Late last year, Raffi Aftandelian extended an invitation to Open Space practitioners around the world to write a response to the question: What is your personal practice of open space?

Contributors from Canada, India, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, United States, Sweden, and China (Hong Kong) responded. Raffi has edited in all together into an e-book called Living Peace: The Open Space of Our Lives, and posted it for browsing and downloading.

Thanks and congratulations on this, Raffi! And to everyone else, enjoy!

Earlier this year, Larry Peterson opened space for 150 on future of the Ontario Social Housing Sector, and shared this report:

We started with 150 from across the province with two days to be together. The planning committee of the sponsor struggled to decide – OST for 1.5 days then convergence or begin convergence on [the morning of] day 2. It was decided to go for 1 Day in OST to explore ideas and 1 day (in effect in OST) to explore action: Ideas to Action was the overall theme Eh? Shifting Gears beyond Survival was the theme in the OS question.

Great self-organizing discussions on Day 1 but the “breakthroughs” to a new sector paradigm were not there quite yet. The planning group wanted some sector priorities (the sponsor was not the sector, but a key coordination organization in it.) so we did that first thing on day 2, then Opened the Space again for more sector leadership to emerge and take ideas toward action strategies.

In morning news [beginning of Day 2] a brave soul finally stated what was real – the whole had not shifted to a new understanding yet. This was reinforced as we opened the space for action strategies. Not many action strategy sessions emerged, but those who cared were there and were ready to shift. The sessions all went to another level, with some leading the way – even talking about breaking the law to get new directions noticed.

The closing was a mutual love feast – sector leadership from various forms of social housing – co-op, non-profit, municipal, small town, big town now felt they were on the same page, ready to work together on some key change strategies with a sponsor who had decided to provide resources to some of the key efforts.

Great fun to hold such a space.

I’ve used something like this “serial Open Space” a number of times, including one 4-day session on peaceful development in Nepal, where we merged with Appreciative Inquiry practice. The four themes, on four consecutive days, were the 4-Ds of AI: Discover, Dream, Design, Deliver. In every case I can remember, it seems to work as Larry says. The sub-themes suggest a path, invite a direction. They’re never going to fit perfectly into the movement of the group, but then the group takes them by the horns and steers them to what fits. It’s just another dimension of ownership and responsibility and the crafting of the process by and for the people involved.

Scott Schimanski announced an Elegant Code Open Spaces Session back in May, but looks like there will be more of these:

Elegant code is hosting an Open Spaces session. An Open Spaces session is a discussion where the attendees generate the topics. There will be no presentation, no lecture, no Powerpoint slides, etc. The main point of this is a discussion were all can grow and learn from each other. We plan on holding these once a quarter.

The topics for discussion will be created by the group. The discussion will be facilitated, but just to keep the conversation going, not to drive it in any direction.

The first one will be held on June 3rd, at the Casa Mexico Restaurant in the Hyde Park section of Boise. They offer beer and wine in addition to the great “South of the Border” food. Details

Maybe we can get a report on what happened — and when the next one will be.

Something new in September, in Western Australia, certain to be informed by Brendan McKeague’s deep experience in Open Space:

Senior leadership can be physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausting. Disillusionment, stress and difficulties in balancing the various aspects of life can be symptomatic of a deeper disconnection from the fundamental purpose of why we lead in the first place.

In September 2008 – September 16 to 19 – we are convening a 4 day retreat for CEOs at Margaret River. This will be an opportunity to step out of `business as usual’ into some high quality reflective space. The design of the retreat is still emerging in conversation with participants, but is likely to be a mixture of very lightly structured individual and group work and substantial periods of silence.

If you would like to know more about the Retreat for CEOs, or simply have a conversation with us about the crafting of opportunities for the next generation of senior leadership, we invite you to contact…

Michael Wood Ph. 0435 065326
Brendan McKeague Ph. O429 448090

Sessions convened today at the international World Open Space on Open Space included:

