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Programme

Learning in Organizations - Inventing Desired Futures in a Global Society
Lifelong Learning Institute Dipoli
Espoo, Finland - June 11-14, 2003
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Learning in Organizations - Inventing Desired Futures in a Global Society

A learning organization is a place where people together can create their reality - and have the power to change it. The choices before us, in our personal lives, work situations, communities, and the world, call us to collective mindfulness and action.

The theme of this first SoL Global Forum was"Learning in Organizations - Inventing Desired Futures in a Global Society". Learning from the future rather than learning only from the past is a key competence for all of us, whether we practice in business, government, or civil society. And while we can increase our knowledge by becoming more aware of what we are accomplishing separately, many of our desired futures will only be achieved together. The Global Forum was an opportunity to exchange, reflect, and work together on topics of personal and global concern.

The programme started with pre-meeting capacity building sessions on Tuesday June 10th and Wednesday June 11th. The official opening of the 1st SoL Global Forum took place on Wednesday evening, June 11th with a reception and an orientation session. The official programme of the Forum ended on SaturdayJune 14th in the afternoon.

Themes and Tracks
The theme of the 1st SoL Global Forum, "Learning in Organizations - Inventing Desired Futures in a Global Society", was designed to be inclusive of themes individuals and communities are working with.

The program featured top level keynotes on the theme of "Learning in Organizations - Inventing Desired Futures in a Global Society." Participants engaged in a variety of focused sessions, paper presentations, dialogue groups, on-site visits / learning journeys, project clinics, open space groups and informal dialogues. Topic tracks for the event emerged around the following themes:

  • Innovation (technical and social)
  • Sustainability (economic, environmental, and social)
  • Leadership development (individual and collective)
  • Learning regions, societal change
  • Learning schools
  • Large scale change
  • Organizational learning (theories, methods, and tools)
  • Spirit in business
  • SoL track

Plenary Sessions
Plenary sessions included top level keynotes such as Peter Senge, Arie de Geus, Göran Carstedt, Erwin Laszlo, Sherry Immediato, and more. Here are some plenary session descriptions:

Learning Journey of SoL
Coming together for our Wednesday evening reception, we started by sharing stories of SoL's own learning journey - the insights, the mistakes, and the guiding principles that have shaped SoL's Global Network. Our purpose in choosing such a beginning was to bring 'new' and 'old' together in a way that makes the most of the collective wisdom and shared understanding of everyone present.

"Inventing Desired Futures in a Global Society" - Peter Senge
Before any change takes place in real life it has to exist in our minds as an idea or thought. Peter Senge started the Global Forum with this provocative session, leading us to the theme of the Forum and sparking our awareness of the range of possible futures and the steps we can take to actualize them in our everyday life.

World Café
This session explored and invented the desired futures we want to see in ourselves, our communities and the world, assisted by world's leading experts and other Forum participants. At the same time we opened ourselves to the learnings and new friends we had after the Forum ended.

Closing Session: Fish Bowl Dialogue
 The Global Forum ended with a dialogue in which various experts with diverse backgrounds shared and crystallized essential learnings and next steps for SoL as a global learning community.

Parallel Sessions
The program of the Forum was designed to present and share the work, connections and insights of the SoL Network in various places around the world. This goal is best presented in a diversity of sessions and proposed sessions from the different corners of the world (US, UK, Australia, Ethiopia, Finland etc.). Sessions offered a delicious learning combination of some familiar SoL people (Dennis Sandow, Göran Carstedt, Karen Ayas, Nick Zeniuk, Joe Laur, Andreas Priestland, Robert Hanig, Manfred Mack) with some new, intriguing presenters.

Pre-Meeting Capacity Building Sessions
 Pre-meeting capacity building sessions were offered on Tuesday, June 10th and Wednesday, June 11th. These sessions prepared participants for the Forum and also helped in building capacity and theoretical knowledge.