Elwin Guild recently posted to the OSLIST a report from an OSonOS by the Sea conversation about Opening Space in Conflict. Four case studies were presented as examples of a wide variety of conflict instances where Elwin has used OST:

1. [A] consulting contract with a small and defective office within the U.S. Dept of Interior. This was a two-day “team building” workshop that was in reality a “set-up” to eliminate/terminate one of the office employees. The new boss felt this person was an obstructionist and determined to cause trouble for him.

2. A 2 1/2 day OST for an International Consulting firm that just underwent a senior management coup d’etat in order to launch a “global” marketing strategy.

3. A series of four 2 1/2 day OSTs each with 30 participants representing Croat, Serb and Bosnian Muslim NGO leaders in equal numbers (10). The objective was to find improved management strategies for post-war operations.

4. The surrender of the Communist National Dairy Union to the Bulgarian
Dairy Association during a 2 1/2 day OST with 253 participants.

Elwin’s notes about how each one turned out can be read here in the OSLIST Achives.

I often describe Open Space as a “practice in invitation.” At the center of every invitation is a theme, in the same way that at the center of every meeting/circle is a purpose. The theme is the clearest possible statement of the purpose. Here’s a bit of what OST originator Harrison Owen had to say recently, when asked about “good themes for Opening Space…”

…I doubt that there is any such thing as a “generic good theme.” But I have found that there are some general criteria:

• Short — anything more than a half dozen words is usually too long.
• Always stated as a question — questions open space. Statements close it.
• In the language of the people — every organization or group of people has its own special language and code words. The theme should be stated in that language/words. This is
  one reason why a great theme for one group will automatically be a dud for
  another.
• Cuts to the heart of the matter — there is a place for diplomatic statement, but not here. Verbal obfuscation rarely arouses passion — and you want a lot of passion.

A really good theme will be so specific to that group that others will simply not notice it, or if noticed, then not inspired [by it]. Read the full OSLIST posting…

Once you have a theme that fits like this, the rest of the invitation is usually a slam dunk. Just tell them where and when to show up!

Great stuff from Chris Corrigan about learning to converse

1. Be present.
2. Have a good question.
3. Use a listening piece.
4. Work with mates.
5. Harvest.
6. Be wise.

John Engle shares with the OSlist how at the opening of group work, he often invites groups to rest at ease if silence happens, waiting for what the silence might bring:

“I ask that we see silence as a friend during our time together whether we’re in small groups or in this large group. If silence comes, let’s not feel like we need to chase it away, remembering that frequently, it’s the nudgings of silence that bring into being ideas and voices which would’ve otherwise remained unspoken.”

Gabriella Ender, the creator of OpenSpace-Online sends news that her software has been nominated for a Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics award. The nomination text states:

Germany’s “do-it-yourself” OpenSpace-Online E- Participation Real-Time Methodology is a powerful philosophy that has the potential to become one of the most earth shifting Internet meeting and conferencing methods in society, politics, education and other fields. OpenSpace-Online was developed by Change Facilitator Gabriela Ender and her team in Germany (1999-2002). The easy to use innovation enables fast collaboration, knowledge-sharing, problem solving and results-oriented dialogs about urgent topics for small and large groups in real-time without ’human’ online moderators. During the virtual-led and structured working process all participants are equal. It also bridges value-gaps between online and offline collaboration / participation in a wonderful unique way.

You can vote for Gabriella’s contribution at the awards site.

Singapore-based Nigel Seys-Phillips, reported on the OSLIST on his contribution to a World Bank Asian initiative to connect with marginalized people:

…an amazing meeting in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, with some 150 street children from the horrendous circumstances of working for a living on the Phnom Penh city garbage dump – a literal mountain of fetid rubbish where garbage trucks arrive every few minutes to dump their waste directly onto this pile. The children made a living scrabbling for anything sellable the moment the back was opened, running in front of the bulldozer set to plough it down. Plastic, material, glass, food – anything sellable that might make them up to US$1 per day if they were truly lucky.

…Taken in by an astounding NGO “Pour Un Sourire D’Enfant” they now work at school six days a week. They are fed three simple nutritious meals a day, given uniforms and books, and educated towards a career and a productive life.

