The Institute's 2009 conference at the Radisson Hotel
was a very positive, expansive, and fascinating one!
To all who attended: it was great seeing you
and sharing ideas with you! And to those who missed it,
we hope that you'll mark your calendars next year and join us,
because talking about and practicing Inclusion is a powerful
way to expand your consciousness, and is a great tool
for increasing your organization's effectiveness as well !
This year we modified our format to feature multiple short
concurrent sessions. Judith Katz and Fred Miller have been to
a couple of TED conferences (see Fred's new blog entry about
this year's TED conference ) and they were very excited about
the energy that that much sharing can create. So we split our
focus this year: we maintained our custom of co-creating
intellectual capital (this year we looked at the areas of Inclusive
Behaviors and at the Values and Language of Inclusion) and we
made sure that we had good chunks of valuable conference time
for presentations and for full group dialog/sharing time, following
the sessions.
I think the format worked well, although our attendance
was lower this year than last year, and I thought that some
of the presentations didn't get the attendance they deserved,
especially because of the lower turnout.
There was a lot of enthusiasm as Institute "regulars" like
Edie Seashore, Fred Miller, Russ Gaskin and Bernardo Ferdman
presented on topics ranging from "triple impact change" to
Energy to Polarity Managment and Measuring Inclusion.
There were lots of presentations from newer attendees too!
For example: Yvette Jarreau and Amy Hall presented on
initiatives underway at Eileen Fisher; and Ruthie Landis
illuminated "points of view" via the Enneagram, as a way to
increase inclusion; Michael Donovan, who is a city councilman
as well as a professor, talked about "bonding and bridging"
types of social groups and public policy in "Opportunity Valley".
Steve Hanamura, at this point still our only regular conference
attendee who is blind, inspired us with the trailer for his new film
(funding needed for the full production, please sponsor!) and
illuminated us with his gentle and loving (yet firm) reminder that
by not transferring our material into Braille text we are leaving
him, a visual learner with a disability, more "out" than "in".
We need to do better, and we need to include more people
in our work!
One of many talented and thoughtful people who joined us this
year for the first time was Margherita Coppolino. Marg is a
leading diversity and inclusion consultant from Australia, and
she presented on her journey in leading the creation of a
social inclusion framework for the government of the state of
Victoria, Australia, through their department of Planning and
Community Development. There are 5 million people in Victoria!
Margherita's thoughtful work and insightful comments were
deeply appreciated, and she also took over 100 photos,
which form a new slideshow on our website.
A pdf file of her presentation will be in our Archives.
A recurring theme for us was how to practice inclusion when it
seems like the "other" is hostile. The KKK was used as an
example, as was radical Islamic fundamentalists, but the
challenge is there for us all - and not just with such dramatic
examples. It's a daily challenge for everyone, but the big
issues still need to be wrestled with. As Ruthie said,
maybe we have to come to terms with the shadow inside of
each of us before we can hope to engage someone who
represents that shadow we "love to hate."
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