Alchemy Consulting LLC

We are process experts who help teams around the world unleash their creativity to solve today's complex business issues. Alchemy gives you a system that works -- graphic recording, strategic illustration, process innovation, organizational strategy, leadership development -- leading you and your business to sustainable success. The Alchemy team, which provided their top-knotch graphic recording services at the 2004 NCDD conference in Denver, consists of Chris Chopyak, Patti Dobrowolski and Lois Todd.

Resource Link: http://link2alchemy.com

Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives "life" to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system's capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential.

Charrettes

Charrettes are typically a potent combination of modern design studio and town meeting, with a dash of the teamwork from an old-fashioned barnraising mixed in. Most start with a hands-on session for citizens and continue in an around-the-clock, energetic push until a plan is finished about a week later. A charrette can be a breakthrough event that helps overcome inertia and creates a meaningful master plan. Properly executed, this technique can produce a master plan that is more useful, better understood, and more quickly produced than one formed by other methods.

Resource Link: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/pittd/charrett.htm

Dynamic Facilitation

Dynamic Facilitation is an energy-based way of facilitating where people address difficult issues creatively and collaboratively, achieving breakthrough results. It creates a process of talking and thinking that builds mutual respect, trust and the sense of community.

Future Search Network (and trainings)

The Future Search Network initiates future search conferences, innovative planning conferences used world-wide by hundreds of communities and organizations. The conferences meet two goals at the same time: helping large diverse groups discover values, purposes and projects they hold in common; and enabling people to create a desired future together and start implementing right away.

Resource Link: http://www.futuresearch.net

Future Search: An Action Guide to Finding Common Ground in Organizations and Communities

Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff, Future Search Network. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995.

This book describes a step-by-step process for planning and leading a Future Search conference, where diverse community members come together to envision and plan their shared future.

Resource Link: http://www.futuresearch.net

Meaningful Public Involvement: Charrettes for Community Change

National Charrette Institute for the National Association of REALTORS.

Achieving true citizen participation in community planning is always a challenge. To address the need for a better participation process, communities and developers are turning to the "charrette," a multi-day intensive planning workshop that includes all stakeholders in a community and results in a plan that can be implemented and built. This PowerPoint presentation, which includes both slides and a script, describes what a charrette is and how it can be used to improve the planning process in your community.

Resource Link: http://www.realtor.org/sg3.nsf/pages/Charrettes

National Charrette Institute (NCI)

The National Charrette Institute (NCI) is a nonprofit educational institution. We help people build community capacity for collaboration to create healthy community plans. We teach professionals and community leaders the art and science of Dynamic Planning, a holistic, collaborative planning process that harnesses the talents and energies of all interested parties to create and support a feasible plan. And we advance the fields of community planning and public involvement through research and publications.

Resource Link: http://www.charretteinstitute.org

World Cafe Method, Metaphor, and Community Foundation

Juanita Brown and David Isaacs from Whole Systems Associates use the model of the cafe setting to create a warm, inviting environment in which people can converse. Participants gather informally at small tables and are encouraged to map out the ideas generated from conversation onto the paper table cloths covering the tables.

Resource Link: http://www.theworldcafe.com