A collective inquiry and laboratory
Where can AI technology support hosting and facilitating meaningful conversations and when and where should we not use AI when working with groups?
Together, we will explore practical applications, ethical considerations, and the deeper questions about what it means to facilitate in a world increasingly shaped by technology and digital intelligence.
As we navigate this new landscape, this inquiry offers a laboratory for playing and experimenting with AI, while making sense of its role in our personal and collective lives. Through key questions, case studies, and live interactions, we will learn to create our own criteria for how to work with AI - considering the integrity of the individual, the group, and the purpose we engage around.
We will work with these four lenses:
The Landscape of AI
UNDERSTANDING THE LANDSCAPE OF AI IN HOSTING AND FACILITATION?
Who is using AI in relation to support facilitation and sense making? Where and how are they using it and what can we learn from these experiences?
New Horizons
POSSIBILITIES FOR WORKING WITH AI
What potential are we starting to get a sense of now? Exploring this with practitioners who are moving the edge of what we can imagine possible?
Our Humanity
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN AT THIS TIME WITH THE RISE OF NEW TECHNOLOGY?
What makes us uniquely human and how do we ensure that our use of technology strengthens our innate humanity?
Our Compass
WHAT IS OUR MORAL COMPASS?
What are the important questions for ask as we navigate this landscape and the possibilities? What is our moral and ethical compass as hosts, facilitators and human beings?
We will explore...
This offering invites you to reflect on the delicate balance between hosting human connection and collaboration by building trust and cultivating personal connections and creating collective insights while working with rapid evolving technology and AI.
Through four real-time online conversations and prerecorded interviews with practitioners and thought leaders who are well versed in using AI, we will delve into how artificial intelligence can both challenge and enhance participatory processes.
A Collective Inquiry
We asked Chat GPT4 the following question and got some new perspectives to think about, that we had not considered yet:
"What are the 10 most important questions to explore around AI´s role for facilitation and hosting meetings, hinking about the process of invitation, facilitating the meeting and making sense?"
Invitation Phase
- How can AI support more intentional and inclusive meeting invitations?
- Can AI help identify who truly needs to be in the room, ensuring diversity of thought and stakeholder relevance?
- What role can AI play in framing the purpose and agenda of a meeting?
- Could AI co-design or recommend agenda structures based on past conversations, org goals, or group dynamics?
- How can AI tailor pre-meeting preparation for each participant?
- Personalized context briefs, emotional tone previews, or surfacing relevant past discussions?
Facilitation Phase
- Can AI act as a real-time co-facilitator to support flow and engagement?
- For example, suggesting process shifts, tracking airtime equity, or helping manage emotional tone?
- How might AI help surface unspoken dynamics or power imbalances during meetings?
- Detecting patterns in language use, participation levels, or sentiment that a human host might miss?
- What boundaries should exist around AI’s authority in live facilitation?
- Should AI merely advise, or can it intervene (e.g., pausing discussion, prompting reflection)?
- How can AI facilitate hybrid or asynchronous participation more effectively?
- Ensuring those who are remote or engaging later can contribute meaningfully, not just passively receive a transcript?
Sensemaking Phase
- In what ways can AI support shared sensemaking rather than just summarizing?
- Identifying emerging themes, tensions, or divergent worldviews, not just bullet points?
- How might AI help translate meeting outcomes into meaningful next steps?
- Not only action items, but deeper insights, strategic shifts, or invitations to further dialogue?
- What ethical considerations arise in storing, interpreting, and using meeting data via AI?
- Ownership, privacy, interpretation biases, and long-term organizational memory?
Format
We will meet in real-time over four sessions to look at our questions, share our insights, inspirations, and challenges with this emerging new technology, and explore how we engage with AI will be part of shaping our culture -- now and into the future.
Between each real time session we will share pre-recorded interviews with practitioners who can open new perspectives, possibilities and questions for us. These interviews will be available after the course together with recordings of all real-time sessions.
FOUR REAL-TIME ONLINE SESSIONS:
- November 12th & 19th, December 3rd & 10th
TIMES
- 10am - 12pm Pacific Time
- 12 - 2pm Eastern Time
- 10:00 - 21:00 Central European Time
PRICE:
- US$350
Accessibility
We don’t want your economic situation to get in the way of your participation. Contact us for group discounts, or if you need help making the course work for you financially.
CONTRIBUTORS & GUESTS
To stimulate our thinking and widen our horizons, we will be interviewing several leading practitioners and thinkers who are working on pushing the edge and understanding the new reality that we are starting to see take shape.
These interviews — along with a playlist of videos expressing a variety of important perspectives — will be made available as part of the course, presented in ways we can interact with, inside and outside of the four sessions. In addition, some of the guests interviewed will join us in one or more of the live sessions.
List of contributors coming soon...
Your Hosting Team
We are thrilled to be hosting you with our full Beehive team:
Amy Lenzo
Amy is an online activist, focused on creating “hospitable space” online – environments that connect us to our bodies and the natural world; "containers" that open us to the joy of learning, and awaken the power of collective wisdom among us.
Rowan Simonsen
Rowan is guided by the question of how to live a simple, beautiful life with impact, asking the questions that really matter.
He is the co-founder of Beehive Productions with Amy Lenzo, a Kaospilot and long time practitioner of the Art of Hosting.
Mary Alice Arthur
An internationally recognised process host for more than 25 years, Mary Alice is a Story Activist working with story in service of positive systemic shift and for focusing collective intelligence on critical issues.