The sustainable links workshop
This “Workshop of Sustainable Connections” encourages the creation of lasting bonds between participants in collective events. Each person exchanges their personalized contact details with five others, while jointly defining concrete reasons for future follow-up.
And what’s next?
During moments of collective intelligence animation, what people experience can be very powerful and constructive. However, I believe it is important to think about what comes next, because one can leave an exciting day having developed important things with other participants, yet not know how to contact them again. Sometimes, we didn’t dare to ask for their contact details, or we receive a list of all the attendees without knowing who is who, and without feeling authorized to reach out to them. This is why, at the end of a day for example, it can be very interesting to implement this rather original “Workshop of Sustainable Connections,” which I will now describe.
Method of the Workshop of Sustainable Connections
The goal is to forge connections that can potentially continue beyond the day. This workshop has two parts:
First Part:
- The first part is quite similar to the Pair Exchange Workshop. It involves using the same principle, except that the theme shared in pairs is to introduce oneself and explain to the other why they are there, what they expect, what they wish to do, and what their project is.
- For example, if one is an amateur artist, they can explain their performance project. If in a professional setting, they can share their service project. It can also be an opportunity to share a utopian idea related to the context we are in.
- In any case, it is important to propose a theme that is both concrete and forward-looking during this exchange.
Second Part:
- The second part involves asking participants to take 5 half-A4 sheets and, on these sheets, to write their contact details, their name, their role, or any other information they wish to share. They can use markers to make this information aesthetically pleasing.
- Then, they take a photo of their designed contact details and immediately share this photo via a QR Code in a dedicated digital space. This space can be a simple WhatsApp group, but the ideal is a photo gallery system where all the photos can be viewed visually. This way, participants are made responsible for creating a visual and unique list, which works much better in mnemonic terms than a simple anonymously sent Excel sheet.
- Next, in an open space where everyone is moving around, each person distributes their 5 sheets to 5 others and receives in return 5 sheets from other participants. At the end, everyone leaves with the complete contact details of 5 other participants.
Why?
There is an important instruction during this exchange: it’s not just about handing over a paper without speaking, but about engaging in a bit of dialogue, even if briefly. The exercise lasts 15 minutes, and the goal is to have conversed with 5 people in this short time. That’s about 3 minutes per person, but the timing isn’t overly rigid, as it’s a more relaxed moment at the end of the day. This exercise works particularly well after participants have already shared experiences together.
How?
When someone hands me their sheet, we must agree together, by writing on the sheet itself, on reasons that might lead us to get back in touch. So, I receive the sheet, and it’s up to me, in a way, to commit to contacting this person again for a reason we define together. This reason isn’t necessarily functional, and I emphasize this: it can be related to a deep exchange, a sharing of ideas, or a discussion on a specific topic.
There is a form of investment, even if the word is a bit strong, in a future connection to be pursued. This exercise allows for creating connections that go beyond simply collecting contact details, promoting meaningful and engaging interactions.
In the context of businesses, as well as in associative, social, artistic, cultural mediation, cultural action, initial or professional training, and social action settings, mobilizing the collective intelligence of participants is a very powerful lever. It enables mutual enrichment, improved relationships, stronger cohesion, the emergence of ideas, the invention of projects, greater engagement, and more.
Collective intelligence tools are also powerful democratic tools. They have been largely developed within the field of popular education, where the contribution of each individual is valued far more than in the national education system, which, in France, unfortunately often remains too traditional in its approaches.
I have frequently participated in collective intelligence workshops, and I have facilitated, applied, refined, adapted, and even invented a number of them. Here, you will find a collection of tools that I have personally used, which are integrated into the methods I propose, supported by real-life use cases. I believe these tools are highly worth sharing, as I have seen so many beneficial effects from them! I often find myself thinking, during collective moments such as conferences, for example: it’s a shame to limit ourselves to passive listening—all these minds gathered together could, if mobilized more effectively, produce something greater collectively.
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The Shared Secret
When the intimate becomes collective: a method of collective intelligence through whispering, listening and creation.
Creating a space where the intimacy of a whisper becomes a collective work. Engaging empathic listening, emotional regulation and creative (…) -
The Implementation of Methods
When Words Are No Longer Enough: Toward an Embodied Transformation of Professional Practices
Methods often fail because they remain discursive. Advocating for cooperation while dominating, speaking of ecology while imposing: the (…) -
Cooperative Narratives
Creating polyphonic narrative devices to transform academic knowledge into living and operative knowledge.
How can we overcome the limits of academic narrative to create truly shared knowledge? A concrete experience of collective writing devices that (…) -
For an ecology of dispensability
Rethinking authority and transmission.
Faced with the vertical management that dominates and alienates, another path exists: that of an authority that aims for its own dispensability, (…) -
The Group Flag
Between cohesion and freedom: the fertile paradox of shared culture.
How can a common symbol liberate singularities? I propose here a reflection on the paradoxical role of the “group flag” function as guarantor of (…) -
The State of Openness
For democratic and transformative facilitation.
