Advanced Facilitation Seminar

(photo from a recent meeting Ron facilitated using small groups)

I’m leading another Advanced Facilitation Workshop on Wednesday, September 15^th at the LA Eco-Village (117 Bimini Pl), from 7 to 9pm and invite you to attend. This workshop explores more sophisticated tools and strategies that facilitators use to ensure groups 
effectively reach decisions.  Participants will have the opportunity to practice facilitating challenging 
situations and receive feedback from the instructor and training participants.  Recommended pre-requisite:  Intro to Facilitation or some facilitation experience. Fee:  $35 (sliding scale available)
Reservations required:  crsp@igc.org or 213/738-1254.  For those interested in learning more about facilitation, consider attending Beatrice Brigg’s upcoming “Leading Effective Meetings” training on September 30th through October 2nd.

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Advanced Facilitation Training – June 9

LA Eco-Villager Julio Santizo presenting at a Beverly Vermont Community Land Trust board meeting that Ron Milam facilitated

Tomorrow night (June 9th), Ron Milam will lead an Advanced Facilitation training at the LA Eco-Village. The following week on June 15th, he’ll lead a Running Effective Meetings training.  You are welcome to attend one or both of these trainings.

Here’s more information about the trainings:

Wed, June 9, 2010 from 7 to 9 pm at L.A. Eco-Village directions

Advanced Facilitation

This workshop explores more sophisticated tools and strategies that facilitators use to ensure groups effectively reach decisions.  Participants will have the opportunity to practice facilitating challenging situations and receive feedback from the instructor and training participants.

Recommended pre-requisite: Intro to Facilitation or some facilitation experience.

Fee: $35 (sliding scale available)
Reservations required: crsp@igc.org or 213/738-1254

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Tue, June 15, 2010 from 7 to 9 pm at L.A. Eco-Village    directions

Running Effective Meetings

This workshop explores the key components necessary to ensure meetings are effective and result in decisions that help an organization move forward.  These components include: developing an agenda, knowing people’s roles and responsibilities, having a decision making process, facilitation and good listening skills.

Fee: $35 (sliding scale available)
Reservations required: crsp@igc.org or 213/738-1254

For more information Ron Milam’s work as a facilitator, click here.

Ron will also lead another Introduction to Facilitation training on July 28th from 7pm to 9pm at the LA Eco-Village.

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Facilitator on a bike

Ron, my friend and neighbor, asked me to post this blog entry that he wrote, see the original post here:

A good facilitator brings some important materials to a meeting including an easel, markers, a small clock and most challenging of all to carry on a bicycle, a full sized posterboard to scribe notes to capture everyone’s good thoughts. Up until now, I have always asked clients to bring the posterboard because it was too challenging to secure on my small bike rack.

For a recent peer learning session I led for the Liberty Hill Foundation, one of the leading funders of social change movements in Los Angeles, I decided I would incorporate a little social change in my own lifestyle and bring everything to the training by bicycle.  Knowing I couldn’t fit everyone on my existing bike, I remembered one of my neighbors here at the LA Eco-Village has an XtraCycle I could borrow, which is a bicycle trailer device designed to carry heavy loads.

I’m excited to report that I successfully carried the following items on one bicycle: that big posterboard, an easel, markers, handouts, my laptop computer and three bags of groceries that fed an impressive group of 15 leaders working on social change here in Los Angeles.  I really enjoyed the ride and the discussion that followed it.

Now that I know it can easily be done, I look forward to hauling all of my facilitation tools on bike to future trainings, retreats and meetings. While I can’t confirm it, I just might be able to say I’m the only bicycling facilitator in Los Angeles! If you need a facilitator or want to know more about what a facilitator does, check out my website.

See you on the streets of Los Angeles and remember that you can always carry more stuff on a bicycle than you think you can.

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Introducing Ron Milam’s Consulting Business

Ron, my friend, neighbor, fellow bicyclist, bike advocate (and more) asked me to post this blog entry that he wrote:

Eco-Villager and Non-Profit Facilitator and Consultant Ron Milam

I’m pleased to base my consulting business out of the Los Angeles Eco-Village.  Since I work primarily with urban sustainability oriented nonprofit organizations in Los Angeles, living and working at the Los Angeles Eco-Village definitely inspires me and has taught me a lot about sustainability. 
 
Living at the Los Angeles Eco-Village has played a key role in teaching me how to become a good facilitator.  I remember going to retreats that the Eco-Village had several years back led by experienced facilitators and taking detailed notes on how they helped guide us towards making important decisions.  I then had the opportunity to practice these skills facilitating one of our many weekly meetings where we make decisions by consensus. 
 
I now professionally facilitate for local nonprofit organizations, with the most recent retreat being for the Los Angeles Audubon Society (see my recent blog post on Facilitation and Flying for more details).  I’m pleased to offer an upcoming Introduction to Facilitation workshop at the Eco-Village on September 29th, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm and welcome you to attend. More information about this workshop can be found at laecovillage.org.  I also lead a wide variety of trainings to build the capacity of nonprofit organizations and welcome you to attend any of those as well – for information see the calendar page at my website.

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