Story of a recent 2.5 day OST

Thu Aug 23 00:09:12 PDT 2001

Colleagues:

I opened the space the other day for about 70 people here in Vancouver.
Just thought I'd let you know how it went.

These folks were a motley collection of rubes, rogues and spirited
tricksters, dopplegangers, shapshifters and ghosts.  Some were old, and
some were very young.  Some were sick and some were tired and some were
infected with enthusiasm that made me reel with giddiness when I was in
their prescence.

They had nothing in common with each other, which was kind of cool.

As the vast majority of them were OST facilitators, it felt to me a
little like telling jokes to comedians.  In some ways it was the hardest
OST I have ever done and in other ways it was easy.

We gathered in the Sty-Wet-Tan Great Hall at the First Nations longhouse
at the University of British Columbia.  The theme of the gathering was
"Improving our practice of OST" or something like that.  The 70 folks
who were there came from Canada, America, Taiwan, Australia, Denmark,
Germany, Sweden, Russia, Israel, Belgium, Portugal, and Haiti.  There
were tranplanted Americans from Taiwan, a transplanted Turk from
Germany, a transplanted Australian from America, a transplanted Pole
from America and a transplanted Ojibway from Bowen Island....that's me.
It was a decently eclectic crew.

Walking the circle was not too hard, and I managed to remember pretty
much everything I needed to say.  Folks were polite in that they didn't
rush into the middle too fast, but they didn't hang back so long that I
broke into a sweat.

We had lots and lots of sessions proposed for the 2.5 day meeting, and
it took a while to get everything up on the wall. In retrospect i
probably should have allowed for more time for the posting, but as each
session was 1.5 hours long, shaving a half hour off the first one was no
big deal.  We had lunch breaks of one hour scheduled from 12:30 to 1:30
which was a good move I think.

Holding the space was harder than I expected, partly due to the fact
that I had a migraine and a nauseous stomach (Caused by?  Chicken and
egg?  You be the judge...).  For the first time in my life, I took a nap
during an OS meeting, over the lunch break, which worked out fine except
that I missed out on a feast of alder-smoked salmon and bannock.  Rats.

I felt better after that and after the eight hours of shut eye I had
overnight.  My colleague Laurel Doersam (whose name means "breath of
fresh air, bringer of light and saver of bacon" in my own private
language) did the morning and evening news sessions both days.  On the
second day, morning news went on and on and on with lots of interesting
material, but the cool thing was that it ended itself.  People just
collectively realized that they had two feet and they put them to use.

Some of the participants remarked on how much more silence there was and
attributed this to the fact that we had a much more diverse
international crowd, a large part of which may be used to silence.
Other remarked that the silences were too short, so I guess the
observation was right!

The closing circle was a very profound experience for me, listening to
people talk about their experience of this particular OST meeting.  Many
people talked about the depth of discussions, the solid friendships made
over 2.5 days, the unwillingness to leave, and the generosity of spirit
that pervaded the room.  i was in a kind of grief during the whole
closing circle, becasue as a facilitator, I had really not experienced
the event in the same way.  I was privately mourning my inability to
have connected in that way, and in some small way secretly regretting
that I had volunteered to be the one person in the room who was not
available for that kind of experience.  That was hard.

I felt, as my dear partner/teacher Caitlin said when she was in labour,
like a ghost, living between two worlds.  I felt like an actor finding
his way through the darkness of the wings, or like a goalie whose team
is scoring goals at the other end of the rink all night.  Sure I was a
part of it, but in a different way.

I ended by giving away a few things: the talking stick that we had
acquired for the event, carved by a Nisga'a carver, a carved wolf plaque
to our silent partner Gabriel Shirley for his help in putting our
conference online, and my small bag of tobacco, with which I had been
making offerings for success, to my colleague Laurel Doersam (whose name
means "spirit buttress, one who cradles and nutures the soul, strength
of ages" if you say it differently).  This confirmed my hunch that to
have a successful OST meeting, you have to give away
something...something really meanigful.  There is an element of
sacrifice that is not in the User's Guide, or on Michael Herman's
website or in any of the training that I have ever taken.  And yet it is
known by all OST facilitators after they do their first one.

Anyway, it worked out pretty well in the end, and next year it seems
like this gathering will be repeated in Australia, which is great news.
If you want to read to proceedings, they are onlilne at
http://catalyst.bigmindmedia.com/osonoslogin.html or at
http://www.openspaceworld.org in the near future.

Cheers,

Chris

--
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

http://www.chriscorrigan.com
corcom at interchange.ubc.ca

RR 1 E-3
1172 Miller Road
Bowen Island, BC
Canada, V0N 1G0

phone (604) 947-9236
fax (604) 947-9238

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>From  Thu Aug 23 00:39:55 2001
Message-Id: <THU.23.AUG.2001.003955.0500.>
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 00:39:55 -0500
Reply-To: mherman at globalchicago.net
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Michael Herman <mherman at globalchicago.net>
Organization: Michael Herman Associates
Subject: Re: Story of a recent 2.5 day OST
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...and that's just how it was.  fantastic.

many many thanks to chris and laurel, and to gabriel who's keeping it going
still on big mind.

michael herman
doppleganger, first class

Chris Corrigan wrote:

> Colleagues:
>
> I opened the space the other day for about 70 people here in Vancouver.
> Just thought I'd let you know how it went.
>
> These folks were a motley collection of rubes, rogues and spirited
> tricksters, dopplegangers, shapshifters and ghosts.  Some were old, and
> some were very young.  Some were sick and some were tired and some were
> infected with enthusiasm that made me reel with giddiness when I was in
> their prescence.
>
> They had

--

Michael Herman
300 West North Avenue #1105
Chicago IL 60610
312-280-7838 voice
312-280-7837 fax

http://www.michaelherman.com
a personal/professional portal to
consulting, open space, evolution,
invitation resources, michael's
open notebook, and the rest of
GlobalChicago...

mailto:mherman at globalchicago.net

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