ReFramed

Over the past 2 days, the Mountain T.O.P. staff participated in ReFrame, a conference for home repair non-profits working in Appalachia. The whole premise of this gathering was to collaborate, share ideas, best practices, wisdom, and information.

Truth be known, I think it's typical to leave conferences feeling drained or overwhelmed. But that didn't happen this time! I think that's because the format of the conference valued the wisdom of every attendee. We relied on the experience and knowledge of the participants in each session. Facilitators were in place to do just that, help guide the conversations.

Not only did we walk away with new ideas, we walked away invigorated by the collaboration. That's really hard to do, spending 7.5 hours in workshops in just over 24 hours. I think the key was that we didn't spend a lot of our time listening to "special" speakers or presentations. Instead, we listened to each other, everyone, no matter if you did 700 projects a year or 5 projects a year. And that made A LOT of difference.

Well,...that, and Jay's performance at the Holiday Inn's Karaoke Klub. I think Bo has the video. You should ask him about it.