Reflections on a challenging OST event (long)

Artur F. Silva artsilva at mail.eunet.pt
Wed Jun 13 15:28:06 PDT 2001


Hello Dear Lisa:

At 16:25 12-06-2001 -0700, Lisa Heft wrote:
>Friends -- I would like to share with you an experience I had last week
>-- I am still mulling it over (...) I learn the most when you
>all share the 'crumbly' moments as well as the perfect ones.  I shall do
>the same here.

Thanks for your story. Much courage is needed to share a "less than perfect"
story. But  I agree with you that "less than perfect" stories are the ones
that can teach us most.

Reading your mail I felt that it was not a story of ONE OST but a story
of TWO different OSTs, for the same people.

I think the main problem was the change of room and the fact that
you could not use the walls in the second one. So I assume that you
couldn't move the  Boletin Board. Were there any sessions
planned in day 1 to de held on day 2?

Has anyone the experience of changing the main room in the middle of
a single OS?

I think of OS as "changing meeting rules" (for the ones of OST).
If then you distribute the proceedings of Day 1 and begin day 2
with something that is not exactly OST (like storytelling) I suspect
thay you are transmiting signals that a different event began and maybe
that confused people (?).

I am not sure about that, of course, and would like to see other opinions.

And what if the second day would be tretead as a different OST with
a sligtly diferent theme and openning?

I have no solution, only more questions... Anyhow...


  Eventually the groups that wanted to got together, the same deep
>learning and communication ensued, and in the closing circle all the
>right comments came out.  We even did written evaluations after this
>event, and the evals underlined peoples' delight with this new process,
>wish to use it again although in a longer conference (a full 2 days, for
>example or 2.5 days), and overwhelmingly positive comments on how
>networking and finding out things in common was one of the biggest
>benefits of their experience together.  There was even an announcement
>for a next similar meeting.  And even better, there were a few comments
>on how, if this group was waiting for a leader to tell them when to
>begin, maybe that was reflective of their current situation in the
>California Central Valley -- nothing is being done because everybody is
>waiting for some outside leader to tell them when to begin -- when in
>reality *they* are the leaders -- *they* are the people they have been
>waiting for.
>
>I couldn't have hoped for a better outcome.

...in the end, it worked ok. Those are good news, aren't they?

Regards

Artur

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