While tomorrow is the official start of World Open Space on Open Space XVI, conference events are well underway.

The week started with an extremely well-attended (40+ participants) two day Open Space Technology learning workshop led by Lisa Heft. People from Uganda, Russia, Spain (Basque country), South Korea, the Netherlands, UK, and other countries attended the workshop.

Tuesday evening Harrison Owen presented the third edition (expanded and updated) of Open Space Technology: a User’s Guide. Harrison encouraged the approximately 100 attendees to dive in to the wine and crackers after a short talk about Open Space, self-organization, and his upcoming book, Wave Rider: Leadership for High Performance in a Self-organizing World. It was a delightful meeting of new and old friends of Open Space.

This evening, Wednesday, was an informal gathering also held at the historic Fort Mason site. This was the traditional pre-conference informal gathering. More wine, a delicious dinner, and extremely rich conversation.

Lisa Heft gives a taste of the whole WOSonOS experience thus far on the OSlist.

More reporting from the conference forthcoming!

Part of the one of the annual series international conference of the global personal and organizational leadership movement Initiatives of Change, July 3-9, will use Open Space Technology. The event will take place in Caux, Switzerland.

Initiatives of Change (Caux) started in Europe over 60 years ago. As a lay movement, it seeks to bring people from all walks of life and from all societal sectors to foster the capacity for personal, daily leadership.

The program for the conference entitled, Global Servant-Leadership: Contributing to Human Security, is available here.

Russian-speaking coaches gathered again in Open Space in Moscow for their semi-annual conference February 18, 2008. They seasoned the convening question, “What has to be done for the Professional Association of Russian-speaking Coaches to work?” first with one hour of dynamic facilitation. Moscow OST facilitator Mikhail Pronin held the space.

Read more about it in English or in Russian.

Harrison shared the following today on OSlist:

Every now and again we seem to get ourselves involved here on OSLIST in
creating and comparing “elevator speeches” about Open Space. I have never been very good at all that, but a young Korean friend caught me early in the
morning on the shuttle to the airport. Given the hour I wasn’t sure how it
would all turn out, but I guess it is a good picture of The Hat. And for
sure it is the shortest speech I have ever given. If interested, check out

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TDi0GLTO9ao

Jo Toepfer, who held the space for the 15th Worldwide Open Space on Open Space on days one and two, writes:

Thank you for support. The thing is over now and I am totally exhausted and (guess what) happy! you will hear more stories…

Andrew Ballance, in a post to the Change Management Blog, writes of the Kyiv OSonOS:

The core of what I achieved in this Open Space was an appreciation for (and maybe even some understanding of) the different frames that other practitioners, some highly experienced, hold.

Andrew also reports that

Our Vikings (Thomas and Eva) presented Lisa Heft’s invitation to host the WOSonOS in 2008 in San Francisco…The generosity of the invitation was completely irresistible…The decision was thus inevitable. In 2008, the WOSonOS will be in San Francisco.

Need some visuals from the space? A few are available here. Thank you Olga Datsko of Lugansk, Ukraine!

We look forward to learning more soon!

John Engle began a lively discussion of the “Whatever happens in the only thing that could have” principle in late April on the OSlist. And it is continuing! Here is how it all began:

I know that some have been through this hundreds of times but I’m wanting to get the most recent reflections on the principle:

What Happens is what happens – learn and move forward.

Join the conversation on OSlist!

Harrison Owen was recently interviewed by a new online news service, assignment zero.

You can read the full text of the article here.

Thank you Joelle Shelton for sharing this piece of inspiring news on the OSlist about Cheryl Honey, originator of Community Weaving, an approach to activating the gift economy for family and community vibrancy and resilience. This approach in part draws upon open space principles.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper and Microsoft Corp. honor five people, including an Antioch University Seattle graduate, who make a difference through community service.

Cheryl Honey, who received her B.A. degree in 2006, has been selected to receive a 2007 Jefferson Award for her 15 years spent weaving people together to create a support system for families. The program, named in honor of President Thomas Jefferson, was created nationally in 1972 by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Sen. Robert Taft Jr. and economic-development expert Sam Beard. The founders’ vision was to create an award, similar to a Nobel Prize, for public and community service, with a special honor for local service “by ordinary people who do extraordinary things.”

