OS Research (was: Open Space ,Self-Organizing Systems, and The Plexus Institute)

Artur Ferreira da Silva artsilva at mail.eunet.pt
Sat May 31 06:39:30 PDT 2003


Sorry for the delay, Harrison and all. I had not the time to read all the
post in this thread but I know that a lot of interesting suggestions have
been made on how to continue the conversations with Plexus. So, changing
the subject, I would like to make some lateral comments.

At 09:45 26-05-2003 -0400, Harrison Owen wrote:

>(...) I also confess to a degree of frustration -- that to the moment, few
>in the larger scientific community have taken any notice or interest in
>Open Space. I think this is a lose/lose situation. We lose because their
>insights and questions might reveal aspects of Open Space that we have
>failed to notice. And I think they lose because, from where I sit, Open
>Space is a wonderful natural experiment over time and in the present. Over
>time, we have probably some 20,000 iterations of the "experiment" from
>which to learn. Since most of us were more interested in the practical
>results than "doing science" detailed accounts are hard to come by. but we
>do have a network, and it does have a memory. And what we may have lost as
>a matter of historical record can be replicated any time someone chooses
>to open space.

I am more interested in the "research" ("action research", actually) that
we can do in this community of practitioners than in "academic (mostly
quantitative) research".

But in this community I think that we have a lot of exchange of help (which
is vary valuable) and some tales, more or less documented, about individual
OST events.

What I think that is still missing is to have real "case studies", not only
of separated events, but of organizations or communities that use OST
regularly (or at least during a long period). From those of you that
conduct regular follow up events, I would like to read about such meetings
and about the organizational transformation that followed (or not) the OST
meeting. And from those of you that have facilitated many events for a
single organization or community (or know about such situations), I would
like very much to read about the long-term transformations, namely, but not
exclusively, in the sense of those organizations becoming more
self-organized (or less constrained).

Are there some of you interested in this too that want to report on this?

Regards

Artur

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