Christina Baldwin, best know to this audience as the originator of Peerspirit Circling and author of, “Calling the Circle: The First and Future Culture”, has published a new work called, “Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story”.

Some excerpts from the Preface:

We make our lives bigger or smaller, more expansive or more limited, according to the interpretation of life that is our story. We are the storytellers, the ones who put life into words.

Events become real when we organize experience into narrative: we literally cannot think without words. People become real when we put interaction into words: story is the foundation of relationship. With words alone we can create connection, establish community.

Something is happening in these stories and in this book and in our lives. It is the time of the Storycatcher. It is the time when those who understand the value of story and practice the art of connection have an essential role to play….Storycatchers invite the stories we most need to come forward into the community.

Chris Corrigan and Michael Herman are hosting a 3-day Practice Retreat on Bowen Island, April 18-20, 2006 to cultivate the essence of Open Space leadership.

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.

Identity Woman says:

He says flat out…”you know I really don’t like this format where we are at the front of the room and you are out there but we all have ideas to contribute.” It is very frustrating for me to hear this because I advocated that the organizers of this conference including Boris use Open Space as the format.

This from the OSLIST today…

You are invited to the 1st anniversary Convocation of the U.S. Partnership for the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development – hosted by the EPA in Raleigh, NC!

In addition to updates on Partnership progress this past year, March 1-2 will be a series of OpenSpace gatherings around issues and topics that participants put on the table ahead of time. EVERYONE WELCOME!

Given this group’s passionate participation and experience, I’m really hoping that any of you interested in sustainability, in any of its myriad forms, who can make it to Raleigh will join us.

For one example, with Raphael Peter of Asheville I’m anchoring an Open Space on intergrating the arts across the sustainability movement. Other areas already on the table include the business community, k-12 education, community-based learning, faith-based and -related movements, higher education – we’d love someone to take a lead on green building, sustainable agriculture, health, marketing/advertising – what else can you creative folks think of?

Patricia Haines
Level Green Institute, Ithaca, NY
Co-Chair, Adult & Community Learning
US Partnership for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

John Engle invites us to Haiti Salon 2007 by asking: How can we improve our efforts to support Haiti?

Haiti Salon is an inclusive two and a half day gathering in New York toward furthering justice, peace and democracy in Haiti.
(see the link for more)

At How to Save the World, Dave Pollard is looking at using leading edge thinking on social networks wisdom of crowds and Open Space Technology to find ways to address complex problems. He paints a picture of how a summit leveraging theory produced by George Lakoff, James Surowicki and Dave Snowdon can address issues like global warming:

Conceptually, this seems to me to be an ideal melding of the best of social Complexity Theory, Open Space Technology and the Wisdom of Crowds principles, and bringing in learnings from Lakoff’s Frames theories and Freakonomics methodology, to provide a means by which intractable problems could be addressed in a flexible, constructive, and yet highly disciplined way, so that a broad and deep understanding of the issue could emerge, and where resolutions that might never be revealed in more traditional ‘problem-solving’ venues might be identified and pursued by those ‘responsible’, in a self-organizing and very fluid and dynamic setting.

Visit Dave’s site and join in the conversation.

Christine Whitney Sanchez writes:

Claudia Haack and I are excited to share our report to the Girl Scouts of the USA on the “Open Strategic Conversations” capacity building project which culminated in large events at the Girl Scout National Convention. Naturally, the Girl Scouts have given us their permission to share this with you.

On October 7, 2005, an Open Space on Governance was held for more than 1600 delegates and over the following 3 days Strategy Caf̩s attracted over 3000 participants. These events were eagerly awaited by 100 volunteers Рthe core of the capacity building effort who we had trained in Open Space and World Cafe. They had self-organized for planning and implementation before, during and after the convention to become the logistics backbone for these events.

The “Smooth Operators,” as they called themselves, captured the spirit and imagination of what lies in the future for Girl Scouting and have gone on to facilitate many Open Space events and World Cafe conversations in their local Girl Scout councils and their communities at large.

At Anecdote,Andrew Rixon has teamed up with OSonOS X co-host Viv McWaters in an innovative community of practice exercise. They are running a three month long reflective learning group on the uses of open and closed language among facilitators:

Our focus is on the language facilitators use to encourage or discourage a group discussion. This reflective practice will run over 3 months and for those participating we will provide reminders, feedback and stories from other participants. We aim to share our learnings and findings at a workshop for some upcoming Australasian facilitation conference… If you would like to join in on this reflective practice, send either Viv (viv@thereef.com.au) or myself (andrew@anecdote.com.au) an email and we will join you in to our program.

