Steve Byers (OSR 13) reflects on 2008 Pegasus Conference held in Boston

Each year I approach the Pegasus Systems Thinking in Action conference with huge anticipation and enthusiasm – I have very high expectations, every year.  I go to this conference to learn at multiple levels.  I go… for the tangible feeling of community and belonging…to make new relationships…looking for a stretch and the unexpected…to hone skills…to watch others do the work they love…to make a contribution to a community. 

I was really pleased this year by the abundance of music and poetry, thanks to the wonderful slam poet Tim Merry and his mates. And this became one of my “unexpecteds”, as I joined up with a small group of conference participants to write and perform a song after the closing keynote, before the entire conference.

Since I’ve been doing a lot of World Café work in my own practice, I was delighted to experience well-attended Cafes at the conference community building session, at a session about becoming an Elder (both hosted by David Isaacs of The World Café), and at a session on social innovation (hosted by Tim Merry).

One evening Linda Booth Sweeney and Drew Jones (Sustainability Institute) hosted a fun session about causal loops and stocks and flows and delays related to climate change, including a “bathtub” to illustrate the concept of accumulation. Speaking of Linda, I bought her new beautiful book, “Connected Wisdom”, and recommend it to all my OSR colleagues and to all their children’s teachers.

The Team Program was pretty vigorous this year. Lots of people register and attend as teams each year, and some teams take specific advantage of volunteer coaches coordinated by Pegasus. This was my second year serving as a team coach, along with Nalani Linder and four other non-OSR (and extremely qualified) coaches. We designed a welcoming event for the evening preceding the opening of the conference, and then met with our teams during the conference to help them make the most of their experience. I worked with a team of 9 school district administrators. Nalani and I will lead the team coaching program at the 2009 conference.

The 2009 conference is in Seattle, November 2-4. Save the date.  I hope to see many of you there.

Steve Byers, OSR 13