Transcript of this video:
I’ve just finished running an online weekly workshop
with my friend Shawn Callahan, where we’ve been experimenting
with running it as what I call a practice group,
rather than a conventional training.
So we have very deliberately not arrived with
an elaborate structure
and teaching points about the subject;
in this case, storytelling.
Rather, we’ve set up a number of experiments
and experiences, which we’ve joined in with,
to just basically play around with what is, what sort
of stories we can tell each other
and how to listen for stories.
And we’ve sometimes had
to slightly bite our tongues when we felt the urge
to teach things, when perhaps there’s been a bit of a period
of confusion in a sense
that people don’t quite know what’s happening
or if they’re learning anything.
And as I often find, when you’re willing to be a bit patient
with confusion, you are rewarded with people coming up
with insights of their own
that you might never have thought of.
And both Shawn and I I think afterwards realise
that we’ve probably learned as much as the participants
from hosting this. Now that would
probably offend the training Gods ‘cos
surely we are meant to be the ones imparting the,
the experts imparting the knowledge.
And surely we shouldn’t be learning things too.
Well, I disagree.
I actually think that’s quite a good
metric for a practice group.
It shows that we had some skin in the game too,
and that we weren’t just arriving to impart our knowledge,
but to learn things ourselves
and join in a spirit of exploration and discovery
and a willingness to sit a bit with confusion.
And one of the other things I think happens in a group
like that is you get a thing I call resonance.
Something I’ve been paying more attention
to in my life the past year or so.
An example of it would be someone, let’s say me
shares some discovery into the group
and then someone else in the group
repeats it back in their own voice and in their own words.
And hearing them say it in their own way.
I get excited again
as if I’m discovering a little bit more deeply for myself.
So it might, what might look like a straightforward exchange
of information, one with another becomes more than that.
And I think if humans are going to collaborate together
and do a bit better than AI can, we have to be in that,
that territory where we are in that space
of discovery together.
We aren’t just regurgitating the knowledge of the past,
we are creating new knowledge together.
So I’m quite excited by this idea of practice groups
and I’m planning to do more of them.
