Earlier this month, I made the hardest, most gut-wrenching decision of my professional life. Effective today, I am leaving Groupaya, which I co-founded in late 2011 with the amazing, wonderful Kristin Cobble. My reasons for leaving are simple, although the decision was anything but. I have a set of things I want to accomplish, both personally and professionally, and I did not feel like I was on the best path to accomplish all of them. My goals are to be the best human being […]
Author: Eugene Eric Kim
Nonprofits, Please Take our Survey on Consultants!
Last year, Shiree Teng approached us with an itch she’s been wanting to scratch for years now. Shiree has been a social justice and community activist for over three decades, and she’s spent a good part of the past few decades focusing on organizational effectiveness, learning, and evaluation work. One of the things she observed, especially in her role as an advisor to the Packard Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness Program, was that nonprofits seem to use consultants quite a bit. If consultants […]
Building a Culture of Openness
This morning, I saw this exchange on my Twitter stream between Dennis Whittle and John S. Bracken: [View the story “Building a Culture of Openness” on Storify] Building a Culture of Openness Storified by Eugene Eric Kim · Wed, Oct 31 2012 07:35:11 Great conf on how open data can hold govt to account. @ethanz alone would be worth price of ticket: http://openup12.org/agenda/ @OmidyarNetworkDennis Whittle @EthanZ @DennisWhittle @OmidyarNetwork I have emailed to ask for an invitation, though doubt I am […]
Group Process on Steroids
We often describe our work to others as “group process on steroids.” It’s like organizational development, community organizing, and other related practices done really, really well. Except that it’s also somewhat different. What exactly does that mean?! It means doing whatever you can and leveraging whatever tools are at your disposal to enable groups to work skillfully together, to help them come alive. Where exactly do the steroids come in?! (My business partner, Kristin Cobble, took a pass at this […]
Behind the Scenes: Storytelling and Group Process
One of the great ironies of designing highly participatory, emergent processes is that they require a lot of work. We walk through and practice design scenarios. We scrutinize every last detail, from the wording of each question to the layout of the physical space. It’s exhausting, but it’s also incredibly fun and gratifying, and the results more than make it worth it. We’ve written a rough description of our design process, but the best way to understand it is to experience it […]