…We tackled the theme: “A better future for us – the Issues and Opportunities” And within the two days allowed we posted 110 topics. We reviewed, discussed and documented 92 of them and prioritized to 10, for which we created action points.

…these are street children from approximately 12-18 years old, but major topics prioritized included:

• Corruption and how to reduce it in Cambodia
• How to develop the economy in Cambodia to give us greater work opportunities
• How to export more products made in Cambodia
• How to limit illegal immigration so Cambodians aren’t disadvantaged
• How to use the results of the Khmer Rouge trials to benefit the people of Cambodia

These, and the way the children came at them, are a great tribute to the power of Open Space and its ability to genuinely achieve openness and safety for those who would otherwise not have a voice.

The World Bank OST “road show” continues to Mongolia, Laos, Timor, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Philippines and Thailand, and we hope to be able to train others to take the programme deeper into these countries.

A hearty thanks to Nigel for this work, and to Brian Bainbridge and Viv McWaters for their initiating work.

This is just about the coolest bit of OS documentation I have ever seen. There are words about this event at Johnnie Moore’s Weblog, but this is the cool part, posted at YouTube… Open Space in 30 seconds, time-lapse video of his one-day event at the BBC.

…are posted here. This was the 14th annual Open Space on Open Space (OSonOS) international gathering of OS practitioners. Regional OSonOS events are upcoming in Ukraine, Maine, North Carolina and elsewhere… listed here.

A lively example of what happens in an inviting open space: presented by WGBH Radio Boston and distributed by Public Radio International (PRI),

…Open Source with Christopher Lydon is a conversation, four times a week on the radio and any time you like on the blog. We designed the show to invert the traditional relationship between broadcast and the web: we aren’t a public radio show with a web community, we’re a web community that produces a daily hour of radio.

This means that we rely on our listeners and readers — whom David Sifry calls “the people formerly known as your audience” to help us produce the show. At its most basic, we look for this production help in the comment threads of this website. Every time we have an idea for an hour of radio we post it to the site. That show may not go on the radio for another month, but we immediately start reading comments — suggestions for guests, questions for guests, suggestions for ways to frame the show or reading material — and following up on them.

You, the people formerly known as the audience, know more than we do. Frequent commenter razib understands — intimately — how DNA testing works; sidewalker sometimes weighs in about his adopted country of Japan; jeffakboston helped us with a list of theoretical physicists. So pick your handle and name your obsession. We’re reading.

And we’re watching the rest of the Internet, too. We look at every blogger as a “fixer,” a journalist’s term for someone with local knowledge, someone who speaks the language and can tell us who to talk to. We try to get a blogger on every show, whether we’re talking about knitting or Belarus. Almost every picture on the site comes from the photo-sharing site Flickr, and we try to get the story behind the pictures like the one taken from the 10th floor of the Fariyas Hotel in Mumbai…

Conversations are happening everywhere on the web, and they’re not just about computers or Star Trek. They’re about God and the world, people taking pictures and and comparing notes of what they see around them. It’s why we chose to run our website as a blog; a blog functions naturally as a conversation, asking for input and correction and responding in turn. Broadcast media can’t just be a bullhorn anymore; it has to be an invitation, or it misses out on some of the best stuff happening around it.

Open Source was conceived and developed by Christopher Lydon and Mary McGrath and is a joint production of Open Source Media Inc. and the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.

John Engle sends photos from the Open Space on Open Space in Haiti last month. Next year’s 6th Annual Haiti OSonOS will be June 28 – July 1, 2007. Email John Engle for details.

Ralph Copleman, an OS veteran who’s been around since OS started, posted this bit of brilliance to the OSLIST today:

Here’s what I think about trying to do it all in one day…

I don’t bother trying to get proceedings printed, let alone distributed and reviewed. That’s for later. I operate out of the belief that one day is not enough to truly explore the territory (the “issues and opportunities”) plus come to conclusion about priorities plus formulate action plans. You can do it, but it will not, in my experience, have much sticking power. And the larger the group, the more challenging it is to make the energy last.

So I open space, hold the space, close the space.

The latter, for me, requires about 20 minutes (not counting a closing circle, which I always do in one form or another, sometimes abbreviated to one word or phrase per person).

