Issue: Why OS on OS?

Convenor: Florian Fisher

Participants: Judy - Canada; Brain - Australia; Tova - Israel; Toke - Denmark; Audrey - Canada; Mlinka - Zagreb; Gabriela - Germany; Florian - Berlin


Summary of the meeting:

Intro: Why OSonOS why every year, how does OSonOS work for us? Work for the cause of opening space? What does experience and inexperienced mean in our field?

Discussion: Reasons people were coming to OSonOS were mainly

1. to meet people and to match face to name from the listserve

2. feeling this is a meaningful community

3. laying ground for the work that is done through the year

4. renewing and rejuvenating ourselves

5. helped me feel we are one world

6. sharing information, practices, etc.

7. practicing our own practice -- being a community of practitioners who are practicing their own medicine; pushing the boundaries through our development.

Most of the people felt that international OS is very important. Will regional OSonOS take energy from global?

Meeting with the international community gives people the feeling:

Open Space Truth's:


Follow up:


Online Comments:

OSonOS does several things for me. Helps me see that this is a worldwide human phenomenon. Helps me explain and demonstrate that to those I would work with locally. My attendance and active online involvement demonstrates my leadership and connection and implies some understanding of this phenomenon to would-be clients/colleagues. My links to this larger whole is a model for others, I think, that holds out the possibility of humans forming and sustaining larger communities of caring and cooperation. On a practical level, OSonOS conversations form the foundation of the OSLIST and other online conversations. I think that the people who gather face-to-face each year teach the rest of us how 'normal' conversation happens among us, and allows us to do more online throughout the year because of the directness and caring that is possible when we've recently known each other face-to-face. I think those who attend in a given year, and those who make other meetings with OSLIST friends throughout the year, teach the rest of us how to talk to each other in these direct, caring, personal ways. OSonOS is also an interesting place to watch the phenomenon of the global practice of OST. As noted elsewhere, already, we seem to have moved from focus on experiments, to marketing, to training, to implementation and ongoing practice. Also seems we are becoming a community of communities, a global world of regional worlds. This is real progress to have a thriving whole made up of thriving wholes. OST embodied in world, regions and individuals. Marvelous! --MichaelHerman