Paul Collins has been an independent consultant since 1981. Since 1989, his practice has focused on providing facilitation and consulting services in the business, government, academic and not-for-profit sectors. In the last nine years, Paul has specialized in providing clients with facilitation, training and consulting services in the deployment of group support technology (electronic meeting systems) and the integration of work teams, projects, and group process with computer-supported facilitation. Paul is a certified facilitator for the WebIQ and GroupSystems Group Decision Support Systems and is a certified Forté Communications System Facilitator/Coach. He has authored "white papers" for clients on the results and effects of integrating business practices with group support technology and has made presentations at numerous conferences on the enterprise deployment of computer-supported collaboration. Paul also does public speaking on the subjects of Personal Networks, Interpersonal Communications, Facilitation and Leadership

Paul has facilitated groups in both business and technical areas. His facilitation style would be described as empowering and leading without directing, helping participants quickly overcome technophobia, and making sessions fun and highly productive. Overall, Paul has spent over 27 years facilitating, mentoring and coaching diverse business, ethnic, cultural, religious and racial groups in working towards common ground, setting goals, accomplishing objectives and becoming high performing work-teams. Paul has also worked with clients to design and facilitate distributed (same time, different place) and virtual (anytime, any place) meetings integrating, collaborative methods & processes using group decision support technologies including web collaboration, web conferencing and teleconferencing and video conferencing environments.

He has facilitated projects in business areas such as vision and mission development, business strategy planning, sales/marketing strategy planning, marketing research focus groups, leadership development, project management, organization development, organization design, program design, human resource management, new product development, concept evaluation and problem identification/solving. He has facilitated in technical areas that include system requirements analysis, system design specification, data modeling, functional decomposition, process modeling, process improvement and work re-design/re-engineering.

Paul's client experience includes the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), Argonne National Laboratory, U.S. Cellular Corporation, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, GATX Corporation, Mc Donald's Corporation, Motorola, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), BP Amoco Corporation, GD Searle, Baxter Healthcare, GE Railcar Services, Commonwealth Edison, NIPSCO (Northern Indiana Public Service Company), Fel-Pro, Cardinal Health, Oregon Liquor Control Commission, Bergen-Brunswig, Fox-Meyer, University Healthcare Consortium (UHC), Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Ameritech, Kemper Insurance, Hartford Insurance, Loyola University, De Paul University, University of Chicago, the Labor Management Council of Greater Kansas City, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, and the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center.

He does pro bono consulting and facilitation services for community outreach groups such as the Tutor/Mentor Connection, Cabrini Connections, Chicago Wilderness, Teen Think Tanks of America and the Common Ground for Pro Life/Pro Choice. Paul has established relationships with Chicago area public, parochial and private schools to present programs on group collaboration and technology, to bring in guest speakers from among his clients, and to expose students to various forms of ethnic dance.

Paul is active in a number of professional organizations, including the Midwest Facilitators' Network (MFN), where he is a co-founder, director and webmaster. Paul Collins and Sue Leonard (then of Amoco Corporation) founded this organization in 1992. The MFN's first event was a January 1993 Conference sponsored by Amoco. Since then, the organization has evolved into a non-traditional, non-membership, non-bureaucratic network with over 1200 "members". By the end of 2003, the MFN will have produced 32 full-day conferences and 7 professional skill development workshops for people who facilitate or who manage those who facilitate. Paul is a member of the Midwest Society of Professional Consultants (chair of Programs and Publicity Committees), the National Black MBA Association (a Lifetime Member), the International Association of Facilitators and the American Management Association. Paul did undergraduate work in Germanic Languages & Literature and Economics at the University of Chicago. In the last 20 years, Paul has continued to enrich his professional development and education. He has attended seminars and workshops in various aspects of group facilitation, high-performance and virtual work team development and other skills related to group collaboration, presented by organizations such as the Institute for Performance Culture, MG Rush Systems, Interaction Associates, Leadership Strategies, the American Management Association, the JAD Institute, Atlis/Performance Resources and the Sandler Sales Institute.

Paul has lectured and presented seminars on facilitation, group collaboration, team development and other subjects for Graduate Business Schools including the University of Chicago, Loyola University, De Paul University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Illinois Benedictine University and the University of Wisconsin (Madison). He is a member of the Board of Advisors for Loyola University's Center for Information Management and Technology (CIMT), and is Chair of the Academic Advisory Committee for that Board. He has presented and lectured at conferences including the De Paul University Ethics Conference, the National Black MBA Association Conference, the Structured Techniques Association Conference, Face to Face Technology Symposium, Collaboration 2003 Conference, Toastmasters International Region V Conference, the World-Wide GroupSystems Conference, American Society for Quality (ASQ), the Best of Teams Conference and various facilitator conferences including the Southwest Facilitators Network, Midwest Facilitators Network, International Association of Facilitators, and the International Association of Public Practitioners. He has taught at Loyola University, De Paul University and the University of Chicago Graduate Schools of Business and has been a lecturer in the Management Certificate Program of the University of Wisconsin Executive Education Program.

