Here is a summary of what emerged:

It’s clear from the feedback that NI means different things to different people. And we felt it should be like this. The range of people and activities exemplifies thinking out of the box, fun, experimentation and play. There is a risk of institutionalising NI if its focus is too narrow.

But the conversation also helped to clarify some of the givens around NI which make it distinctive:

• NI has a clear domain: people, change and organisations
• NI is a community of practice; dedicated to knowledge sharing and creation. It offers support, and helps us all to know and find points of leverage in our work, helping us to become distinctive in our work and developing pride/esprit in this
• NI is a live experiment, that demonstrates new ways of working and organising and the fun and learning that happens when you bring people together
• NI is about crossing boundaries to create new knowledge and understanding, primarily through face to face contact and two way exchange; bricks and clicks, leaders and luddites, internal/external change agents. It seeks to gather new perspectives on change from other communities; theatre, arts, therapy, other kinds of intermediaries
• NI is an open community: people can come and go, dip in and out as work commitments/their own energy levels permit. It is not about building a membership organisation, or achieving critical mass as an end in itself
• NI recognises that a community serves both internal and external consultants, but perhaps in different ways. External consultants need contact with others to avoid isolation, internal consultants gain value from a distancing and perspective on their own home cultures
• This suggests a style, a way of being which can be summarised as:

Informal feedback suggests that most people only look at the knowledge pool after the first visit, and are particularly interested in the News and Events. Tony and Fiona’s Emails are important in prompting visits to the website. The website could be developed much more to support contact within the community online e.g.

• Home page could be redesigned to reflect centrality of Knowledge Pool and give easier access to the bits that are most interesting and useful - such as email/chat room…
• Explore use of bulletin board where people can post questions and provide reactions/answers ie. get help, interact. (We learned form Philip about the highly successful use of community bulletin boards and chat within expertgardener.com. "which surfaces knowledge that just doesn’t appear in any gardening books" Yes!!)
• The bulletin board could also be a useful way of internal consultants/potential clients accessing the external consultant marketplace
• Who we are could appear under Knowledge Pool as another kind of resource, reminding people who they found themselves talking to at an NI get together and accessing contact details. Space for people to say whatever they like about themselves, as a way of introducing themselves to the rest of the New Intermediaries community. Maybe in time invent some categories, possibly unconventional ones.
• Delete the Clients section of the website – it reflects an outdated model of NI. Adjust the case studies to bring out the across boundaries flavour and ensure that they are in inclusive spirit of NI – not just Tony/Fiona work.

17^th May insider/outsider dialogue was high point and really showed what NI was all about. It could be extended to include change sponsors.

As well as pure dialogue and sharing experiences there is a role for bring new perspectives into the room e.g. April Theatre Games day. This was more of a ‘showcase’ for the Harmon’s skills than a dialogue. Many felt this was another high point. Some felt uncomfortable that it was verging on marketing. And now it’s unclear where the offer to create a lab to experiment with theatre/improvisation and change has gone.

We agreed that there are some show cases everyone can relate to like Theatre Games and Storytelling. But others are more theoretical like Personal Construct Theory and Psychosynthesis. One person knowing and others not knowing sets up a limited expert mode of interacting. We would prefer to have days that everyone can understand and join in with rather than theory (we are NOT setting ourselves up as another place where people turn up to lectures by people flogging their latest ideas, books, services).

So perhaps if we were interested in the therapy/consulting boundary it would be important to set up the event as a real two way exchange of value between two groups; therapists and consultants. e.g. Psychosynthesis Trust has a business need to broaden its reach to include consultancy and organisation work – so what can therapists learn from us, as well as what can we learn from them?

In terms of building knowledge and expertise within NI we could do this in a non expert, participative way by doing a "Live Problem Page Day", with people bringing say 3 issues during day and everyone puts in their ideas about how to respond/resolve.

Sophie works for What if? A wacky creativity consultancy where they would like to learn about doing excellent 1:1 coaching. We could do an exchange/sharing day.

Could have hi-tech vs hi-touch day, involving a dialogue amongst those who are creating change through introducing new systems/IT and those who take a people-centred view of change in organisations.

Could have "So what do designers have to tell us about change?"

Currently Tony and Andy currently doing research into change sponsors and role of improvisation in managing change. Hope to publish something in autumn.

Wendy Hirsch used NI as a case example for her Roffey Park research project on alliances and new forms of organisation.

Fiona and Tony authored, printed and distributed article on spontaneous change under NI ‘brand’.

View is that all of these kinds of things can go on spontaneously. Garth interested in sub-groups working around a common theme. Tony and Andy’s work is perhaps an example of this already happening. In time we might develop website bulletin board to stimulate interest in other areas?

The vision of the online community is compelling – but Philip’s experience suggests you need a big investment of time, money and commitment to make a virtual community thrive. Our feeling is that NI should evolve from the needs and wishes of the 45-50 or so people who are associated with NI now. This suggests that face to face is still in the foreground and infrastructure/website supports face to face rather than vice versa.

However, the website has a lot of untapped potential. We have no idea what kind of investment would be needed to facilitate more online interaction/problem sharing. Going down this path raises issues for Tony and Fiona about financing (currently low key, bring a tenner to cover costs) to what might be a more substantial investment. It would seem to be a retrograde step to make this kind of decision unilaterally. We want to respond to a felt need and a shared commitment rather than provide something which may or may not be taken up. Any thoughts/suggestions anyone?

Lots of people expressing friendly concern about Tony and Fiona’s investment of time in NI – where’s the payoff, how do you do it all etc? A lot of support for the need to have some leadership, particularly in early days of NI’s evolution and no feedback that leadership is being experienced as inhibiting/controlling (although you never know!!!)

Tony and Fiona comfortable with way things are at moment, but wary of step change in level of workload to bring NI community on. Still see our primary task as facilitating people and change in organisations for a living – not designing websites, or administering virtual communities! Really appreciative of support offered in running activities/planning days (John Wilkes, Andy and Anita Harmon). Hope that Autumn programme might include some events which are led by others, which we can always support in terms of venue, communications etc.

Any ideas, comments, offers?

Suggest that dates are fixed, activities subject to confirmation but…..