More Reflections on the 2007 Retrospective Facilitators Gathering

I’ve had a few days pass since getting back from the Retrospective Facilitators Gathering and since I’ve been working on a new project haven’t had much time to reflect on the last half of the conference.

Here’s a condensed summary of notes I took:

• Four and a half days of an open space conference is extremely exhausting, especially in the desert. I think it’s a great way of running the conference and since I am who I am, I feel like I need to attend all the interesting sessions (of which there was plenty) and contribute or take out a lot of it. I’m very glad the organisers planned a small break at the end of Wednesday afternoon to help relieve some of this pressure.
• A retrospective facilitator’s toolkit can be minimal and at another end of the spectrum could easily fill an entire small suitcase with equipment that looks like an arts and craft or stationary store. Many that we listed include various types of tapes, various types and sizes of post-its, papers, cards, thinking toys, focus tools, food, tissue paper, pens, pencils, markers, dry erase, pins, hand cleaner, timers, and dots.
• Open space events help people solve specific problems. One I attended that seems particularly relevant to me and many people I know was called “Avoiding Burnout (How to be energised by your passion and not drained by it)”.

• Linda Rising’s quote: “You don’t get the thermometer out if you’re not sick”.
• Even people in the retrospective community make mistakes but are amazingly quick at reflecting, applying themselves and learning from it. It’s a community that really eat’s their own dog food (and this is a good thing – follow the link if you don’t believe me).
• Norm had a great story about how retrospectives and wisdom from their retrospectives are leveraged in the US Fire Fighting system. I found it fascinating how teams fighting fires hold reflections on how to improve their firefighting abilities while the US Fire Fighting Academy takes all those reflections, writes about them in journals, magazines and reports, teaches their students about the lessons learned from mistakes in the field, and lobby the government to influence and improve fire fighting standards.

I’ll get around to posting a final book list here sometime soon.