Five weeks until the PNI Practicum

(The title of this blog post is not correct. I started posting these videos only on LinkedIn, but decided on the third week to post in both places at once.)

Hello good people of the internet. My next PNI Practicum courses start on 5 and 7 September 2023. In preparation, here I am answering another common question about participatory narrative inquiry.

If you are thinking that you might want to take one of my courses next year (when you have more time), be aware that if these fall courses don't fill up (enough), I will have to stop giving them. Having poured my time into so many open-source projects over the years, I'm out of funds, and I can't run my courses half full.

If you don't have time to take a course right now, but want to help me keep offering them, please consider making a donation in support of my free books and software. You can find donation buttons on workingwithstories.org (on the download-it page) and on narrafirma.com (at the bottom of the main page). I also offer bespoke coaching and training (see cfkurtz.com).

Here's another recommendation video from a course that ended recently. 

 

All of the videos I am posting here can also be found on the PNI Practicum web site at cfkurtz.com/pnipracticum. Special thanks to Augusto Cuginotti, who helped me put this video series together.

 

Getting ready for the next PNI Practicum Courses

Hello good people of the internet. My next PNI Practicum courses start on 5 and 7 September 2023. I rarely promote my work, but if I want to give these courses, I had better find people who want to take them. So I am posting new FAQ and testimonial videos once a week until September, here and on LinkedIn. 

Here I am explaining what PNI is in the first place.

 

And here is the first of several recommendations from satisfied students.

All of the videos I am posting here can also be found on the PNI Practicum web site at cfkurtz.com/pnipracticum. Special thanks to Augusto Cuginotti, who helped me put the video series together.

My next courses will begin in September, not July

Please excuse me while I learn how to run international online courses.

After much feedback, I have decided to move my next set of PNI Practicum courses to begin in September instead of July. This is mainly to accommodate the many people who don't work (or work much) during some or most of July and August.

• The next PNI Practicum I course will now run from 5 September to 19 December 2023.
• The next PNI Practicum II course will now run from 7 September 2023 to 1 February 2024. 

To make the courses fit into these time frames, given the various holidays, I have had to remove the one-week mid-course break.

The only other change I have made is to simplify the multi-ticket bundles from three to one. Now there is only a ten percent discount if you buy two tickets at once. 

If you have any questions or suggestions about the PNI Practicum courses, write to me at cfkurtz@cfkurtz.com.

New course and book developments

I have updates for you. 

Working with Stories is changing

I spent most of 2022 writing materials for my new PNI Practicum courses (about which more below). 

• I wrote a "picture book" version of Working with Stories, one that says the same thing but with far fewer words and a lot more diagrams and photographs. 
• I wrote a "story form library" of 36 question sets to suit a variety of PNI project goals.
  

Both of these resources have been appreciated by my students. However, I don't want to keep them behind a paywall. It's not how I do things. So this year, while running the courses, I have been working on getting the new materials out into the world. 

I've been thinking about what people need when they are learning how to do PNI. And I've been thinking about what people have said to me about Working with Stories over the past eight years. Based on what I have learned, I think WWS wants to be four books: 

• the original book (trimmed and updated)
  
• a shorter, simpler version (the picture book)
  
• a resource library (story forms and case studies)
  
• a book with abundant details (for the nerds who want everything)
  

So that's what I'm working on - when I'm not working on the courses that are going on right now, that is.

I think it's going to take me at least several months to get all of these books ready to publish. So I decided to put them up in draft form now while I work on finishing them. You can find the new books on the More page of the WWS web site. 

These are the new book cover designs (so far). Coincidentally, the original book has four pictures on the cover. It's almost like WWS knew it wanted to be four books before I did.

So: have at the new stuff, and please send feedback.

The PNI Practicum courses are changing

The PNI Practicum courses are going very well. People are doing lots of wonderful projects, and we are all learning and making useful mistakes together. For myself, I have learned a lot about how to give online courses (well, how not to give online courses; but that works too). So my next set of courses (starting in July) will incorporate many changes.

Some changes have to do with what will happen in the course.

• Calls will be recorded. I wasn't sure if people would want to be recorded in our course meetings. Turns out they do. So, all Zoom calls are now being recorded and are available to all students for review as long as the course goes on. So if you miss a call, you can see and hear what happened in your absence.
  
