I hope you’ve had an awesome week…
We’ve all been to events where the formal talking part feels like it will never end, and you just want to get back to conversations with a bunch of interesting people…
And we’ve all had times where we don’t really know anyone, and it feels awkward to join in on conversations.
These are a couple of reason I love the Open Space format. It’s one of my favourite ways to have just enough structure while being adaptive and providing a fun and safe way for everyone to participate however they’re comfortable.
It’s a dynamic, participant-driven approach designed to help spark meaningful conversations, build connections, and accelerate problem-solving.
Since the late 2000s I’ve been lucky to both facilitate and be a participant in a lot of sessions that have used Open Space.
This week was our first Adelaide Design Thinking, and we used a version of Open Space as part of co-designing what the community wants from the meetup… more on that in my next newsletter. While I was preparing, I took the opportunity to reflect.
Check out my post where I share a bit about what Open Space is, why it’s so valuable, how it works, and the key considerations when designing for a great experience. And why I love it so much!
Ideas
An event and a couple of blog posts you…
SydDT #110: International Women’s Day. Accelerate Action: Make AI Your Equity Partner with Kristin de la Fuente
Accelerate Action: What if your AI partner could teach you how to be more ethical and inclusive?
To celebrate International Women’s Day, Kristin de la Fuente will lead a session that will provide tools that ensure AI-generated outputs for design can be more ethical, inclusive, and free from gender bias.
Organised by Kylie Mageropoulos and brought to you by Thoughtworks, UserTesting, Sh8peshifters, Lanson Partners, and Dynamic4 on 13 March. Grab your free ticket before it sells out!
People Planet Pint Sydney
People Planet Pint: Sustainability Meetup is an awesome global community I’m stoked to be part of. A huge thanks to Henrietta, Kelly Beaumont, and Tanya Jackson-Vaughan for organising the Sydney meetup.
What is it? There’s a pretty clear clue in the name but check my post for a video by Jeremy Thomas to get the vibe…
Reflecting on SydDT #108: Visual Thinking with Alan Chen & Diana Ayoub from Sh8peshifters
Last week we were lucky to have Alan and Diana from Sh8peshifters lead a fun visual thinking workshop at SydDT with around 80 people. The participants experienced visual thinking as a powerful tool for reflecting, problem solving, mapping out ideas, and communicating.
They started with a blind contour drawing exercise, introduced a visual language, and we mapped a journey. Pradeep Gulur then generously shared a bit of his story about moving from India to Sydney and the audience practiced live scribing… and shared their sketchnotes in Padlet.
It was a great way to kick off another year of Sydney Design Thinking… and the countdown to our 10th birthday in June. Check out the full write-up, photos, and video.
Let’s Collaborate
At Dynamic4, we specialise in leadership, design, and innovation with a focus on purpose and wellbeing. We do that by working alongside leaders and their teams to navigate complexity and solve problems that matter.
We love helping our clients design, build, and launch ideas that customers and teams love, make money, and do great things for people and our planet while increasing wellbeing. My book Solve Problems That Matter is a good way to get started.
This draws on my 30+ years of bringing together strategy, design, and tech to lead, design, and deliver strategic change in financial services, digital & tech, health & fitness, and building startups/social enterprises.
What do we actually do? Key ways we help is through coaching and advice, workshops, innovation sprints, and designing and delivering leadership, design thinking & innovation programs.
Our approach builds personal, team, and organisational capability to solve problems that matter with more:
🌿 Confidence to navigate complexity and solve problems that matter for your teams, customers, shareholders – and build momentum with more certainty and less risk while increasing your wellbeing
❤️ Clarity to empathically engage your stakeholders, make better decisions, and collaborate to create solutions that your teams and customers love, make money, and do great things for people and our planet
🎯 Purpose that drives progress on your goals and creates meaningful value that you’re proud of for all stakeholders – and build the relationships, workflows, rhythms, and habits for success
Keen to chat about how we can have fun collaborating to solve problems that matter? Book a free 15-minute discovery call.
Have fun!
Ben