More and more, traditional conferences are being called to answer for the big wastes of time that many (most?) of them really are. The best parts are always the coffee breaks!

The term that keeps popping up is Unconferencing. Johnnie Moore offers this podcast of a Skype conversation with Chris Corrigan and Rob Paterson, talking about Unconferencing and Open Space Technology.

How can we get away from unsatisfying conferences where the audience is often bored, towards much more engaging learning events? Listen here…

Richard Burg and The Centre for Group Learning have assembled a resource on Bohmian Dialogue that includes the classic paper, “Dialogue: A Proposal” by David Bohm, Donald Factor, and Peter Garrett, as well as a letter from Donald Factor to Bill Isaacs and Margaret Wheatley discussing the main differences he sees between their approach and Bohmian dialogue. Contains thought-provoking material for what we experience in Open Space events. Here are a few short excerpts:

Dialogue, as we are choosing to use the word, is a way of exploring the roots of the many crises that face humanity today. It enables inquiry into, and understanding of, the sorts of processes that fragment and interfere with real communication between individuals, nations and even different parts of the same organization. In our modern culture men and women are able to interact with one another in many ways: they can sing, dance, or play together with little difficulty but their ability to talk together about subjects that matter deeply to them seems invariably to lead to dispute, division and often to violence. In our view this condition points to a deep and pervasive defect in the process of human thought.

Because the nature of Dialogue is exploratory, its meaning and its methods continue to unfold. No firm rules can be laid down for conducting a Dialogue because its essence is learning – not as the result of consuming a body of information or doctrine imparted by an authority, nor as a means of examining or criticizing a particular theory or programme, but rather as part of an unfolding process of creative participation between peers.

A Dialogue works best with between twenty and forty people seated facing one another in a single circle. A group of this size allows for the emergence and observation of different subgroups or subcultures that can help to reveal some of the ways in which thought operatives collectively., This is important because the differences between such subcultures are often an unrecognized cause of failed communication and conflict.

What is earth changing is not the idea that people can change their world, but the actual trying of it. That leads to the discovery. Once people find it’s true, they can.

Do they? I don’t know. They might slip back into the old ruts. It takes energy, enormous amounts, to change things. For me, it is easier to do my old business and keep my nose to the grindstone. So it may be necessary to make special events every so often to keep people’s energy focused. For it can dampen easily and be deflected by day to day concerns, little or big. Keeping the conversation sustained may be necessary. Open space practitioners who invite the conversants to keep on may be central. Events may be the catalysts without which not.

Does that fit somewhere in the implicate order? Perhaps it says if we want to keep something (action, say) unfolded, we must keep our fingers on the tuner.

The trick it seems at the moment is to keep inviting the conversations. What matters now? Do we need actions or understanding or health or the overcoming of fear? We know. We have the ways. We are the ones needed in this hour.

We are the ones for here and now. No others.

:- Doug. Germann
What wants to happen in your communities?

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)

Kenny Moore, co-author of “The CEO and the Monk: One Company’s Journey to Profit and Purpose” (John Wiley and Sons, 2004), writes a witty and candid account of his first Open Space event facilitation. Here’s an excerpt:

“I now invite anyone who has passion about the business to come forward to the microphone… Who would like to go first?”

My invitation was greeted with silence. 400 employees looked around for senior management to take the lead. But they didn’t. Thirty seconds slowly ticked by. The alpha-males in the audience were starting to twitch. With no relief in sight, one brave soul stood up and walked to the microphone. “My name’s Bill Kearns and I’d like to host a session discussing the relocation of the company’s call center.” Right on his heels was another employee who took her place at the mic and spoke her passion. Two minutes later, we had exceeded the 5 employees the CIO feared would never materialize. By the end of 20 minutes we had 53 sessions posted.

Something powerful was underway. Something that could never have been managerially orchestrated. It all seemed to get energy from the freedom inherent in a business “invitation.” Employees sensed that they were in charge. And indeed, they truly were.

The whole story is recounted here in glorious detail.

Writer-director of the established British theater, Improbable, Phelim McDermott, is one of the latest people to join the OS discussion list.

Improbable organized a 200 person OST event in London on the topic of the current situation in British drama.

Of course, as many others who stumble upon OST, Phelim notes that he worked in open space long before he worked with the method.

Two articles in London’s Guardian and Observer describe this recent application of OST.

Reading about Improbable’s principles is also intriguing.

The original invitation for the two day OST event, DEVOTED AND DISGRUNTLED: What are we going to do about theatre?, was also posted to the OS list.

Improbable has graciously posted the proceedings from the two day event on their website.

