Your paper Open Space and World Cafe

[chris macrae]

Fortunately I never wish to be a facilitator as opposed to a co-producer
of big issue reconciliations. So I can say this from as near as pure
logic as one trained in maths can get. I don’t have the vested interest
of what's the easy sell or what's the easy facilitation. The café may do
some things but its design is nothing like the big humanitarian goals of
Open Space, and in my view any facilitator who does not have a design
view -a way of contrasting -the differences is quite scary

The following are 5 of the biggest goals of open space as I understand
them. They are not perfectly worded but I would hope those who care
about the big issues of www.practiceofpeace.com would help improve the
content with what after all is your language of what OS= the simplest
better method of communing is, and why there can only be one simplest.

1 Space. This law is vital. I see it broken every day in so called
virtual communities – ways the technology is designed.  The same lack of
space is what Mass Media has down to society’s meeting places. The same
happens when we stop people learning the way a child’s inquisitive flows
do. The same lack of space has been catalogued in about 50 do not
pattern rules of physical architecture.
-------------------------------------------------
OS does this by enshrining its one Law – The law of 2 feet:  go where
conversations energise you; if someone tries to control a conversation
they’ll likely end up on their own; records of all discussions are
communally accessible to everyone architecture; connects people to
maximum participation

2 Human Respect 1st. The stage is set for Conflict resolution at
personal level; Respect each other as people. The retreat and amount of
time are part of this. Some aspect of the circle humanises this though
in European cultures (as far as I’m aware) not as much as that in
American because we don’t pervasively have the reconciliation symbolism
of displacing peoples who governed in circles.

3 Resolution as the greatest Innovation. Conflict at level of
organisation: hierarchy versus self-organising versus
multi-organisational boundaries. Conflict of big organizations having
nothing to do any longer with efficiency ,only opaque power. Conflict to
do with 3 major types of organisation now spinning the worst impacts on
each other's greeds: global corporates, national governments, activist
nets (eg Al Qaeda). Conflict with over 95% of what MBAs are taught
doesn’t match open space's primary ideals of communal organisation.

OS’s equality of participation throughout every aspect of its open
design works through what change forces have compounded the conflict
Confusion from the top:
-cant know as much as all the people
-top people move in own circles and are unlikely to understand or have
full awareness of people in desperate need
-measurement controls current messing up viciously spinning each org
typology:

4 Time & space experiences unlike any modern life throws other 99% of
your year
Equality of all
Spiritual breathing space; joy, trust
Time to reflect, the anti-soundbite
Rediscovering the declaration founding rights; freedom, happiness ,
right to tear down systems that power over those rights; courage in
communion as long as it includes all parties.

5 Nature’s Transparency of Networks
Where your measures systemically value the unique context sustainability
and the boundaries between neighbours as important as the parts
Know that this is nature’s evolution model of interactivity; you/cells
die if you lose context/dna or mess up reciprocality at boundaries
Value the perfect facilitator/host as invisible. They’ve ensured the
right people come. The right openness began. The full open access to all
information stays to the end and the thereafter of the networking
contacts
These are the Vital dynamics of 21st C organizations have yet to learn
and reconstitute into open governance if a networked world isn’t to blow
itself up but you do need to have studied the top 50 pattern rules of
system’s theory not take my word for it.

Against these 5 criteria, the café is a false pretender, and needs
demoting at least a league for such pretensions imo
Chris macrae, wcbn007 at easynet.co.uk,
Transparency Communities www.valuetrue.com

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