Paul is an accomplished instructor of various types of ethnic folk dance and a caller of traditional American square and contra dance. He is the founder and director of Ethnic Dance Chicago and co-director of the Door County Folk Festival, now in its 25th year of operation as one of Midwest's most popular and enjoyable dance and music festivals. He directed and produced the University of Chicago International Folk Festival for 12 years. He is director of the C & J Dancers (an ethnic dance demonstration group) and a long-time member and ex-officer and director of the Folk Dance Council of Chicago. He has conducted dance classes and workshops and organized performing groups for adult and family recreation programs and for school programs in the US, Canada and Europe. Paul's other avocations include, hiking, squash, volleyball, softball, travel, foreign languages, music (classical, jazz, blues, ethnic), sound engineering, opera, theater, model railroading, website development, and exploring new internet technologies.

Background
Paul Collins founded Jordan-Webb in 1981 to develop management information systems for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.  In the late 1980s the company began the move away from 2nd and 3rd generation programming languages and towards more structured methods of system development.

Jordan-Webb became the U.S. distributor for one of the most innovative Computer-Assisted Software Engineering (CASE) tools ever developed -  EXSYS.  The New Zealand developers of EXSYS succeeded in creating a development environment that used concepts from Artificial Intelligence that allowed non-technical business analysts to build working systems using jargon-free statements in a natural language - English.  This innovative approach created operating systems from specifications, without any form of a "computer programming language".  This experience with technology and people confirmed the company's belief and understanding that:

1) the most critical (and least costly to change) steps in a system development cycle were in the requirements analysis and design specification phases; and

2) the quality of delivered systems would be dramatically improved if the expertise and experience of the (often) non-technical users, owners and customers of these systems were captured by the technical analysts and designers; and

3) facilitated, interactive  sessions would be the best place for the technical and non-technical stakeholders of a system development project to discuss and resolve issues concerning the requirements of and design for a system.

The principles of facilitating divergent stakeholder groups into teams that can build consensus on difficult issues and decisions remain a constant regardless of the environment.  A strong desire to improve the operation of and deliverable work products of facilitated sessions led to an interest in developing innovative group management techniques and integrating them with a specialized type of groupware known as group support technology.

Jordan-Webb provides support for sales, marketing, training and deployment of Web Collaboration - web-based group decision support technology (aka computer-supported collaboration.  The firms currently market the group support product known as WebIQ, developed by WebIQ, LLC of Silver Spring, MD.

Paul Collins (the founder) did undergraduate work in Germanic Languages & Literature and Economics at the University of Chicago.  Paul has lectured and presented seminars on facilitation, collaboration and other subjects for Business Schools at the University of Chicago, Loyola , De Paul, Illinois Institute ofg Technology, Illinois Benedictine College and the University of Wisconsin (Madison).  He is a member of the Board of Advisors for Loyola University's Center for Information Management and Technology (CIMT), and is Chair of the Academic Advisory Committee for that Board.

Paul has been a presenter at the Annual International GroupSystems Conference, Face To Face Technology Symposium, Midwest Facilittors' Network, Southwest Facilitator's Network, International Association of Facilitators Annual Conference, National Black MBA Annual Conference and the Structured Techiques Association Conference.

Paul is active in many professional organizations, including the Midwest Facilitators' Network (Co-Founder, Director),  American Management Association, Midwest Society of Professional Consultants (Programs, Publicity) and the National Black MBA Association (Lifetime Member).

Paul is an accomplished caller of traditional American square and contra dances and an instructor of ethnic folk dance.  He is the director of Ethnic Dance Chicago and co-director of the Door County Folk Festival, approaching its 27th year as one of Midwest's most popular and enjoyable ethinc folk dance and music festivals.  He is also director of the C & J Dancers (an ethnic dance demonstration group) and a long-time member and former officer dna director of the Folk Dance Council of Chicago.

He has done pro bono community outreach work for the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Cabrini Connections, Teen Think Tanks of America, and the Common Ground for Pro Life/Pro Choice.

Jordan-Webb's client experience includes National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), Amoco Corporation, Searle, Baxter Healthcare, GE Railcar Services, Commonwealth Edison, Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO), Fel-Pro, Cardinal Health, Bergen-Brunswig, University Healthcare Consortium, Federal Reserve Bank (Chicago), Ameritech, Kemper Insurance, Argonne National Laboratory and Motorola.

Paul Collins

pcollins@jordan-webb.net - www.jordan-webb.net - www.webcollaboration.biz

Office/Voice: (773)-463-2288 - Fax/Voice: (773)-463-1830

Jordan-Webb
2656 W Montrose Ave - Suite 110
Chicago, IL 60618