Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Community of practice discussion

Thanksgiving Point community: Guests become volunteers, volunteers become ambassadors. Why does this happen?

Brainstorm:

Guests enjoy themselves want to get involved.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Culture review and influence

The scope of our attention is mainly helping parents interact with children. We will assume that Thanksgiving Point will evolve the general rules (e.g. be curtious, be quick to be kind, etc.).

Personal thought: Where in the property will parent/child interaction be most visible?

Expertise can be general and specific. General problem solving skills. Specific content solving skills. Our value add is where our specific expertise lies. We are instructional psychologist and technologists.

According to Stephen, focusing on the family group as guests would be key and best. Engaging with their own family members is where some great discovery learning and fun happens.

Task for next week: List suggested literature. Learning is a form of play.

Friday, March 4, 2011

My culture brainstorm


Cultural change

Bring a list in printed format:

Culture-
Reserved places
Stories
Rituals
Moment-to-moment action
Language
Habits
Skills

How do you go about influencing the items on the list? How many ways?

Imagine different scenarios...

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Generative principle

What principle generates "the" list of words that define the role?

If you walk through a series of typical encounters/scenes, you will envision all of the adjectives that describe the ambassador. The generative principle is the "walk-through".

This might be a chicken-egg process because envisioning an undefined role is a process of defining the role and envisioning a walk-through at the same time in a cyclical way.

NEXT:

What are the subject-matter we need to invent (expected protocol for each type of action in each of the typical scenes, expected attitudes, expected improvising, etc.)?

How are we going to train the subject-matter? (leaders exemplify culture/norms/values/rules/how you act, make specific terms/discourse the natural language (slogans), ...

How do we generate "the" list of establishing and maintaining the culture of ambassadoring?

Monday, February 28, 2011

Our taxonomy (what are the words?)

We need to generate words that describe the "thing" we are creating.

1. What are words that exemplify the role of the ambassador (more the merrier)?

This should be shown the client.

2. What are words that describe the ambassador role's methods used to perform the role (more the merrier)?

This should be shown the client.

Role of ambassador

What kind of skills does an ambassador need?

From Stephen's email:

Objective of the Ambassador Program

The objective of the Ambassador Program at Thanksgiving Point is to empower staff and volunteers to be able to enhance visitors’ experiences through meaningful interaction.

Roles of an Ambassador
  1. Help facilitate meaningful experiences with the visitors.
  2. Be friendly and outgoing
  3. Be somewhat knowledgeable about the subject matter in a particular venue (Gardens, Museum, Farm Country, etc.)
  4. Be aware of upcoming events that may be of interest to the visitors
  5. Be an advocate for both the visitors and Thanksgiving Point
  6. Converse with visitors
  7. Become a mentor/coach to other ambassadors-in-training

[end of email text]