WAIC 2012

banner WAIC smallThe 2012 World Appreciative Inquiry Conference in Ghent, Belgium, was an amazing experience! From 45 countries, 600 people gathered to share ideas, news of their activities, their dreams and hopes for the future and – as always – wonderful cameraderie.

Armed with his camera, Chris captured special moments from the conference as well as many sights of the beautiful city of Ghent, in which we wandered for a couple of days prior to the conference itself.

Just as we did for the 2009 conference in Nepal, we have incorporated those photos into flash shows. This time there are two shows – one has images from the conference and the other images of Ghent.

You can view the shows below.  The one on the conference itself may perhaps be of interest only for those who attended. But the second should be of more general interest – perhaps for those who have visited Ghent, or for ‘armchair travellers’ who would like to. :)

We’ve selected the photos for both shows from a much larger number Chris took, but not every photo is ‘technically perfect’. Conference photos were chosen to tell the story of the gathering, capturing as many faces and special moments as we could. This show also includes 11 photos kindly provided by Jan Somers, to fill some ‘gaps’ in the story – such as one of the morning Tai Chi sessions. :) The Ghent photos we chose were those that best shared our experience of this truly beautiful and diverse city.

World Appreciative Inquiry Conference 2012

[Note: We had originally hosted the shows here on our own server, but ran into excessive bandwidth problems. So this is now hosted on YouTube.]

This flash show has over 300 images and runs for a little over 21 minutes. We hope it will help to recapture the story of the conference for those who were there. You may also have some fun playing ‘spot the faces’ of the people you know or met there! :)

Playing for Change have generously given permission to use their music as the soundtrack. The Playing for Change band performed for us all at the end of the conference and it was a fantastic way to conclude the four days we all spent together!

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Images of Ghent

[Note: We had originally hosted the shows here on our own server, but ran into excessive bandwidth problems. So this is now hosted on YouTube.]

This flash show is smaller, with 140 images and an 11-minute running time. It shares some of the sights from our two day ‘walkabout’ in Ghent before the conference began. From beautiful buildings to bicycles, from postcard scenery to people going about their daily business – it was all fascinating to us. We even spotted – and captured the proof in a photo – a small piece of Australia in central Ghent! And it’s something we actually don’t have in Australia, as far as we’re aware. :)

The accompanying music is the aptly named On the Road Again, composed and played by Cedric Willems, a local Ghent musician. Our thanks to Cedric, who has also generously given us permission to use this track.

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