The full story can be read in the online version of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Wendy Farmer-O’Neil announces an April 28th stammtische in Nanaimo (British Columbia) for those who will be unable to attend the Toronto Open Space on Open Space April 27th and April 28th:

In confluence with our friends to the east who will be opening space at the Toronto OSonOS, we are hosting a West Coast Canada Stammtisch on Saturday, April 28th for all of those who want to join us. We will be gathering at Muddy Waters Marine Pub (within walking distance of the Vancouver Ferry) on the water in Nanaimo at 1:00. We look forward to seeing you there!

Directions are available here.

Harrison Owen has started a lively thread on OSlist using a Washington Post piece by President Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski to launch the conversation.

Essentially, the question being posed is:
How do we keep opening space in a(n) (inter-)national climate of fear?

Marty Boroson has developed a video companion to his book, Becoming Me, inspired in part by open space. Acclaimed by spiritual leaders of different faiths, the clip has been posted to YouTube. Becoming Me is a simple, daring, and moving story of your/my creation.

This resource might be considered as another video to inspire one’s open space practice. An addition, perhaps, to this collection?

Proceedings from the Nexus for Change conference have been available throughout the conference.

What is Nexus? Why it is
an unprecedented conference bringing together practitioners, researchers, leaders, activists, and educators to advance participative change methods.

The conference brought together practitioners of many (most?) of the change methods represented in the second edition of the Change Handbook, by Peggy Holman, Tom Devane, and Steven Cady and others, including OST.

Change methods bloggers will be sharing their perspectives in the coming days.

Holger Nauheimer at Change Management Blog writes:
Rich conversations have begun, however, and .. the desire for some kind of shared meaning within this practice seems to be deeply rooted in all of them.

Stay tuned!

Veteran Novosibirsk (Russia) Open Space Technology facilitator Elena Marchuk writes on the OpenSpaceRu discussion group that
“a few more have joined the club.”

Elena just finished conducting a Working with Open Space Technology learning workshop as part of the Genuine Contactâ„¢ Program in organizational health and balance.

More than 20 participants completed the workshop commissioned by the Community Relations Department of the City of Irkutsk.

Elena notes that “as usual all the learning in the workshop was great.” The workshop participants experienced a mini-OST meeting with action planning on the topic of “Increasing our Effectiveness in Working with the Community.”

The City of Irkutsk asked Elena to conduct the workshop because “the city wanted to learn a method together with neighborhood groups and local NGO’s so that they could speak the same language and make headway in future collaboration.”

Good work, Elena!

On Runet (the Russian language Internet) Various online forums also report having experiences with OST as people run meetings called OST, but not really run on OST principles.

Might this be a familiar refrain which brings us back to the age-old question of how do we guarantee quality of OST meetings run around the world?

In one example, in an OST meeting, a “training: Our children: child-rearing issues” one participants writes that she “didn’t like” OST.

Others on the forum share other, more positive experiences of OST and invite her to further explore the method.

In another intriguing development, a Moscow coaching program offers training in the “Open Space model,” listing Harrison Owen and Birgitt Williams as co-authors. The material further refers to the role of the Creative Person in this model. Some might wonder, are Harrison Owen and Birgitt Williams teaching something in Russia that the rest of the OST community is not aware of?!

Typing in the Russian equivalent of the word, “unconference,” “неконференция,” in a search engine now yields hits as Russian IT bloggers report on the “camp” and “unconference” movements in North America.

Note: PROMT offers a free and relatively good quality Russian to English webpage translation service.

OST’s potential as an excellent process for networking, visioning and problem-solving, has been discovered by Moscow trainer and consultant Elena Buryakova, who has created an “HR space” for mid-sized companies. Her HR-space has been operating for over a year. Buryakova is posting the results of their meetings online.

Harrison Owen recently shared on OS list about a retreat he facilitated for students at Columbia Business School. As is often the case, the meeting was so fruitful that “opening [the] space…just wouldn’t stop– [it kept] getting deeper and richer.” Indeed so rich, that one participant sent Harrison a poem afterwards:

Open Spaces
Tibetan bells
Open spaces
Safest people
Safest places
Magic creeping…
(rest of poem here)

by Carol J. Morley, CFA, Managing Director

In conclusion, Harrison writes, “Maybe we ought to keep this one around for the next time somebody asks us for a
recent client evaluation of Open Space, particularly an evaluation from the Business World. :-)”

Might it behoove us to start a new resource called “Client evaluations-alternative formats”? After all, this is definitely not the first time that a participant has written an “evaluation” of an OST meeting as a poem!

Open Space Institute-Russia is convening a stammtisch (local gathering of OST facilitators and people interested in the method) March 17th in Moscow.