*Public Space with Heart and Meaning: Creating Coffeehouses that Matter
*Hearing (telling) Stories on OS Spreading Around the World
*Designing a Research Project: Open Space on Basque Conflict with Teenagers
*Conflict Resolution at the Cross Roads: If conflict exists, how do we co-exist in a conflict situation? Can a traditional justice system work?
*How to Transform a Town Using Open Space Technology
*Signs of a World Awakening
*Discussion and Movement
*Combining OST with World Cafe
*Ways to use OS to Weave Community to Transform Culture
*OS in Commercial/Business Settings
*Bringing OST to Global Climate Change Problems and Solutions
*Freedom and OS
*How Can we Develop Communicatively Competent Citizens to Realise the Re-emergence of Deliberative Democracy to Address the “Crisis” in Western Cultures?
*World Wide Open Space on the Future of Humanity
*How to Answer When the Sponsor Asks, What is the Facilitator Doing?
*An Open Space School
*Facilitating with Kids
*Executive Leadership and Open Space
*17 Ways to Ruin Open Space
*Using Open Space in Local Government
*Open Space Institute – US Annual Member Meeting: What’s Happening?
*Nonviolent Communication and OST
*OST Tricks for Here and Overseas
*OS Facilitator Intentional Learning and Teaching — Sharing Wisdom
*How to Use Open Space to Create a NV Movement in Argentina
*OS as ‘Public Art’ in Communities and Across Communities
*Open Space as Ancestral Space
*Magic Stick (what would we do if we had one, which we do?)
*Coming to Ground: Crafting Home
*OS on Broadway, How Far Can I Go: I’m doing a big $10M Broadway musical – could it be organised in Open Space. Or are the stakes too high for the producers?
*How Is and Can Online Social Tools be Used Before and After an Open Space Event to Build Community?

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!

John Engle sends pictures from the 7th annual OSonOS in Haiti.

There were about 80 participants. Mostly were Haitians coming from towns and villages from around the country, plus eleven from Dominican Republic and several from the US. Great meeting! Lots of synergy as usual and plans for trainings, conferences, exchanges, etc.

Way to go, Haiti!

If you can’t make the 16th Annual World Open Space on Open Space (see below), maybe you can join the 7th Annual Scandanavian OSonOS. It will take place in Ã…s kommune in Norway, not far from Oslo, on August 8-9. The full invitation is still being worked out by our Norweigian colleagues, but you might keep an eye on sidebar at www.openspaceconsulting.com for details.

The World Open Space on Open Space (WOSonOS) is a conference in and about Open Space — for facilitators, organizations and colleagues who use Open Space.

Join us July 21 through 28, 2008, in San Francisco, California, USA. “What Can We Learn / Share / Teach / Explore / Discover with Each Other about our work in Open Space around the world?” That is what we want to find out!

This year, a full week of events includes an Open Space Learning Workshop (July 21-22), an Author Evening with Harrison Owen and the launch of his Third Edition of Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide, and several days in and about Open Space with colleagues from around the world.

Online Registration

Harrison Owen’s Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide is now in its 3rd edition and is now in the bookstore. It sells there at a discount to list price and your purchase goes to support the work of the Open Space Institute USA.

Also in new… John Engle has added a Spanish version of Circles of Change: a quiet revolution in Haiti, the DVD about his in grassroots movement that is transforming notions and practices in education and leadership in Haiti and beyond. See the Videos section of the bookstore.

Go direct to ordering, from USA or Another Country.

Steve Hargadon is intrigued by what’s happening in ed-tech:

One element to these meetings that intrigues me, and which I’m still trying to quantify, is the ability for an engaged and devoted group to succeed in producing from their own experiences material and learning which not only meet what a single expert might bring, but often exceed traditional expertise. Darren Draper and I have been struggling to find a easy phrase for this, what he calls “Hargadon’s Law,” but which surely has been expressed somewhere else by someone more eloquent. It’s the literal equivalent of 1 + 1 = 3, which does not invalidate the value of an expert, but which demonstrates or draws out the wisdom of a group, showing it to be significantly more powerful than typically manifest in more traditional teaching environments. Again, arguably not founded on the technologies of the Web, but enhanced and focused, perhaps, by using them.

He has a long list of ideas (at the end of his post) for enhancing or supporting self-organization. Some I’d call kindred to (some are actually already embedded in) an open space approach. Others, like bringing people in by video or audio conferencing, might just get in the way. Generally, though, he’s got a broad inventory of where various sorts of new meetings are happening and a good list of suggestions for supporting self-organization.

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.

Reporting from inside the EU Commission, Integral Yeshe points to three different grassroots sorts of things happening in open space and makes connections to the Integral story articulated by Ken Wilber and others…

I just found out about Transitions – a grass-roots model adopted to respond to the twin challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Change. I am particularly impressed that their website is a wiki. What first caught my attention was the fact that they used Open Space Technology to host their annual conference. Not coincidentally, from the same source, I learned of a gathering of cultural creatives to be held in France, also to be hosted in Open Space format.

