Regular OS meetings

[Harrison Owen]

At 11:18 PM 6/7/00 -0400, Romy wrote:

>A VERY LITTLE CASE STUDY: using Open Space in a ONE hour meeting -
>(Harrison you might be horrified.! - I hope not)
**********************************
Absolutely NOT horrified. My personal practice of going for longer Open Spaces
relates to 2 factors. First is the complexity/conflict of the issues. Given a
lot of both, a "mini-Open Space" ends up being frustrating at best and may be
counter-productive. The second factor is the experience level of the group.
When Open Space becomes a common experience, I have seen the space effectively
opened in 20 min -- from start to finish. There seems to be a natural
progresssion from Open Space Event to OS mentality -- to OS organization.
When a
group of folks start to move along this progression it is as if (as you
suggest)  they never leave Open Space. So the short versions come as
"intnentional focusing of the space already open" as opposed to something brand
new.

In short Open Spaces with an experieinced group, the words of the opening
become infinitely less important than the "ritual" -- and the most powerful
element here, I think, is the circle. I have seen groups simply sit in the
circle and go imediately from silence to posting of issues to the market place
and on to the discussion groups in 5 min flat.

Harrison


Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854
USA
phone 301-469-9269
fax 301-983-9314
website
www.mindspring.com/~owenhh
Open Space Institute websites
www.openspaceworld.org
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