More Program Highlights
Friday, October 15, 2010
Pre-conference Community Volunteer Program: OD Gives Back
This year, we've created a special program that offers conference attendees the chance to share with and contribute to the New Orleans community. Plan to come in early and sign up for this enriching experience.
- Rebuilding Together New Orleans (RTNO): Spend a day literally rebuilding New Orleans. RTNO is a continuing volunteer effort to improve the quality of life of low income homeowners, particularly those who are elderly, disabled, or single head of households with minor children, through home repair and revitalization of New Orleans’ neighborhoods. To learn more about this organization, visit www.rtno.org.
Saturday, October 16
Practitioners of Color Caucus
Join Kenneth Jones, John Perry, and Forrest Story for a day of community-building, networking, and conversations about an important tool that can identify and focus the sources of energy in the organizations we serve.
Sunday, October 17
First Time Attendees
Make a note to attend the First Time Attendees' Orientation on Sunday morning to get a jump start on a full and satisfying conference experience. Meet and network with other first timers and hear an overview of Conference 2010
Dick Beckhard Mentoring Program
If you are a new practitioner, consider taking advantage of the Dick Beckhard Mentoring Program offered on Sunday morning. This highly rated conference favorite is named in honor of OD founder and committed mentor, Dick Beckhard. The program pairs practitioners who are newer to the field with more seasoned OD mentors. While the commitment is for the duration of the conference only, the relationships that are forged often last long beyond the conference experience! Sign up online or at Registration to be a mentor or if you'd like to have a mentor! Seasoned OD Practitoners, we could use your help; sign up to be a mentor.
Networking Forward
Come and Actually Meet the “Right” People! Are you looking for an engaging way to make useful contacts to enhance your conference experience, and build enduring professional relationships? Networking events can be unsatisfying when the connections made are random, fleeting, and underdeveloped. Networking Forward is an antidote to those challenges. Based on group methodologies, it will help you find others—and help them find you—to make positive, interesting, and engaging connections. Join in turning a roomful of strangers into a roomful of allies. Please join us!
Presenters: Arthur Lerner, Networking Forward and Deborah Peluso, The Change Collaborative
The Strategic Practitioner
When the going gets tough, the tough get strategic, and for all of us, the challenge now is making sure that the good work we do and the results we achieve are clear, visible, and undeniable. These sessions, presented by our field’s senior resources, bring the issues of our credibility and value into tight focus. How do we make it clear that we offer compelling solutions, that we can deliver on our promises, and that we can point to past successes? Join these conversations, each reinforcing a different strategy for underscoring our competence and the value of our work.
- Theories-of-Practice: Mine, Yours, Ours – Our actions as practitioners are guided by sets of filters we use to interpret presenting situations and client interactions, and these filters include our formal and in-use theories, beliefs, assumptions, values, and intuitions. As we become more experienced practitioners, explicit reflection on what guides our actions tends to fade and we see and do things because: “That’s what works,” “My gut told me,” “Everyone knows,” “Based on my experience . . .,” and so on. However, how able are we to articulate what we do to curious clients, fellow OD practitioners wanting to learn from us, or even to challenge our own long accepted wisdom in the face of new premises, problems, and possibilities? Come if you’d like to become more explicit about what you currently think, believe, and feel about consulting and change; and especially if you’d like to learn more about the filters held by other practitioners, and maybe discover some new possibilities to add to your theories-of-practice. Robert J. Marshak will lead and facilitate the conversation. Bob is currently Senior Scholar in Residence for the AU/NTL MSOD Program at American University and an internal/external consultant for more than 35 years.
- Showing Our Value: How Do We Demonstrate the Impact of Our Work (and How Do We Talk About It)? – The pressure to demonstrate our value has never been greater. We may be sure that OD has helped our organizations succeed, but how do we prove that to our clients and potential clients? True, we’ve all seen OD efforts that didn’t go well—even after a heavy investment of time, money and effort by the client—so it’s no wonder people are skeptical. Is there a way to confidently address these challenging situations and clearly show value? There is, and it requires a strategic decision: to both define and measure specific outcomes. This session will introduce a strategic framework for demonstrating our value while maintaining our values as OD practitioners. Jeff Frakes has over 30 years experience as an OD professional in both internal and external roles. He recently completed a book entitled Practical Methods and Measures to Enhance Organizational Effectiveness. Ruth House is a member of the adjunct faculty of the Organization Development program at Fielding Graduate University, where she facilitates classes in group process, strategies for large scale change, managing resistance to change, and managing organizational change. She is also President of Middleton-House & Co., a consulting practice that helps clients get better results from organizational change.