Across the Atlantic, the Food and Society movement, sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation, also held its 2008 conference using Open Space – among other techniques gathered under the banner of the art of hosting meaningful conversations. This was a very big gathering (600+ participants), bringing together people from the whole spectrum of food and society – as the name suggests. Since some of my friends were involved in the design and facilitation of the event, I followed with some interest and was impressed by the depth and breadth of the insights that emerged from the collective alchemy as these participative processes metabolised and presenced the system present in the room.

She goes on to suggest that “These are just three examples of mushrooming grass-roots practices that I read as symptomatic of the integral, peer-to-peer age that is emerging on our planet today.” more…

Most Valuable Invitation at Microsoft:

Techie is proud to have been invited to this year’s Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2008 at at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center in Seattle and at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

What is the MVP Global Summit?
The MVP Global Summit is a four-day invitation-only event hosted at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center in Seattle and at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. With more than 400 sessions and a variety of networking opportunities, the MVP Global Summit enables Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and Regional Directors (RDs) to:

Connect with other MVPs and RDs
Engage with Microsoft product managers
Provide valuable feedback directly to Microsoft on its products and technologies.

Highlights for 2008 include:
Event closing technical discussion by Ray Ozzie, Microsoft chief software architect
Keynote by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft chief executive officer
Deep technical sessions by competency
Cross-competency electives
Highly dynamic and interactive sessions, designed based on Open Space Technology, where you’ll be able to define topics, attend, or even host
Additional activities designed to promote networking and meet attendees’ diverse informational and business needs

UPDATE: Harrison Owen posted this today to the OSLIST… looks like another Microsoft open space:

Seems like the folks at the annual Microsoft Professional Development Conference are intending to open a little space. Definitely cutting edge, innovative – Cheers for Microsoft. For the details. Don’t have any idea who is doing it, but I am sure they will have a grand time.

I especially like this bit from a Microsoft blog:

Not only are we doing Open Space at PDC 2008, we want to make sure it is a _real_ Open Space. None of this “Microsoft doesn’t understand, they don’t grok it, they entirely and utterly butchered the whole Open Space concept”.

In her Livable Neighborhoods Project Patricia Mikkelson reports on her open space practice, in neighborhood and child care, informed by unschooling, non-violent communication…

For the past year I have envisioned an intergenerational community gathering which would bring people together in their neighborhood or town to have fun, food, conversations, and networking which would lead to people finding friends with which to collaborate with on the projects they are passionate about which better their community in some way. You can read more and see my slide show here

The first Community Gathering I held back in September was magnificent, and I saw the potential was huge. We had it at a pavilion at a park, and people enjoyed it immensely and lots of great connections were made. But then the weather got cold, and I could not find any indoor locations. This is the hardest thing about having an intergenerational gathering with lots of activities going on at once–finding a place that is inexpensive or free.

Today I got a second chance to coordinate a different kind of community gathering. I was asked to coordinate the child care at the Ozark Natural Foods Co-op Annual Owners Meeting. I had coordinated this 4 times previously, and although every time it was a success, I always felt like there was something missing. This time, I approached the event as if it were a community gathering–and it clicked! The missing ingredient was lots of people of all ages interacting, with everyone having fun. I wanted everyone involved to experience a sense of connection and even family–and my experience was that it happened. I brought into it some unschooling principles, non-violent communication and open space technology principles. Here’s what happened.

Adam at The Creativity Project points out…

Seth Godin explores a new standard for meetings and conferences and how to justify the increasing cost and time commitment of travel. Face-to-face contact is much more effective than internet-related conferencing tools and Seth hits an important point that we need to address this effectively.

One powerful method Seth missed in his analysis is Open Space Technology.

Godin says:

The new rule seems to be that if you’re going to spend the time and the money to see someone face to face, be in their face. Interact or stay home!

And of course, as Adam describes, Open Space Technology lets us apply that to everyone in the room. Not just a few talking heads at the front of the room.

Open Space Romania was a pleasant surprise today. There is a record (in english) of open space events in Romania and a photo-album. Thanks to Janina-Diana Pasaniuc in Oradea, Transilvania, Romania, for pointing to the (new?) site and for her discovery of the Holy Grail of Open Space.

One of the best things about operating in Open Space is the transparency of the whole process, which supports immediate repetition and replication, as PhatBoyG reports…

After a great weekend in Seattle for the ALT.NET Open Spaces event, the two coworkers and I discussed how we could bring the experience of Open Spaces back to the team in Tulsa. We decided that instead of just giving a few talks about some of the things we took away from Seattle, we would bring the experience itself to the team.

