Liberating Structures Practice Group Leeds
A great start
On Friday 9th November 2018 I was pleased to welcome a group to the Open Data Institute in Leeds to take part in our first Liberating Structures practice group meetup.
Fourteen of us took part; Erica, Fliss, Francis, Kev, Lisa, Jenny, Pauline, Rohit, Salma, Scott, Steve, Tom, Tony and myself. Thank you everyone who came along and made it an enjoyable day.
I was offered the use of a city centre event space in September, however their fit-out was delayed. Time was moving on and so I applied and was granted sponsorship from UK GovCamp to pay for space for the first meetup.
Thank you to UKGovCamp particularly James Arthur Cattell and Steph Gray who I know administer the grant fund. Thank you also to ODI Leeds for making us welcome.
In preparing for the event I had asked people what time of day they would prefer, about their experience with LS and also what their hopes were for the event.
- Most (3 of 4) respondents preferred a daytime meetup
- Most people had no experience of Liberating Structures, a couple had seen them in use and a couple had used them with teams or at events.
- People mainly wanted to meet others and to discover ways to use LS.
The Structures
I wanted to give the group a little of the experience which I had at the beginning of the year when I took part in Liberating Structures London.
Impromptu Networking
Troika Consulting
& 1–2–4 all
Since the group was fairly new to Liberating Structures I spent more time explaining where they come from than we might ordinarily do.
Here are my slides
Thank you to David Heath for all of your support and slide design.
Feedback
The feedback on the wall was good, I particularly liked the comments (also made in the room) about it being a safe space. Thank you to everyone who has commented on Twitter, Meetup and LinkedIN.
What’s next?
I am now busy looking for a venue and/or sponsorship for December and the future so that we can keep the momentum going and it would be great to have some volunteers to help make it happen. We might switch to an early evening given that none of the people who voted for daytime were able to make it this time and there was feedback that daytime is difficult for some of the people who attended.
I’m looking forward to the next meetup.
