Open Space / Open List / The Public Domain

Harrison Owen hhowen at comcast.net
Tue Mar 30 14:59:01 PST 2004


Well - if anybody is guilty, it must be me. Way back when the OSLIST began,
the good folks at Boise State University offered to host our conversations -
FREE! Now it must be understood that Boise State University is a public
institution, operating in the public domain, at public expense. And we have
been beneficiaries of their munificence.  But there was an expectation that
what we did would be for the public good, and available to the public.
Sounded like a good idea to me - just like Open Space. And I agreed. OSLIST
hit the cyberwaves. Anybody could join (and many have). Anybody could leave
(and many have). Some would be lurkers, some more in evidence - and that
was, and remains, a personal choice. Now it is true that we (maybe I should
say, "I") could have opted for an encrypted forum with clear entry criteria
for who was "in" and who was "out". But that didn't sound much like Open
Space to me. I also agree, that we might have created a "community decision
making process" - but at the time we didn't have much of a community to
speak of (in terms of numbers) - and just about everybody knew each other.
So we did what we did, or I guess it would be fair to say - I did what I
did. Guilty as charged!

I understand that back in the old days, we did not have Super-Search Engines
(Googles and such) that could pry into every nook and cranny of the
InterNet. But truthfully, if we had such thing, I would have shouted
Hallelujah! After all, the point was to open the space, get the message out,
share what we were learning with whomever, however, any way we could. 

So where do we go from here? We could close the OSLIST. Sounds terrible, but
it is possible. We could adjourn to some undisclosed, secure location.
Sounds worse, and I ain't coming. Or we could just carry on as always,
recognizing that if this is not your cup of tea, there are always 1) The
Delete Button 2) The Unsubscribe Button otherwise known as The Law of Two
Feet.

Harrison   



 

Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland   20845
Phone 301-365-2093

Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com <http://www.openspaceworld.com/>

Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm
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