- Large Group Methods: Outcomes, Implementation, and Organization Capacity Building – Billie Alban and Barbara Bunker will lead a session in which innovative case examples of large group interventions, selected from a national “call for cases” sponsored by OD Network, will be presented. The focus of inquiry will be on what leads to full implementation in action planning and to capacity building back in the workplace. In this session, we intend to feature outstanding work by practitioners that do not regularly publish their work. We will also give examples from our own practice of Large Group Methods that document outcomes and changes in workplace culture. This inquiry will seek to answer: “What are those factors that lead to robust and important outcomes, as well as to changes/capacity building within the culture of the organization?” We will suggest some ideas and engage small groups in identifying others.
Welcome to the Big Easy Reception
Sunday evening’s Welcome to New Orleans reception offers a warm welcome as unique as the city itself. This reception is the time to connect with old friends and make the acquaintance of colleagues from across the country and around the world. This is also your first opportunity to meet with Sponsors and Exhibitors who support your work and are here to help. Come for conversation and start your Conference 2010 in NOLA style! A ticket to this reception is included with your full conference registration. Hors douerves are provided; a cash bar is available. Guest tickets may be purchased for those who are not full conference attendees.
Sunday Evening Community Building
NOLA in the Aftermath: Emerging Leadership, Resiliency, and Responsiveness
Louisiana has endured, and continues to endure, its share of challenge and trauma. Remember Geraldo Rivera holding a little boy in his arms as he tearfully pleaded for the authorities to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? While the breakdowns in our formal response systems continue to be thoroughly scrutinized, behind these visible, frustrating failures, emerged a multitude of local leaders, who were remarkably resilient in responding to overwhelming needs. Hear stories about individuals “doing the right thing” in the absence of formal authority, about groups of people connecting to share resources, and about organizations that kept information flowing, regardless of the obstacles they had to endure. Through these stories, we'll put a special frame around our time here in NOLA, and explore how this learning might be transferred into our own organizations.
Facilitated by Michael Arena with powerful stories based on experiences at the New Orleans Times Picayune, Women's Hospital for Baton Rouge, Walmart and the Coast Guard and more. Come prepared to be fascinated and engaged.
Monday, October 18
Get Published!
The Organization Development Network invites you to a lunchtime meeting on Monday to discuss with the Editor and members of the Editorial Review Board your ideas for articles and your questions about getting published in the OD Practitioner, OD Seasonings, and Practicing OD. Share what you have learned from client practice, applying OD theories, and developing your own approaches and methods. It is a perfect time to give something back to the OD community by offering your case experiences in OD Network publications.
Affinity and Special Interest Group Meetings
Monday evening is a time for conversation and networking. Select sponsors offer open receptions, and self-organized group meetings are an OD Network Conference tradition. These meetings bring together people with common identity, interests, industry, roles, and challenges. Groups spend time reflecting, connecting, and renewing. Time and space have been set aside on Monday evening for special interest groups to meet.
As meetings are scheduled, we’ll post them online; a schedule will also be provided on site. OD Network encourages groups to organize and meet! For information on how to create an affinity group, email lsherman@odnetwork.org
Tuesday, October 19
The OD Network is committed to recognizing and rewarding the contributions of individuals and organizations who advance the theory and practice of organization development. Join us on Tuesday morning for the presentation of the 2010 Awards. Every year the OD Network honors people and organizations that, in the judgment of its members, have made significant contributions to the field of organization development. The OD Network publicly acknowledges and thanks the recipients of these awards during its annual conference, and the names of current recipients are then added to the Award roster. Those Award winners who are able to attend will take part in a special concurrent session offered on Tuesday morning-watch for it on the schedule! Learn from these OD practitioners and from the organizations that have embodied key OD values, principles, and practices in exemplary ways.
Start your last night in NOLA with a little night magic. Two of your OD colleagues are also professional magicians who will entertain and intrique you. We'll have a New Orlean's style happy hour with a Cajun flavor. Warm up for a night on the town with some zydeco and jazz background music.
Wednesday, Oct. 20
Regional Network Members' Breakfast
Grab a cup of coffee and come to join a conversation designed for members of regional networks. Share key accomplishments and practices and learn with colleagues from other regions. This is an opportunity to focus on strengthening regional networks through innovation and partnership. All attendees who are members of a regional network are invited to attend; those who are leaders of their regional network are urged to do so!