1. Ask people what themes came up repeatedly regardless of topic or session. Ask someone to note these on flip charts.
2. Keep going until everyone who wishes has a chance to mention the theme they noticed.
3. Take the resultant flip charts, spread them on the floor, ask people to mark their favorites. Might be three, five, seven, etc. Depends on the size of the group and the number of items on the chart. Count them up if there’s time. Certainly count them up if you’ll be moving on to action planning the next day. Otherwise, simply promise the info will be available shortly in written form (after the coordinators pull it together and send it out).

(Where did I learn to do it this way? I do not remember, but I think from Harrison. Is it in the book?)

Simple, fast, everyone’s involved, no fancy footwork on my part. I can think of a thousand group dynamics issues and eventualities that I have not covered by doing things this way. My conviction is few if any of them really matter. Dealing with them, I have learned from finally acknowledging feedback I could not hear for years, was more about my needs than the client’s.

Organizations of all types may be better served if we open the space W I D E and let lots of air and light in than if we merely crack a window for a brief time in the name of completing the entire exercise in a short period.

Kaliya Hamlin posts a great article on the Mashupcamp 2 Open Space recently in the San Fransico, USA area. Included in the article, on the front page of the San Jose Mercury business section, is the above photo, probably the first ever example of hand drawn OST principles in a business section.

Notice the photos in the top-left corner of this page? They’re different every time you look at this page because they’re randomly selected from all photos tagged “openspacetech” at flickr.com. So go ahead and add your own photos there and notice the diversity of what open space looks like throughout time and space.

London-based facilitator Johnnie Moore describes how Open Space Technology works in this short video clip from a recent event he did on education and social software

The Pioneers of Change “Summer School” is taking place August 19-25. This year it is hosted at the “Shire“, an inspiring learning centre in Nova Scotia, Canada, that focuses on leadership and sustainable practices, and which has been launched by a fellow pioneer, social entrepreneur, and artist, Tim Merry.

Pioneers of Change is a global learning network of young people, in their 20’s and 30’s, who have committed to be themselves, do what matters, start now, engage with others, and never stop asking questions. The “pioneers” include social entrepreneurs, corporate and NGO professionals, civil servants, artists, teachers, and free agents from a variety of cultural and social backgrounds. Founded in 1999, Pioneers of Change today engages over 2000 participants in over 70 countries.

Our intention for Summer School is to create a much space as possible for Pioneers from around the world to learn from each other. We invite you to come prepared to share experiences, case studies, tools, models and anything from your Pioneering work that you think could benefit other Pioneers. Together we can create a rich, diverse and highly self-organized learning environment.
Find the full invitation and intention here.

For more information or questions about financing participation, please email Sera (sera|at|pioneersofchange.net) or Pablo (pablo|at|pioneersofchange.net).

Chris Corrigan has posted 21 newly revised stories of Open Space in action at his website. These stories form an important learning resource, especially for those working with marginalized groups.

Interesting conversation going on at omidyar.net on The Mystery of Open Space. From Christina Jordan, an Ashoka Fellow in Uganda:

So inspired am I by open space, actually, that I’m trying to develop it as a cultural ideal at Life in Africa. I’d like to see the physical WE Centers operate more or less in a permanent state of open space, where members reserve spaces to do their thing and invite others to learn or help.

The tricky part of developing the physical Life in Africa space so far has been to have a hook that effectively brings people to the space and keeps them coming back. In practice, offering part-time, temporary income generating activities in craft-making is the glue that’s worked best. Once they are there making jungle beads or solidarity bracelets (which are activities they can do while talking or listening) they decide where to do that work at the Center according to the other activities (english lessons, loan planning discussions, health presentations) that are scheduled throughout the day.

My hope is that members will eventually will feel able to use the LiA space to work freely with likeminded members to achieve whatever they want to achieve. Right now, they are learning alot from each other informally, but most are still waiting for instructions at every turn with regard to implementing activities. I think within another 6 months or so they will have had enough leadership experience as a community to start initiating more and more small project & group work ideas on their own.

Very interesting how people have to be taught self-organization, as if they don’t already know how to do it! Open space seems to do that teaching without even trying.

