Open Space / Open List

[chris macrae]

Excellent

Makes me feel like planting the question: what does open mean to you? in
any conversation board I can find, and then posting this as a benchmark
reply (and if someone betters the benchmark, well the planet needs some
3 cheers- and I feel Harrison will lend me a hat to eat if a better
benchmark ever did cheerlead the world...)
Chris`macrae

-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of
Harrison Owen
Sent: 18 March 2004 16:59
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Open Space / Open List

>From the very beginning (1985) Open Space Technology has been free and
freely available. I can't possibly remember how many times I have said
this
in print, verbally, and online - but I am reasonably certain that
whenever I
said it, I followed with the words -- But there is a cost. That we
freely
share what we are learning. The mechanisms of sharing are multiple
including
training programs, public presentations, private emails and of course
OSLIST. The substance of what we share is even more diverse: Technical
"How
toss," Philosophical meanderings, and deep feelings from the heart. And
in
many ways, I think the deep feelings are the most important. It is from
those feelings that we learn who we are, what we are doing, and what the
true value might be. Were Open Space simply a technical approach to
better
meetings, we might avoid both the philosophy and the feelings. I believe
we
have discovered, however, that OS as a meeting methodology is but a tiny
part of the reality. Over time we have wandered into the strange world
of
self-organizing systems, questions of peace making, human dignity,
personal
sense of worth, constructive conflict. And our journey has always been a
shared one. No single person has, or could have, the total experience.
And
no one has the interpretive capacity to explain and elucidate that
experience. We can only do this together, freely and openly.

Occasionally I am asked why I never trademarked, patented, or franchised
Open Space Technology. A flip, but honest answer would be that I was too
lazy, in addition to the fact that I had better things to do than spend
my
time defending the sacred precincts. The same might be said for my
refusal
to "Certify" OS Practitioners. More to the point, and closer to my heart
(true feelings :-)), I really felt/feel that OS does some good in ways
that
this funny world of ours can truly benefit from. Therefore I wanted it
to be
freely available to whomever, wherever, and however. . . And I don't
just
mean Open Space Technology as a narrowly prescribed methodology. I mean
the
whole enchilada - Method, Philosophy, Feelings, and anything else that
has
popped up along the way.

The OSLIST has been one critical part of the Open Space experience, and
the
evolution of the global Open Space community. From the very beginning it
was
open to anybody who cared - with no questions asked about why they cared
or
how much. People have come, people have gone, and some have just hung
out.
There has never been any promise of privacy or exclusivity, indeed just
the
opposite. Anybody who thought they had joined a private, exclusive club
was
operating under a severe misunderstanding. Indeed, the nature of the
Internet, of which OSLIST is an infinitesimally small part, fosters this
openness, for anything that appears anywhere in cyberspace is quite
likely
to show up somewhere else. In the case of OSLIST, all of this has been
profoundly and wonderfully true. Messages forwarded and copied have gone
around the world multiple times making Open Space, and the possibilities
of
Open Space, available to people and places we will never know.
Fantastic!

For myself, I propose to keep the space fully open. Or if we do restrict
it
to a particular community, I propose the community of the Planet. And
that
is a very strong feeling.

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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