Timelines, mindmapping and other fun things to do on a Saturday...

摘要

Don't pass up the chance of attending a Future Search event: it could change your life, says Lynn Wetenhall in the latest installment of her 'participation process practitioner's diary'. The event is held in a comfortable hall with the obligatory circle of chairs and flipchart. Strikingly, the walls are covered in three enormous areas of white paper, each divided into linear sections marking off the last five decades. The three paper walls are headed 'Personal', local' and 'Global'. The first exercise is 'timelines'. People are asked to take a marker pen and write up any significant milestones under the three headings. After an embarrassed pause, there is a headlong rush to the wall, and people spend a happy 20 minutes writing up everything from 'Got married' to 'By-pass built'. (Spooky but true is the fact that at every timelines exercise witnessed by a CAG consultant, someone has written 'Elvis dies' as a significant personal or global milestone - no other personality has received this accolade in our presence!)