• We will use Miro. I had wanted to show people that you can use a variety of online tools to facilitate interactive sessions. But Miro is so much better than every other option that I'm switching to it entirely.
• Students will make presentations. To give people better opportunities to practice selling PNI to their participants and funders, in the next set of courses, each student will be asked to make two brief presentations to the class. 
• Early on, each student will pitch their chosen project as if they were soliciting approval for it and participation in it.
  
• At the end of the course, each student will make a brief presentation on what happened in their project: its goals, plans, challenges, surprises, and outcomes.
  

 Some changes will be structural.

• There will be a mid-course break. From now on, there will be a one-week break between parts 4 and 5 (weeks 8 and 9) of each course. This will help people catch up if they have fallen behind, and it will give us all a spring or fall break.
• One meeting time will be different. In the next courses, our Zoom calls will happen at 1700 and 2100 (was 2300) UTC. This should help when people in farther-apart time zones want to be on the same calls.

Some changes will be to the course requirements.

• NarraFirma will be required in the II-level course. I had been making a special effort not to require the use of NarraFirma, in case people wanted to use other things. However, all of my students thought I should require everyone to use NF, so everyone can learn how to use it together. So now, if you want to take the PNI Practicum II course, you will need to use NarraFirma. (The I-level course still requires no particular software.)
  
• Course fees will need to be paid two weeks ahead. To avoid last-minute scheduling difficulties, anyone who wants to take either course must pay the full course fee two weeks before the course starts.
  

And finally, I have made some changes to how I will promote and manage the courses.

• The course syllabi will be available to review before you sign up. I have posted the syllabi for the two courses on the PNI Practicum web site, so you can see what is going to happen in each part of each course.
  
• Refunds will be pro-rated. If you need to drop out of a course for any reason, I will refund your course fee on a pro-rated basis, counting how many weeks you have attended (and not counting the first week, which is covered by the nonrefundable deposit). However, I ask people not to take the course (or dropping out) lightly, since dropping out will affect the peer learning experiences of everyone else in the course.
  
• There will be a new 6-student minimum. If either course does not have at least six people signed up (and paid in full) by the time the course fee is due, the course will not run, and I will send out refunds (including of deposits) to those who have signed up.
  
• There might be an extra course. If either course fills up completely and people still want to take it (if that happens to you, tell me), I will open up one more course of that type. If at least 6 people want to take that course, I will give it.

If you have any questions about the PNI Practicum courses, or if you have any suggestions about Working with Stories, reach out via email (cfkurtz@cfkurtz.com).

Here I am talking to Madelyn Blair about stories

Hey everybody. Recently I had a wonderful conversation with Madelyn Blair, one of my role models in getting out there and doing things in the world. It was about stories and working with them, and it was part of an episode of her Unlocked TV show.

(Watch out, the music starts suddenly. Made me jump.)

For those who are new to story work, you might find our conversation informative. For those who know me and my spiel well, the conversation will probably be pretty familiar - it's the same stories I always tell. Though of course I keep polishing them, don't I, and that can be interesting in and of itself. 

That's one of the things I find most interesting about stories: they have stories. I try to remember this when somebody starts telling me a story I've already heard ten times. When I catch myself thinking, "Ugh, there they go again," I (try to) challenge myself to think, "Ah, it's that story. I remember it well. I wonder what it's been up to since I last heard it." I don't always succeed in meeting this challenge, but when I do, I always find out something new.

It's like being in the woods. Even though I have spent time in my particular bit of forest a thousand times, I find that if I can be quiet and pay attention to it for at least fifteen minutes, something new always happens. Sometimes it is something as dramatic as an owl teaching its baby how to fly, a squirrel rushing up and reading me the riot act, or a woodpecker poking its way up and down a tree. Sometimes it's something as simple as a conversation between birds, an operatically creaking tree, or a busy insect going about its workday next to my boot. And sometimes the thing that happens is in my own mind. I hear or see something, and it brings up something new and different. That's an event too. 

Things are always happening, fascinating things, even in the things I know very well. The trick, I find, is to stop not noticing them. I don't know if that's helpful to you - maybe it's just more sighing of my branches - but here I am writing it anyway, because I'm here, because you're here.

Thank you, Madelyn, for inviting me onto your program. I enjoyed the experience very much.