Narrative Ecology – Blog of Ron Donaldson – fACILITATOR, TRAINER AND COACH

Happy new year. It has been just five months since I became self employed and I have absolutely no regrets as I have enjoyed every minute of it. I did myself a quick ‘future backwards’ review of my 12 most interesting and important events of the past five months:

TODAY: Doing OK, opportunities for work emerge at very short notice. Nice balance of leisure to work and paid to unpaid projects. Building reputation, networking and finding my niche.

PAST:

• Attended a Business Link course on starting a business.
• Spoke on “The ecology of WEB 2.0” at a Unicom conference
• Ran a workshop for MSc students at Metropolitan University in London
• Great weekend at Cae Mabon which brought together sustainability, storytellers and an iron age roundhouse – unforgettable and life changing
• Was guest blogger on Cognitive Edge web site for two weeks
• Facilitated workshop in British Library for a friend doing a PhD
• Re-visited Cognitive Edge accreditation at Wetlands Centre in London
• Became a TRIZ trainer at Oxford and Farnborough for Oxford Creativity
• Attended the superb Centre for Narrative Leadership “Cathedrals in the Heart” get-together near Stroud
• Worked on a couple of projects with Dave Snowden based on and in Liverpool museums
• My “Storytelling Guru” interview published on Kathy Hanson blog ‘a storied career’
• Ran archetype extraction workshop in Glasgow.

HELL = In one year if everything that could go wrong does go wrong.

Meaningless, non story-based work, Central London, fewer contracts, need to seek employment. No travel or too much travel.

HEAVEN = In one year if everything that could go right does go right:

Many meaningful and varying projects (eg sustainability, health and environment), mostly narrative based, facilitating, lecturing, speaking, coaching and inspiring others. Some travel. Some research, publishing and writing.