The Center for Graphic Facilitation

Radical Collaboration

PHOTO: African scientists installed servers and set up a new volunteer computing project for [email protected], a website for volunteer computing projects which allow your computer to contribute to African humanitarian causes.

An African saying teaches: "“If you want to go fast, go alone; If you want to go far, go together…”

Jeff Hamaoui is one of the many contributors to the Skoll Foundation's multi-blog portal on social enterprise, Social Edge. He starts off his discussion on Radical Collaboration declaring:

"The time for playing small and separate is over."

The key ingredients of radical collaboration include familiar basic elements (such as shared opportunity, relationships and simplicity) and can be applied to any community of practice--especially those collaborative enterprises focused on social change.

Crafting Great Stories

[ PHOTO: "Storyteller, Tibet Sera Monastery" by jordan1962 ]

In The Power of Myth, when the journalist Bill Moyers described his experience interviewing the great scholar of comparative religion and collector of ancient stories, Joseph Campbell, he said: "Campbell began his answer to my question as he often did.. with a story."

In the modern age, however, we tend to endure presentations more often than we engage in authentic storytelling.

As members of the human tribe, what we are moved by--what we condense our own experience and meaning into--involve stories. Today, we are swimming an tsunami of pent up stories enabled by the kaleidescope of new media storytelling medium and cheap, consumer-created content.

Graphic facilitators belong to a vast and diverse cosmology of visual storytellers. And the most valuable asset we have, as well as the greatest service we can render, is to illustrate the greater truth that hides beneath the words of our audience's stories.

The CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, Kevin Roberts, often quotes Rolf Jensen of the Dream Company that “the highest-paid person in the first half of the next century will be the storyteller.”  Roberts goes on, however, to emphasize the necessary ingredients in all great stories, beginning with the primary element: truth.

Time Lapse Mural Creation High Speed Art

Watch graphic facilitator Steph Crowley create a 35-foot mural over 5 days in high speed--inspirational music included!