About the gathering

Welcome to the first of what we hope will become an annual gathering, made by practitioners for practitioners, where: 

• the community reveals itself, weaving new relationships of care and mutual support,
• in a way that generates a stronger sense of collective purpose and direction,
• so that we continually shape the conversation about regeneration in the world.

Hosted by regenerative development practitioners from around the world, with 12 hours of rolling time events on March 19th (Americas, Africa, Europe) and March 20th (Deep Pacific), this virtual open space will engage practitioners to hold space and host conversations about the questions and challenges that have been keeping us up at night about applying regenerative development in our work.

Schedule:

• Santa Fe / US Mountain Time: 8am – 8pm on March 19 
• Lisbon: 2pm – 2am on March 19 (Most European practitioners will join during the first part of the day)
• Australia: 1am – 1pm and New Zealand: 3 am – 3 pm on March 20 (Most Deep Pacific practitioners will join during the later part of the day)

From Our Organizing Team

We are working with regenerative practitioners Nuno Da Silva (based in Portugal) and Ben Roberts (based in the US) who have taken on the role of organizing participation and technical implementation of this event. The staff and faculty at Regenesis Institute will be playing a supportive role as well as co-hosting and/or participating in many of the sessions alongside all of you.

This gathering is designed in similar fashion to an open space, with a format that creates space for peer-to-peer learning, collaboration and creativity, and is being initially created as a way for any and all of us to connect, share, learn and co-evolve, nurturing the blossoming global Regenerates community.

It’s an opportunity to meet at the crossroads of our technological avenues to engage in conversations about everything that matters regarding the practice of Regenerative Development and, more particularly, how you are using and learning about Regenerative Development practice in your work and daily life.

It is our pleasure to be stewarding the first gathering of this kind. We chose the term steward as this is a community-driven event and, although we might be managing the organizational bits, it is your participation, your sessions, and your generosity of spirit that kindle the creative nature of this event. We hope this event will continue in the coming years, fully run by the community for the community.

While you can always connect with other regenerative practitioners in the structured environment of our continuing education courses, this global gathering is intended to serve a different purpose as an event where the Institute actually opens up the floor to YOU, the members of this community of practice, to set the agenda and start the conversations you want to be having with one another.

Nuno has shared some of the thoughts and principles that are guiding the creation and organization of this event in a welcome letter. 

Hosting A Session

Here are a few examples of session formats, to give you a taste of what is possible.

Panel Session – A traditional panel session is one in which a group of colleagues proposes a single theme to be addressed by multiple speakers, each of whom presents a distinct element or perspective. 

Roundtable – A Roundtable focuses on a specific topic and features a selection of practitioners who engage in a dialogue. These sessions can be done in various forms. 

Workshop – Workshops are subject focused sessions that provide participants the opportunity to gain understanding and develop capabilities together. This can range from regenerative development topics, to teaching strategies, to explore frameworks together, among others. Hosts of workshops can lead participants through different interactive activities, including dialogues, hands-on-activities, simulations, demonstrations, and exploration and application of frameworks. 

Case Studies Sessions – The presenter shares a case study and reflects on it together with participants or leads participants in going through a process reflecting on the case study at hand. Examples of failures are also great learning opportunities…

Dialogues – Host holds space for a relevant conversation to take place in ways that can generate new insights or open cracks in habitual ways of seeing. 

Advice from our organizers about leading a session:

• If you convene a session, it is your responsibility to “hold the space” for your session. You hold the space by leading a discussion, by posting a “first question,” or by sharing information about your initiative. Be the shepherd – stay visible, be as involved as necessary, be a beacon of consciousness that guides the group.
• Ask for help holding the space if you need it. You might, for example, put a session on the calendar and know that you are so passionate about the topic that it would be better if someone else, someone more objective, facilitates the discussion. 
• Don’t assume people in the room know more, or less, than you do. You never know who is going to be interested in your session. 
• Don’t be upset if only two people show up to your session. Those two people are the ones who share your interest.
• Don’t feel that you have to “fill” up an hour of time. If what you have to say only takes 15 min and the group has finished interacting then the session can end.
• Don’t feel pressure to have everything take “only” an hour. If you start with a short presentation, and then a group conversation gets going, and your discussion needs to continue past an hour, find a way to make this happen. You might move to the café space or jump to your own personal zoom room.
• Be Brave! Others are interested in making your session work!
• Do think about the ideas that you want to cover in your session, and how you want to cover them. But don’t feel as though you need to prepare a great deal. (If you’re over-prepared, your session might lose energy.)
• Experiment with the kind of sessions you lead. There is no such thing as “failure” in our gathering. 

After you submit your RSVP form, you will find instructions on how to sign up to host a session. The deadline to sign up to host a session is March 13.

This will give our team time to share the schedule of sessions with participants the week before the event. For those who wish to be more spontaneous, there will also be opportunities to volunteer to fill unscheduled space on the day of the event. But signing up in advance gives folks time to plan their attendance in advance!

To attend, RSVP now!

Participation is free with an optional donation to support making this a regular annual event. Session hosts should first RSVP as participants. After your RSVP is submitted, you will be given information on how to sign up to host a session.

The deadline to RSVP is March 18. If possible, please RSVP early so that we have a sense of how many people to expect, and also to give you time to explore the online event space. The event will take place over Zoom, but we will organize the different sessions on the platform QiQo, which is designed to work with Zoom. We will send out a link to explore this platform the week before the event.

Advice from our organizers for all participants…

• Go with the flow. This event is intended to help you and all the other practitioners find the time and space to talk with and learn from each other.
• Follow your passion. Go to the sessions that interest you.
• Take responsibility for your own learning. If there are topics you are really interested in that don’t appear on the agenda at first, you need to put them on there!