Presenting the process

I'm just back from Crete where Gusztav and I made a presentation on the Naturama KV process at the European Society for Rural Sociology Congress.  Well, he made a presentation and I spoke a bit about what PV is for in the middle somewhere, though as usual we'd chewed over it all together beforehand.

The centre piece of the presentation was this very short documentary about the process, and it's a great pleasure to share it at last with English subtitles:

We made the presentation to a group of rural sociologists working on rural tourism, and it rather looks like we could take the process to Portugal next year as a result after 2 offers.

New edits

Gusztav and Jani have been working away last week to edit some more films from the project.  It's been great to hear G. get excited about finally taking on some of his own editing projects. The results are up at http://www.youtube.com/user/naturamakv

Graduation Films

 

Edited Films

The first five of the trail films have been uploaded and are ready to be linked to the GIS trail on google maps.

Leaving…and arriving

It’s been a long trip and a long week, and it’s time to find the missing posts and then sign off. It’s been a long week, which is nice, because usually things like this feel like they’ve been over in a flash. 

I didn’t get out to the walk in the morning yesterday because I was helping make the rooms the right shape again, and then we had a long debrief. It was a chance to think forward into the future, and look at what we’d do better next time and what else we’d like to do.  In the end, the three things I’d take away are the importance of fixed points (a more regular framework to the day), of skilful action (doing things that make the whole situation better), and having enough time for a more rigorous technical setup.

Since then I’ve been unpeeling layers of people – down to just me staying behind an hour at the Szechenyi Baths in Budapest at lunch-time.  A rather unexpected media lunch in my usual BP internet cafe (hi guys, if you’re reading), and eventually I’m back in my office minus one bottle of red wine that got mashed all over the inside of my luggage.  I’m still learning things about flash video, but by tomorrow it’ll back to the day job and on to pastures new.

Finishing Off – Friday Afternoon

This afternoon, the biggest task was to close the training off in a good spirit.  I tell every group I work with like this that they have been the best ever, and it’s always true in the moment.

Some important things we did to close:

• Tidy up the room
• Take a moment to let go of frustrations, misunderstandings, and missed opportunities
• Think about what worked, what you learned
• Respond to others and value what they say
• A round of thanks, everyone to each person in turn

An important device in the session was the certificates.  We played with that and made the afternoon an exam, a test of whether people should graduate.  What people had learned became the theory test, and we also had a practical.

We needed a short piece for the werkfilm anyway, so we split the group into 2 and ask them to make a short piece, based on an example from our last project together in Ireland.  It took a while – longer than the 20 mins we had originally asked for – because we relaxed the schedule a bit and moved the part of the session about looking forward to after supper. When I saw the films, I got properly choked up.  They’d used the extra time to do some editing on the footage, and Jani and our pro editor Peti (Pete) had done their magic.

So we passed them all with flying colours, and it was right and fitting that Guszti and Zsuzsa should present the certificates.  The rest of our team stood behind and smiled and supported them. Fantastic.

Not on location

I’ve managed to go the whole project without going out on location, so from my point of view it’s been a slightly mysterious activity – something to send people to and receive them back from.  I’m not complaining at all, it gave me some space to replenish myself after the face-to-face training and be read to catch things as they come up.

This morning was a joy – we got up and sat down to breakfast, and by the end of the meal the teams had worked themselves out, we had an agreement where to meet (the pub in Nagyvazsony) and off they all went.  Three of us set up our nerve centre and have had time to start assembling photos and think through how to bring the training element together.

The crews are starting to arrive now and so it looks like the last of the trail films are in the can.  The editor was going to title the 6 we had ready for last night and compress them for the web, so there should be something pretty to look at later today (internet willing)