Questions and Feedback and hopefully Answers and Corrections

Ecovillage Resilience Project
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Hi valued team of the Resilience Project!

In this thread, I suggest we collect questions that you might be able to answer for all of us. I am Micha from Sieben Linden Ecovillage in Germany, I am very motivated to participate fully in this project, but there’s some mild wondering on the process on my part. And I think you’ll be able to fix that :slight_smile: !

  • I just wanted to upload the results of our timeline workshop over the link I got sent in an email by resilience@ecovillage.org on January 20, 2023. My trouble is, the questions posted there are really different than the material I used when organizing and facilitating our workshop. I cannot really answer that easily, “How has the system changed over time in terms of the benefits it provides to people and the challenges people face?” or “Historically, how did people in the system respond to specific disturbance events or on-going changes?” We did, in the workshop, what was suggested to be done:
    “Identify significant past events”, “Identify Drivers of Change” etc.
    I did not realize that what you posted as “Timeline Discussion Guide” would actually be the questions we should have tried to answer in the workshop and therefore the results you want us to upload. Please make very clear what the objective is when instructing such a workshop. I remember explicitly asking in the Zoom session about what exactly should be done and the “Timeline Discussion Guide” was not mentioned.

  • In the same email you go on about the tree model (“With that, for this round, here we go…”), although in the online session you made it clear that we should not yet worry about/prepare the next workshop. When I asked why you are introducing the tree model at that Zoom call, I got the reply that I should not be confused but we would get into the tree model in some sessions later on.

I am actually an entrepreneur and very much capable to work on my very own, but when/as we do this whole project together, I ask you (Team) to be very precice on what exactly we should prepare/facilitate/evaluate/upload and when.

Thank you.

I will find a way to solve the mentioned issues myself but it would be nice to get less confused the next time… Cheers!

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One more question - can I complete my timeline entry after I have submitted a half-finished version (i.e. re-submit)?

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Hi Micha! Thanks for the feedback and questions - and YES to a Q&A!

First of all - we hear you about the need for more clarity and have taken it on board. And we know we created some condusion around the timeline activity and tree model - oopsie learning by doing!

We are looking at different ways to structure and present information about each activity, and getting much more precise with instructions and where things belong. Hopefully you will notice a difference. Maybe the calendar of local workshops with direct links to all instructions and report forms will also help

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And yes - I haven’t yet figure out how to give people specific edit access to their own sections of coda, so for now please just submit more than once and I will merge or delete so you end up with only one in the end.

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Hi Micha,

I also wanted to reply briefly and apologize if the instructions were not clear and this created stress and confusion. I am used to running this activity in person and the learning curve for doing it all online is steep!

I tried to be concise and clear in writing the Activity Guide for the timeline (a how-to guide for constructing the timeline) and then I wrote a separate Discussion Guide to use during the workshop once the timeline was built. The discussion guide also served as the questions for the report. I realize now that the two documents should have been one single file (or the instructions should have been more clear).

Thanks for taking the time to provide this valuable feedback. As Anna mentions, we have learned from this first workshop reporting step and will try to be as clear and precise as possible going forward.!

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