You are invited to Building Communities Worth Having, an Open Space Conference, February 3-5, 2006, in Portland Oregon.

Co-conveners include Ted Ernst, Brandon Sanders, Mark Dilley, John Abbe, Raymond King, Michael Sparks and others, and our facilitator is Michael Herman. This is a must for those of us who attended the Opening Space for Giving to Flourish Conference, Chicago 2004, and for anyone who is currently engaged in “The Movement” (place-based, cyber-space and/or face-to-face) for building a better world.

· What kinds of community do you dream of?

· What do you need to build them?

· What projects would you work on if you could?

· What skills, resources, gifts and connections do you have to share with other community builders?

· What would happen if you could get what you need and contribute what you have?

This event is being sponsored by IBESI, OSDL, ICANNWiki, SocialText, ATLASSIAN

Register (and see who else is coming) at: http://recentchangescamp.org

Please join us for the 5th International OpenSpace-Online® Real-time Network Conference for Change Facilitators!

Political and economical crises, new diseases, and the growing ecological unbalance on earth greatly influence us and next generations. Change Facilitators from around the world are invited to meet in an OpenSpace-Online® real-time conference with the title:

Change Facilitation: Issues and Opportunities of Economic Globalization, Ecological Challenges and other worldwide Change Processes

Date: January 28th/29th, 2006 (depending on your time zone)
Where: In the comfort of your own home or office
Duration: 3,5 hours (real real-time event)
Costs: Euro 28,00
Registration deadline: January 22nd, 2006 !

The virtually-facilitated and text-based internet methodology takes participants in real-time through successive phases of shared agenda creation, multiple discussions and cafe talks, summarizing results, prioritizing, action planning. At the end each participant receives an extensive documentation about the meeting at the press of a button.

Complete invitation and online registration

This is a great way to meet Open Space practitioners online, get a taste for the spirit and method of Open Space, and also to test-drive what could be a valuable tool (this online version) for your business or community organization. Please join us!

Phelim McDermott, co-artistic director of Improbable in London, offered this recently on the OSLIST…

In preparation for next weekend when I also facilitate my first open space event(!) I put together an invitation which was about how to make things better in our theatre community. It was because I felt passionately that things weren’t as good as they could be in theatreland and I was fed up of hearing myself moan and not doing something about it. The invite was called “devoted and disgruntled.” It’s had an extraordinary response and we have gone beyond the capacity of our space, with 200 people signed up and fifty on a waiting list.

This is a great example of what I always coach clients to do in their invitations: tell the truth. I am devoted to this thing AND I’m disgruntled. That last part is the tough one, and I’m guessing it’s the part of Phelim’s invitation that really makes it sing to others who want something more. I’ve no doubt that they’ll create that “more” when he opens the space for that next weekend.

UPDATE: Phelim published in The Guardian in London… On the surface, British theatre is in its healthiest state in years. But is this buzz of activity hiding a creative slump, in which celebrity and ‘ticking boxes’ are prized over innovation? Here, four writer-directors argue that the theatre is in trouble – and offer their visions for the future. —The Guardian (click and scroll down for Phelim’s section of the story.

WHAT HAPPENED: In short, lots of good things. Reported here and here and here.

Judy Gast writes this week, “…the Open Space Institute of Canada is planning an OS Online event on February 3rd and encourage anyone who is interested (from anywhere) to register by January 27th.”

See CanadianInvitation and OpenSpace-Online for details.