September
30 - October 3, 2001. The Taos Institute was one of the many sponsors
of the First International Conference on Appreciative Inquiry:
Accelerating Positive Change, that took place in Baltimore, September
30 - October 3, 2001. This conference, which took place just three
weeks after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York
City and the US Pentagon, brought over 500 people together from around
the world. The topic of inquiry for the plenary sessions took on new
meaning as participants explored how business might serve as an a gent
of world benefit.
This conference brought together Taos Institute’s founders David
Cooperrider, Diana Whitney, Ken and Mary Gergen, and Suresh Srivastva.
Taos associates presenting at the conference were Frank Barrett, Jane
Watkins, Jim Ludema, Barbara Sloan, Anne Radford, Bliss Browne, Bernard
Mohr, Jane Seiling, Marge Schiller, Amanda Trosten-Bloom, Miriam
Rickets, and Jim Willis. Warren Bennis was there is spirit through a
video presentation due to travel difficulties. As Robert Quinn, from
University of Michigan, writes in his recent book Change the World,
"Appreciative Inquiry is revolutionizing the field of organization
development".
See the new AI Commons website at http://appreciativeinquiry.cwru.edu for summary, pictures and slides of the conference.
Posted on Sunday, September 30, 2001
by Dawn Dole