Last weekend, I attended the Applied Improvisation Network’s yearly conference, which was held outside Portland, at stately Edgefield Manor.   Edgefield Manor, for the first 50 years of its existence, used to be what was called a ‘Poor Farm,’ where indigent people could work on the land and get a hand finding a pathway back into society.

The more things change the more they don’t stay the same. The homeless shelters of today are, by and large, pacifiers. They feed, clothe and shelter poor folks, but they do not usually nurture them in the way that working the land on a Poor Farm would.

It seems, however, that the spirit of nurturing still courses through Edgefield, especially when there are improvisers in the house. You will never encounter a more supportive crowd than the people attending this conference.

And the name Edgefield, I mean, come on, it’s perfect!  Can you think of a better way of describing the market niche occupied by applied improvisation?   We used to live in Outer Edgefield, but now it’s Edgefield, and I think that suits most of us just fine.  Who wants to live in Centerfield anyway?  Not me.  Never have.  Never will.

My own workshop, Improvisation for Business in the Networked World, went well, and offered lots of opportunity for follow-ups, but the many gifts that came my way during the conference far outweighed anything I had to offer.  The posts that follow describe a few of those gifts…

A workshop at the AIN Conference