Heidelberg lies in the past and is still very present. Hamburg is coming up and also vividly challenging my presence and my thoughts. I see people around me trying to map the field of what we call "Re-Authoring Futures" - our conceptional lighthouse facing the ocean of narrative reconnaissances. And the more I listen to them, the more I am convinced that it is all about "learning to be a Jazz musician", as Michael White, the wonderful and truely inspiring Australian family therapist once noted while he was riding his bycicle. The maps he was creating were just a tool to set out to uncharted territory - mapping the unmapped.
Anyway I provide you with this map to show you the field our workshops this year are going to explore. Not to mention the shining keynotes and the in-depth masterclasses.
It is just a line-up converted to a map and it will never compete with the reality of being there and joining us. So get your Early Bird Tickets NOW!
Thinking and unmapping the landscapes of my consciousness, I stumpled upon the mission statement of a blog experiment called ZENARIO. I wrote it down about five years ago, and now when the BEYOND STORYTELLING PROJECT is bulging the sails of this vessel I cannot withhold it from you any longer:
"We have learned to focus on personal deficits in ways that speak of failure rather than accomplishment, that produce social hierarchies (experts who often appear to know more about people’s lives than they do themselves), and that erode our sense of communal interdependence and common purpose. The project is based on the belief that the success of money and benchmark driven organizations has become its limitation: because the old organizational model based on the tools of control has no answer to human hopes, values, interests, and needs. On the other hand organizations are forced to dump these tools and empower their employees in order to stay innovative, agile and productive in complex environments. Machines produce sameness. Human systems like organizations create diversity. The narrative approach helps to co-construct unity in diversity. An ambitious project.“
