Chicago Social Forum

Thu Aug 7 23:46:19 PDT 2003

Great story about another small OST meeting.  What strikes me is how
important it is to flow in small meetings, the emerging structures come
and go so fast that to pin any of it down is just folly.  Thanks Ted for
sharing that.

Chris

---
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Bowen Island, BC, Canada
http://www.chriscorrigan.com
chris at chriscorrigan.com

(604) 947-9236

> -----Original Message-----
> From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Ted
> Ernst
> Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 9:19 PM
> To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> Subject: Re: Chicago Social Forum
>
> Just continuing the story.
>
> Last night I hosted an OST meeting for this planning group.  There was
> some
> confusion over how many would come and if it should be cancelled, but
of
> course I expressed my opinion that the process works no matter how
many
> come
> so we could have it or not, either way.  There were 4 of us for most
of
> the
> meeting and a 5th came near the end.  Because it was so small I left
out
> some of the elements from the book.  I didn't make bumblebee/butterfly
> poster, nor Be Prepared to Be Surprised.  I did post theme, one law, 4
> principles and the time/space grid (4 20-minutes blocks).  I didn't
walk
> the
> circle instead just informally explaining the process and the fact
that I
> was going to wear two hats as facilitator and participant.  The 3 of
us
> generated 13 topics, some of which were merged together.  The
timeslots
> were
> then juggled by the conveners to put topics into a sort of ordering so
the
> whole conversation would more or less just flow through most of the
topics
> on the wall.  All topics were discussed, some more explicitly than
others.
>
> The bottom-line outcome of the meeting is that all planning meetings
from
> now until the event (Jan31/Feb1) will be in OST (and while not stated
> explicitly how this would be evaluated, the idea is that this is an
> experiment, but as we fleshed out the details, that idea sort of fell
away
> and people became more comfortable with passion bounded by
> responsibility).
> At the previous meeting it had been decided to do a "themed meeting"
once
> a
> month where the 1st hour would be about a particular topic (connecting
the
> local to the global, for example) so that outreach could be to
specific
> groups perceived to be interested in that topic regardless of their
prior
> knowledge of the Social Forum idea.  While this idea was retained, it
will
> also be in OST.  We'll have two time slots per meeting where the
> suggestion
> in the opening will be for the 1st time slot to be about the theme of
the
> night and the 2nd slot will be for "What needs to happen to get us to
Jan
> 31st/Feb 1st?"  People really liked the idea that these conversations
> would
> be broken up by interests and the organizing piece could start in the
1st
> session (contrary to suggestion) and the themed piece could carry over
> into
> the 2nd session.  We will also have monthly meetings only about
logistics
> (obviously since these are also OST, any topic is fair game, but the
theme
> for those meetings will be more nuts and bolts).
>
> I'm really excited about this whole thing because the idea of the
Chicago
> Social Forum itself is to create an open space.  I'm excited that
we've
> decided to live in that space while we're creating it (similar to what
> Michael's got us doing in the openspaceworld.net wiki space online).
Good
> stuff.
>
> peace,
> ted
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ted Ernst [mailto:ted at chicagohumanist.org]
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 11:55 PM
> > To: OS List
> > Subject: Chicago Social Forum
> >
> >
> > Recently I heard about the World Social Forums that have been in
> > Porto Alegre Brazil the past few years.  I'm not totally clear on
> > the concept yet, but it seems that it simply opening a space for
> > people from all over the world to come together and share their
> > own work and make connections (the idea is to oppose
> > neo-liberalism and support universal human rights, etc).  Anyone
> > can propose a workshop, seminar, forum, whatever, during the
> > week-long event and as long as it gets in on time, the organizers
> > set the time and place and each thing happens.  I've heard there
> > were 1700 workshops at the last one (100,000 participants total).
> >
> > Anyway, there's a group that's been organizing for a Chicago
> > Social Forum in some form since January.  Until tonight they
> > hadn't picked a date and didn't seem to have even choosen how
> > they (the planning group or whatever) wanted to operate.  I
> > suggested we simply pick a date and then convene OST meetings how
> > ever often we think is necessary between now and the event so
> > that we'd be living in CSF space (presumably getting bigger and
> > bigger if people liked the idea) up until the big "event" and
> > then we could simply continue afterwards if we wanted to.
> >
> > One person in the group talked about experiencing open space and
> > seeing it be VERY powerful when the group in question has passion
> > (or some such word) like his church congregation doing their
> > yearly planning, but how it doesn't work if the group doesn't
> > care enough about the issue and it just falls apart.  Pretty good
> > explanation, no?  Anyway, I didn't push it and the group was too
> > scared to really go that direction, but they did like the concept
> > of living in the type of environment we're trying to create.
> >
> > When we came to the end and they were setting up meeting dates
> > and topics they decided to make a big recruiting push for a big
> > early sepember meeting with a theme of connecting local to global
> > (not open space, I'm afraid), but also decided waiting until then
> > for another meeting might prove a momentum-killer.  A suggestion
> > was floated to not invite new people, but to have "just us" for
> > the next one.  I stepped in at this point to suggest OST again as
> > it doesn't take any planning time and people would get a chance
> > to see how they like it.  The group accepted and off we go!
> >
> > It seems the "big event" will happen in January.  I'll keep you
posted.
> >
> > peace,
> > ted
> > ___
> > Humanize the Earth! http://www.chicagohumanist.org
> http://www.tedernst.com
>
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