Theresa Williamson writes:

Yesterday we undertook a new experiment at Catalytic Communities, inspired by a friend and collaborator, Michael Herman.

and then goes on to say:

As the director of CatComm I was refreshed to see staff taking control of the meeting… I was fascinated by the topics that came up naturally, as they are different to those I would have posed, but are perhaps closer to the pulse of what is really important…

Spirited Work is an experiment in ongoing Open Space that’s been running in the Seattle area since 1999. Anne Stadler, one of the founders and leaders of this multi-year journey, has posted an excellent short history of Spirited Work, complete with pictures.

Here is a list of conferences and exchanges, with contacts for more information, that Michael M Pannwitz helped assemble for us…

Learning Exchange in Southern Germany (July 16-19)
email Georg Rehm or Wolfgang Faenderl

OSonOS in Moscow (August 4-6)
See International OSonOS page for details

OSonOS by the Sea USA (September 11-12)
Hosted by Harrison Owen. Think it’s sold out now.

Learning Exchange in Ukraine (September 20 -22)
email Bohdan V. Maslych or
Andrey Klymyshyn or Lad Kanevska

Jo Toepfer sent this about an International Open Space Technology Training that is going to take place in Blossin / Germany (close to Berlin) from November 2 through 9, 2006…

Many of us experience our work, the organizations we are part of, our communities, even our countries and in fact the whole world around us as transforming at ever increasing speed. To effectively deal with the resulting challenges often perceived as chaos, conflict and confusion we need an approach that involves all interested parties with their insights, experiences, questions and wisdom. An approach in which we collectively focus on making organizations and communities places in which the human spirit can unfold and thrive.

Open Space Technology is such an approach. It supports systems of all kinds and sizes in unfolding the forces of collaboration, cooperation, participation, creativity and spirit required to come to action on the burning issues facing them. It provides a framework of time and space in which people self organize their learning and planning. In this framework everyone works with everyone else on those issues they feel passionate about and for which they are taking responsibility.

More about the training…

Michael Herman, who has provided lots of resources to the Open Space community over the years, has just released two updated offerings:

Open Space Technology: Inviting Leadership Practice – reviews the basics of Open Space, considers its evolution, and points to its dissolving into the ongoing practice of Inviting Leadership.

Open Space Technology: An Inviting Guide – a short guide for Inviting Leaders, with new meeting/event planning worksheet and notes on sustaining action after the big meeting.

What a nice thing to do a week before he gets married!

(Congrats Michael, from the whole osw.org posting team!)

From Ashley Cooper to the OSList about doing Open Space with 42 third graders in 1 hour and 10 minutes (I would’ve given you an excerpt, but couldn’t bear to cut any of this):

The theme was What can we do to make our school a better place? What can we do to make our world a better place?

Of course, the children took to it so easily. We had 2, 20 minute sessions in which they generated 18 topics such as New Rules for the Playground, How we should be nice and kind to each other, Learning from history’s mistakes, Children’s Voting Rights, Try to help the environment! Not polluting any more!, and Not excluding people from anything.

We ended with a once around reflection circle in which everyone had a chance to share. Here are some of their comments.

• What I liked in my group was that there were no debates. We were all united. There were differences about how it is, but we were all united.
• We decided to start a fund to save the rainforest.
• Our group went well. Kids voting rights. It was a good opportunity for discussion.
• In history’s biggest mistakes, it started as being silly with just girls there. Then the boys came in and made it better. In the second session I bonded with someone I didn’t know that well.
• Everyone agreed with saving the rainforest. It wasn’t silly. We were serious.
• I think we talked about an important issue: not excluding.

One little touch that I think helped a lot with this age group was to provide a basket of objects that hosts could choose to use for a talking stick. I saw a few kids struggling with everyone talking at once and then one of them running to grab a talking stick. I also provided a generic form for them to use for note taking.

Aside from the opportunity for their voices to be heard, to connect with one another around things that matter to them, and to experience themselves self-organizing, I greatly appreciated that students who have a tendency to wander and not participate in assigned topics (students that can often be labeled as challenges) that at the OS they actually had names and roles for their ways of being, butterflies and bumble bees. I loved that they were doing what they were ‘supposed to be doing’ by wandering around and trying to figure out where they belong and where they want to participate.