Thank you for the story, Phelim!

An interesting experiment is just starting in the Open Space Sangha blog. It’s called an Inquiry Circle. It was very powerful in person, at the Open Space on Open Space, last year in Halifax.

The hope is that we might replicate some of that in a virtual platform. Here’s how it works: The first person poses a question. The next person (any next person) in answers it and then asks the next question. This continues until it reaches round the circle to the person who posed the original question.

The opening question is: What is your experience of Spirit and Open Space?

You’re welcome to read, comment or join the circle as a posting member, in the Sangha. Maybe we’ll take a short rest here at OpenSpaceWorld.ORG while the experiment runs over there.

Graduate research that makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of Open Space: A Grounded Theory Study On The Value Associated With Using Open Space Technology by Rich Norris

This gem on the first page, even before the introduction: “The prime value noted is OST’s ability to help people move below the surface of their personal or organizational facade by uncovering what is already in existence but unseen.”

This to the OSLIST recently from Birgitt Williams…

The client opens the space in the organization for the facilitator to then do his/her thing with facilitating an OST meeting. Sometimes the space that the client chooses to open is quite big, sometimes it is very small. The key in the prep work and working with the “givens” is whether the space is stated truly, is authentic.

I have never found an organization that couldn’t open a little space for some conversation. For example, in the military, it was not about the whole military, it was only about a master plan for the landscape of the military college, however it was truly open space for the OST meeting to take place. One of the givens, stated by the Brigadier General who was also the commandant was ‘democracy ends on Thursday at 5pm’.

He didn’t pretend that the space was more open than it was. It was very specific to get a specific job done. And it got done well. Follow up even years later is that the whole plan was financed and has been implemented.

The client matters. Openness matters. Clarity matters. Truth matters. And each one is reinforced by the next.

…and how can anyone use it to address crisis situations? Doug Germann and I are beginning to draft a “guide” for use in such situations. Something short and sweet, light enough to stick in a backpack and useful enough help in New Orleans or Indonesia, and wherever the next big bumps show up. This description of OS emerged from that work:

Open Space Technology is a method of organizing meetings (immediately) and leading movements (longer term) so that ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things, in record time. This simple and powerful approach will help you:

1. Organize a meeting of 5-500 (or more!) people, to quickly, cheaply and effectively address any issue or situation of real importance or immediate concern.

2. Focus on the issues and opportunities that are most important, the assets and resources already on hand (even if they are few), and the people who can and must be involved in any successful outcome(s) or resolution(s).

3. Support the movement and connection of people, information, resources and ideas that are related or required by the main issue or situation — to create (or renew) a genuine sense of community and collaboration.

4. Identify and execute responsible, informed and immediate next steps, in many directions, on many levels, and by many different kinds of people, all at once — and to sustain this sort of action as long as is needed to address or resolve the issue or situation.

Open Space Technology will not help you take or maintain control of people, pacify the masses with the illusions of participation, or work very well when you already know what needs to be done and how to do it.

If, however, you find yourself in a situation that is overwhelming (or nearly so) in its complexity of tasks, diversity of people and needs, importance and potential for conflict, and undeniable urgency, then it is likely the best possible way to bring people together, focus on what matters, make essential connections, and do what must be done.

If you have ideas or suggestions about what should go into such a “crisis” guide to Open Space, please email me.

The Australian Open Space Institute is hosting an Open Space on Open Space in Melbourne on February 21 and 22. They’d love to see you there.

This is an opportunity for users of Open Space Technology to explore the depth and edges of Open Space Technology, share experiences, challenge and be challenged. Some of Australia’s and New Zealand’s most experienced Open Space facilitators will be attending. You will get the most out of this OSonOS if you have used/participated in Open Space Technology.

If you are new to Open Space Technology you might be interested in Introductory Training May 17 & 18.

For more information about either event, contact Viv McWaters.

Michael Herman recently posted the latest iteration of his thinking on the Four Practices of Open Space: opening, inviting, holding, and grounding. Here’s an excerpt:

opening heart – in open space, it is the themes and purposes that arise in the hearts of leaders that we turn into invitations. by opening heart, we discover or rediscover the thing(s) we love.
inviting attention – in open space, the invitation comes from listening and then goes out to invite more conversation. to invite attention we almost always need to ask questions and tell stories, about what was, what is now, and what is next.
supporting connection – by supporting connection we make conversation, decision-making, and commitment possible. to support connection, we almost always need to open and hold spaces for people, work, and information to move.
grounding the energy – to ground the energy we almost always have to take responsibility, for recognizing, creating and/or securing value.

For the full text click here.

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