Experience Columbus and offer to help!