Hello

[Robert Chaffe]

Welcome Kathleen

You ask some very difficult questions but ones which we are all faced with.
It was suggested to me that the way to eat an elephant, is one mouth full
at a time.  Where do you start?  Start where you are.  Start where your
know the community and start with what you fell you can manage  with just a
little more effort.

Forget the presentations and focus on participation.  The way to show how
Open Space works is to do it.   The things you do with a service club like
Rotary might be quite small but make it happen as Open Space.  Build from
your success by having the participants stories to share.   Read and read
Harrison's "Open Space" Technology and Birgitt's material (especially about
contracting with the organisations and closing) and when you think you have
it all read the material again.  The special bits are in the fine detail
which I found I learnt by doing it, "Open Space".  Yes, most of my attempts
have not been as good as I would have liked and I always forget to do
something but when I go back to the references the core message becomes
clearer.  Your passion and drive will see you through.  Remember that the
growth of the spirit is based on faith and trust in yourself,  the process
and the participants.  The famous lines from South Pacific say "Fools give
you reasons, wise men never try."  Flying requires a leap of faith (either
in an aircraft or in the circus tent)  the key element is to let go and
trust the people and equipment, enjoy the flight and be prepared to be
surprised.

The school system has its problems around the globe.  The rewards are great
if education can be more effective and less administration.

Please share your journey with us.
Robert

>From  Tue Oct 26 17:38:55 1999
Message-Id: <TUE.26.OCT.1999.173855.0200.>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 17:38:55 +0200
Reply-To: florianfischer at ff-wey.com
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Florian Fischer <florianfischer at ff-wey.com>
Subject: florian fischer unlurks
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854";
 x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

hi, list, give me welcome. I want to give a short report about the
open-air open!space which took place at vienna the 29. september
facilitatet together with Erich Kolenaty.
I`m a german freelance consultant. My interest and my experience on LGI
goes back to the early seventies when I`ve been member of the
quickborner team /metaplan as communication-designer. later I worked
together in a lot of projects with my friend michael m pannwitz.
recently I`ve got training on open!space by Harrison on his workshop at
Berlin and training on Future Search on the the workshop given from
Marve and Sandra at Potsdam.
By the way: I offer to all the oslist the exclamation mark between open
and space, as I use it to point to the aspect of invitation:
let´s open space !  =  open!space.
now please read my report.

hi, list and listeners, please remember the question "is this still
open-space or what" which had been asked from
erich kolenaty, vienna, the 21.09.99.
Thanks, dear birgitt bolten for your encouraging answer on that
question. today I want to give a short report about
that open!space, which took place the 29.september at vienna. (I offer
to all of you the exclamation-mark between
open and space , as I use it to show the character of invitation: let´s
open space!)
The context: At vienna all over that summer every wednesday, 6 p.m. to 9
p.m. took place an open-air-meeting  in a
public park on behalf of "Bridges for Peace". NGO´s, writers, artists
offered their ideas to an everytime changing
audience of about 40 to 100 people including some 30 as every time the
same people taking part on every meeting.
All meetings had been realised as  frontal-presentation with following
discussion with the audience. The organising
is mainly done of a single women who is the heart of all that, basing on
the facilities of a NGO called
"SOS-fellow-creature".
The final event of the open-air summer-events, which I facilitated as
open!space together with erich, has been
planned to harvest the energy of the summer-events for activities in the
city over the wintertime and to enable the
audience as actors.
The conditions: open air in front of and round a closed
(greek-temple)-building, in public open to the parksituation,
starting at dusk going ahead with few artifical light, the surrounding
parc in darkness, the farer surrounding city full
of sounds, total time 3 hours including 25 minutes song-music at the
beginning and 25 minutes at the end, 40 people
at the beginning sitting within the circle, 25 curious people from the
public staying beyond the circle, further 20
walking around.
How it run: song-music of a band situated beyond the circle  //
children building bridges (for peace) with their
bodies within the circle  //  opening the circle: the theme, the givens,
the four principles, the law (problems with the
micro)  //  explanation of the going-on and once more(! )further
explanation of the principles  //  for the issues we put
clip-boards with 2 sheets of paper: 1.sheet: name and issue, 2.sheet:
prepared guide-sheet for the report of the
group  //  9 issues for agenda  // instead of bulletin-board: every
author of an issue repeats once more his/her issue
and gather his/her interested group: 9 issues //  1 session
group-working round the temple (we as facilitators offered
hot tea at the group-places during the session) //   6 handwritten
reports on prepared guide-sheets, which will be sent
afterwords to the participants  //  a short spoken report of every group
within the closing circle  //  3 speaches and
bunches of flowers as gift of participants to honour the lady who run
all the activities all over the summer  //  final
music performance.
Our experience: the conditions of the shortness, of the public
situation, of the darkness, of the open-air make it very
important  to prepare the technics in a perfect way: to give two hours
more time to the preparation, to explain every
step about the process in an extreme clear manner. Thanks god, which
means thanks to the informal and partly
chaotic structure of the organizer at the end all worked well. It needed
all our energy to hold  and to concentrate the
energy under that conditions. It had not been possible at the end to
practice the closing circle in the manner of
talking  stick, which I think to be an essential.
About the ripples: (Beside that question needs a fardistance-view)
Basing on that new experience the organizer is
already arranging meetings as well as open!space within the
entrance-hall and the cafeshop-area of the local
radio-station of Vienna in continuation to the subject of "bridges for
peace". Next date is the 20th of december to the
subject: "Are we loosing reality ?"  Fon-contact: Helga Köcher
0043.1.5862345   Stay open. Please put me on the
OSLIST. Florian Fischer