At the end of our team meeting on Monday, we laid out some paper and pens and asked members of the team to write up topics that they wanted to discuss. It started a bit slow, but within minutes we had eighteen topics on the wall. The variety of topics was excellent, most of which targeted a different subset of the team. It was great to see the team come up with such a nice list of things for the team to discuss. more…

After 20+ years of experimenting in Open Space, we *know* we can produce great meetings, but this potential for the *practice* to spread like this is what keeps OST and a lot of us practitioners going.

Mike Aaron of National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation shares this about the upcoming conference:

Are you dedicated to solving tough problems through honest talk, quality thinking and collaborative action? Come join hundreds of others who believe that better communication is the key to solving many of the biggest problems facing our organizations, communities, and societies.

Join us October 3-5, 2008 in Austin, Texas for the fourth National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation: Creating Cultures of Collaboration. [Early registration through May 16th]

NCDD’s dynamic conferences bring together leaders and future leaders in public engagement, conflict resolution and related fields to share resources and strategies, build lasting relationships, increase the visibility and effectiveness of their work, tackle challenges we face, and initiate collaborative projects. Many people who have attended NCDD conferences say they’re the best conferences they’ve ever attended.

More details or mailto:ncdd@thataway.org.

Jack Martin Leith, Bristol UK, shares this post on what to do after Opening Space. How to keep all those projects going?

When planning your Open Space meeting, you’ll need to think about how you’ll ensure that ideas emerging from the meeting will be brought to fruition, and how the issues identified by participants will be resolved effectively once everyone is back at their workplace. Please be fully aware that this is a very big challenge. More…

It’s a great and detailed post. And Jack’s always got great diagrams to go with the explanations.

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.

In a recent conversation about how to keep the action going after an Open Space meeting or event, Diana Larsen added something simple and, I think, quite new:

More and more often, in any kind of action planning (OS or otherwise) I have abandoned the idea of finding group consensus on the “important” issues. What’s “important” is much too abstract and often involves what we think _other_ people, the proverbial “they” should do. So I don’t ask about importance anymore.

Instead I’ve begun to rely more on the group asking itself two fast rounds of questions, about impact and energy:

First, each person votes on which issues would have the most “impact” if worked on further. That provides some additional data to the group. (I usually use some kind of stickers rather than colored dots – dinosaurs anyone? It just adds some fun. I also like the idea of tickets instead of dots here…I’ll have to try that.)

Then second, I ask each person to put a small number of different stickers (1-3) on whichever issues they personally have the “energy” for moving forward (or if there is room, to stand next to where those issues are posted). We notice where the pattern of energy lies compared with their overall perspective on impact. And we follow the energy, which more or less equals passion.

After that, groups of people create action plans on anything someone has the energy to work on, in another round of OS-style sessions, complete with Law of Two feet, bumblebees, etc. And each group reports out ‘first next steps’. Not the whole plan, just the first action or two, because we know the plan will necessarily change as people implement the first steps and learn more. In the Agile software world, we say “inspect and adapt” and “respond to change rather than following a plan.” So that’s the expectation. People will try a few things, learn more, adjust the plan, try a few more things, etc.

Esther Matte reports a recent Butterfly sighting:

In a recent OS event, I noted one person stayed back when everyone went to the Market Place wall. This person was just sitting on her chair, playing with the papers in her participant’s kit. Eventually, she got up and moved around. But she didn’t participate to any discussion, even though people invited her to join them.

At the time, I thought she was uncomfortable in this space, that it was simply too open for her to work in. I often saw her reading reports coming up on the Breaking News Wall. In the closing circle, to my surprise, her comment was something like: “I had a great day. Lots of participation, lots of open and frank discussions. Thank you everyone!”

I guess we should never assume anything! Taking care of herself, this person stayed close without joining discussions. She found her space and connected in her own way. She was a true butterfly.

In Open Space, The Law of Two Feet says that only you know when you are learning and contributing as much as you can. So you are in charge of that. Use your two feet, or whatever else you normally use to get around, to go wherever you need to go, move to any conversation or space where you can maximize your learning and contribution. When the rule is applied in practice, performance is maximized by two sorts of characters: Bumblebees buzz from group to group, carrying energy and information, cross-pollinating. Butterflies float around, and may not join any group, but their flitting and fluttering directly supports a state of openness and flow.