How can we cultivate a welcoming posture that allows everyone to contribute fully? Openness is not a method but an inner state that transforms our (…) -
Formalizing the informal
Informality, essential to learning, resists structure while calling for it. How to tame it.
The absence of informal aspects in distance learning forces us to rethink its fundamental nature. This constraint becomes a laboratory for (…) -
Framework, purpose and transgression
So as not to get lost along the way.
When the framework of a project becomes inadequate, transgressing it often allows for better achievement of the objectives by prioritizing lived (…) -
Speech takes on PowerPoint
For more useful collective exchanges.
PowerPoint presentations hinder collective intelligence by rigidifying exchanges—this is well-known and documented—yet they remain almost (…) -
Collective surveying of texts
Enrich a text with the intelligence of other readers.
Collective text surveying is a method where a group divides a document into sections, with each subgroup working on one part before sharing their (…) -
Potential development space
Collective innovation method.
The potential development space is a method of collective innovation based on intuitive encounters, without predefined objectives, where mutual (…) -
Mapping the Collective Territory
Geographical Identification of Connections within a Group.
This activity allows visualizing connections and origins within a group by creating a human world map. By positioning themselves according to (…) -
Web platform for professional training
An astonishingly powerful device.
Following the democratization of remote work, it has been necessary to rethink approaches to professional training. This proven method offers a (…) -
Digital traces as a link
The power of digital to bring people together.
The immediate sharing of activity traces (recordings, photos, mind maps) via an accessible digital space strengthens the connection between (…) -
Listener contributions via digital tool
Unleash the power of the brains involved.
In a conference where one or more people address a large audience, it is common, after the presentation, to have a moment of discussion or Q&A (…) -
The sustainable links workshop
Create meaningful connections in collaborative workshops.
This “Workshop of Sustainable Connections” encourages the creation of lasting bonds between participants in collective events. Each person (…) -
Collaborative mind-mapping
An instituting, evolving form of writing.
Collaborative mind mapping is a visual and tree-like note-taking method, projected in real-time during meetings or training sessions. This (…) -
World Café
A tried-and-tested technique that’s always being reinvented.
The World Café is a collective intelligence technique that fosters the collaborative creation of ideas and concrete projects. Through successive (…) -
Thematic groups
Elaborate together.
This method is a simplified and faster variation of the World Café method, which I have successfully implemented and tested. The goal is for each (…) -
A web platform for collective intelligence
Support collective action with a specific digital tool.
Discovering the Power of a Web Platform Specifically Designed for Collective Intelligence Contribution, Through a Concrete Example. A Digital (…) -
Exchanges in pairs
To give everyone a voice.
A collective intelligence exercise that stimulates thinking and listening. Working in pairs, each participant builds his or her own argument on a (…) -
Book synthesis
Boosting professional training in collective intelligence.
How to use collective intelligence in professional training in a way that is not anecdotal but enriches the subject in depth? Bringing a moment of (…) -
The importance of expression
Identifying an essential path to emancipation.
Expression, often overlooked, is a key element for individual and collective emancipation. By providing a legitimate framework, appropriate tools, (…) -
Reception
Interaction practice exercise.
An activity to explore welcoming and interaction: each person alternates between welcoming and being welcomed, experiences strong emotions, and (…) -
Secret tips
In-depth mutual enrichment.
A powerful exercise to nurture creativity and collaboration: each participant presents a project or idea in 3 minutes, then receives intimate, (…) -
Collective bibliography
An encounter with oneself through books.
This activity is very useful at the beginning of meetings, gatherings, or workdays. The idea is to bring a number of books that address the topic (…) -
Sit Stand
Playfully identifying the links between participants.
Sit Stand, a playful and profound exercise to identify the concept of community. The “Sit Stand” exercise is often presented as an icebreaker, (…)
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“Territorial approach, participation, youth and digital technology”: interview of Benoît Labourdette by Serge Saada (52’, 2021) Observatory of cultural mediation in the social field.
As part of the Observatory of cultural mediation in the social field, Serge Saada interviewed Benoît Labourdette on the impact of the (…) -
World Café A tried-and-tested technique that’s always being reinvented.
The World Café is a collective intelligence technique that fosters the collaborative creation of ideas and concrete projects. Through successive (…) -
Speech takes on PowerPoint For more useful collective exchanges.
PowerPoint presentations hinder collective intelligence by rigidifying exchanges—this is well-known and documented—yet they remain almost (…) -
Cooperative Narratives Creating polyphonic narrative devices to transform academic knowledge into living and operative knowledge.
How can we overcome the limits of academic narrative to create truly shared knowledge? A concrete experience of collective writing devices that (…) -
The Ambient Sound Chorus Having non-actors play the ambient sound of a scene live during the shoot, using simple musical instruments.
During a filmmaking workshop, when the shoot begins, how can we make sure everyone genuinely contributes, including those who are not acting or (…)
