Who affects who?

It's always interesting watching the interpersonal relationships within and without a group of people from any walk of life; a jury for example is a good representation of what I'm trying to establish and describe, imagine how many people are influencing each other in that situation not to mention the myriad of different possibilities in which the information presented to each individual member is interpreted; how it is presented to them, by who etc, etc... then there's how they interpret the whole experience individually and as a collective.

Today this phenomena struck me as focused even further within an outdoor education experience; there are so many different levels going on, to make it a little easier to comprehend lets try and split the overall group of people involved, into some component parts:

1 - the group
2 - the facilitators/instructors
3 - the staff accompanying the group (teachers/youth leaders)
4 - facilitators managers

Model of hierarchy in shared experiences;

One way of looking at the way in which this complex set of participants to 'an experience' interact is the model shown above however this model does not show which direction the flow of influence travels; consider the expectations of each level of the pyramid it becomes quickly apparent that this experience becomes a complex interaction simply by the four expectations highlighted in this way, not to mention the further breakdown into individual expectation!

Another way to interpret this interaction may be to view it as a continuum with each component of the shared experience listed from left to right, this would suggest a flow of influence however in which direction? Does the Facilitators Manager ultimately influence the overall experience; it may be argued that the facilitator/instructor has the difficult task of meeting the expectations of all the other three component parts...

Given that experiences are in their nature, reciprocal phenomena then all the component parts must in some way meet the expectations of all the others; this leads to the question who's expectations are the most important? Again it may seem we have come full circle and the pyramid hierarchy model of expectations may be argued, by the purest of outdoor educators/facilitators, is the prioritisation of choice. The pragmatic among us however may have experienced a compromise in this situation, it is an unfortunate circumstance but more often than not it is the 'accompanying staff's' expectations that take precedence; more often than not the expectation of the facilitators manager is simply that the expectations of the teacher/youth leader are met! I claim that this may be the view of the pragmatist as in the current economic climate the people who pay the bills are the people we, out of necessity have to keep happy.

Learning to Blog!

A curious thing seems to be happening, the 21st century has brought people's thoughts, opinions and everyday lives screaming into the public domain; now I understand blogging isn't a new thing it's just new to me so those of you out there who may be judging me as a bit of a backwards Welsh idiot please forgive my late arrival to the cyber-info/self-publicising process.

As you may have worked out if you've had a browse around my blog page I work and spend most of my life in and around the outdoor adventure industry; I can't help but question the validity of face book, tweeting blogging etc... and I struggling to keep up with it, logging into face book then twitter and blogger to keep things up to date and interesting; while continuing to go about my normal life, also why am I doing it?

I came to the conclusion it's a good thing to do just keeping a blog as a diary, an element of self-conciousness creeps in regards the public nature of a blog; so I'm currently sat next to two colleagues trying to glean as much information as I can on how to build and navigate around my blogger page as evrytime I log into here I end up playing and messing about with all the gadgets and not writting any posts! Well finaly here's the first so I hope you've enjoyed my semi rant about how I am making my already busy and hectic life even more busy and hectic and frustrating!?