Agile creativity is the sweet spot at the intersection of planning and improvising. With the help of David Armano’s image, I propose that’s the intersection from which skilled mediators work much of the time.
David, whose influential marketing blog, Logic+Emotion, is a source of inspiration about creativity, design and user experience, says this about agile creativity: […]

Mediation & Applied Conflict Studies core faculty member David Specht was quoted recently in an InterPress Service story about Soliya, for whom David serves as a volunteer facilitator.
The Soliya Connect Program uses web-based videoconferencing technology to create weekly meetings between small groups of university students from the US and predominantly Muslim Countries in the Middle […]

Fellow mediator, ADR blogger, road warrior Geoff Sharp recently found himself in a beautiful—but very cold—spot in the world. In his post about it, Geoff wrote,

Tammy, if your Woodbury College grad students are reading this at the start of class on a summer’s day, tell them please that this is the reality of the coalface […]

I attended a blogging conference last weekend, a first for me. It was SOBCon ‘07 and the sense of community and affiliation in the room was powerful. It turns out that relationship bloggers hug as much as some mediators, and this bunch was just as good at creating meaningful conversation.
During one of the many excellent […]

I just watched a re-run of Tom Hanks interviewed on Inside the Actor’s Studio. In a discussion with host James Lipton, Hanks commented that,
“The death of acting is self-consciousness.”
Mediation, too. It brings to mind Michael Lang’s text, The Art of Mediation, in which he discusses the ability to reflect in action as well as on […]

I came across this story today:
Thomas Edison is reported to have tested anyone he was thinking about hiring. He would invite them to have a bowl of soup with them. Anyone adding salt without first tasting the soup failed his test. He didn’t want anyone making decisions based upon unfounded assumptions.
I have […]

Woodbury welcomed a talented, accomplished new cohort of master’s students this week and I worked with them for the first two days of their on-campus residency. When I returned to my office later in the week, I sat down to craft my lesson plan for Conflict Intervention Skills, a class I’m helping teach to master’s […]

What does depth of mediation education have to do with the scope of an ADR professional’s dreams and aspirations? Maybe more than I was aware.
A while back, one of our graduates emailed the faculty on this very topic. Lisa Bedinger, M.S., first studied at Woodbury in our year-long mediation certificate program. She returned […]

Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users enjoys challenging assumptions, asking the questions others haven’t, and noting when the emperor has no clothes. She’s much like a very blunt mediator in those ways.
She’s done it again with The Dumbness of Crowds, a title takeoff of James Surowiecki’s bestseller, The Wisdom of Crowds. On the dangers […]

Geoff Sharp broke my heart this afternoon.
An animal lover, I was deeply saddened by his story and my mental images of the dying horses. A mediator, I was captivated at the same time. And a teacher, I felt the truth of his words.
You can find Geoff’s mediator blah…blah… post at Rehearsing in Poetry But […]