Hello dear colleagues and friends,

It has been a while since I last wrote to this list.

Many of you originally connected with me through facilitation, collaborative leadership, meeting design, or the broader world of group process. That work remains very close to my heart — and, in many ways, it has become even more central to everything I do.

Over the past months, I have been reflecting on the growing number of people who practise facilitation as part of their everyday work, even when “facilitator” is not their professional title. Project managers, consultants, HR professionals, trainers, agile coaches, service designers, public servants, team leaders, and many others are constantly helping groups think together, make sense of complexity, and move towards shared decisions.

This is sometimes described as “small-f facilitation”.

I have written a new article on this idea and why I believe it matters for the future of our profession:

From small-f to systemic value: rethinking the future of facilitation
​https://www.architectingcollaboration.com/l/from-small-f-to-systemic-value-rethinking-the-future-of-facilitation/​

At the same time, my own facilitation work has increasingly moved into complex systems where collaboration is not just useful, but essential.

One example is the Health Data Forum Global Hybrid Summit, which I am curating in Bilbao on 24–25 September 2026 under the theme:

Making EHDS Real — from policy to implementation
​https://www.healthdataforum.org/bilbao/​

The European Health Data Space is not only a technical or regulatory challenge. It is also a collaboration challenge. It requires trust, shared understanding, multi-stakeholder dialogue, and the capacity to bring very different actors into meaningful conversation.

In other words, it requires facilitation.

So this is both a personal update and a gentle reconnection.

I would love to hear from you if the idea of small-f facilitation resonates with your own work, or if you are now applying facilitation in new fields, sectors, or systems.

Warm regards,

Paul Nunesdea (Paulo Nunes de Abreu), PhD, CPF
​Architecting Collaboration​