Veteran Australian spaceholder Brian Bainbridge will be among the attendees. Galina Tsarkova invites us to “collectively reflect on our experience of holding space in the wide open spaces of Russia. This invitation is for all, including those who have just started out on this path.” For more information, you can reach Galina by email.

The lively Ukrainian OST facilitator discussion list also regularly lists stammisches in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities.

Gabdulla Hamitov facilitates conference on youth leadership development, “Path to the Future”
Ufa, Bashkortostan (Russia)
photos courtesy of Bashtorg, a major regional wholesaler in Russia

Since the 14th annual international Open Space on Open Space conference in Moscow in August 2006, OST has continued to be applied in many different kinds of organizations, especially in companies.

Recent applications include a meeting on personal safety and responsibility with RusAl, one of the largest aluminum producers in the world.

The sponsor, Elena Sochkina, responsible for corporate culture, noted “my most pleasant discoveries with the Open Space method were:

*the number of participants is limited only by the size of the physical meeting space.

*the conditions are created where formal boundaries are erased (status, hierarchical, and professional)

* the participants create the agenda (which is the guarantee of success).”

(Direktor po Personalu magazine)

OST has also been used recently with major Russian political parties, at marketing conferences, training conferences, at a coaching conference (co-sponsored by Open Space Institute-Russia), with Russia’s Central Bank, with cellular phone service provider Beeline, and with a major pharmaceutical company.

Note: PROMT offers a free and relatively good quality Russian to English webpage translation service.

Below is an invitation to a sustainable living forum scheduled for May 6th in Belfast sent by OST facilitator Philip Rogers.

How Can I Live Sustainably?

On Saturday May 6th we will have the time and space to both ask answer this question in the company of others who are also interested and inspired by it. When we reflect on, and begin to understand, what sustainable living means we can act with more confidence to make a difference in our lives and in our communities.
This is an invitation for you to come and join in an Open Space event. Bring your passion, your ideas and your stories; to contribute, to listen, to learn, to be inspired – in an environment that is co-created on the day.

Saturday May 6th
South Bank Hall, Kimberley Drive
10 am -6pm

There is room for 40 people, please call Philip or Jane on 028 9020 3692 to register or email them on ganddltd@clara.co.uk. so we will know how many people are coming.
There is no charge for the day.
A vegetarian lunch can be provided for 5 GBP if you order it in advance.
Looking forward to seeing you there!

In December 2005, Harrison Owen conducted the Practice of Peace Program (PoP) in Berlin. The PoP Program makes a direct, energetic link between one’s life and the practice of OST and open space in life.

Michael Pannewitz, host and organizer of the program, announced in a recent OS list post that the documentation from the workshop is now available online. You can read the documentation and also view photographs of Harrison’s 70th birthday celebration (held after the PoP) here.

New friend of OST, Carol Hiltner (Seattle, USA), and OST facilitator Marina Tyasto (Novosibirsk, Russia) will be leading a Peace-Mapping “Summit” using OST in the Altai (Siberia) right before the 14th International Open Space on Open Space (OSonOS). This event will take place during the 2006 International Altai Expedition July 14-August 3.

This Peace-Mapping “Summit” presents an excellent opportunity to deepen our experience of OST, open space, and peacemaking.

You are invited to participate in the 2006 International Altai Expedition and Peace-Mapping “Summit” July 14 – August 3.

Altai is an extraordinary mountain range along the southern edge of Siberia, recognized as the origin of global shamanism…The Expedition will take you to the very remote Mt. Belukha, the highest energy spot in this high-energy region.

We will be joined there by indigenous Altai people, including shamans, and a Russian spiritual group from Moscow. At this sacred mountain, with this powerful group, we will convene an OST “Summit” with the objective of supporting participants to map out our personal “critical paths” to peace using guidelines (Tablets of Light) that originated in Altai. In conjunction with the Expedition, we have initiated a Clean-Up to take out trekkers’ garbage and install outhouses.

For information, see http://www.altaibooks.com/trekinfo.htm or contact Carol@AltaiBooks.com .. Please feel free to forward this information to anyone whom you think might be interested.

Many practitioners of OST underline that the daily practice of open space in life is more important than the tool called “Open Space Technology.”

Michael Herman together with Chris Corrigan have outlined a brief description of the four practices of Open Space. Michael offered a refined version of these practices recently.

Paul Everett shared his understanding of these practices on the OS list as inspired by the South African teacher, Oz Swallow.

As Paul remembers them:

(Therefore, Fun is results-producing)