Half-way Technology (longish)

[Michael Herman]

i like it!  not an answer here, just some more data points...

on tuesday evening i was setting up for a short session on corporate
compassion, a few hours in open space.  a friend was setting out some
food.  she thought i was joking when i said, "geez this is a lot of
work" (hanging four posters, writing some postits, rearranging the room
in a circle) -- but i wasn't.  <grin>

i do know of at least one group of 200 hospital folks who gathered in a
big empty room with stacks of chairs in teh corners, no circle at all.
one more thing to not do.  just ring the bells and let them gather 'round.

i'm all for radical... i've just spent the last couple of days playing
with the idea of RadicalProfit.
details at http://www.globalchicago.net/wiki/wiki.cgi?RadicalProfit
this is inline with my ongoign suspicion that there may be some merit in
not going out *to* business... but setting up shop in Spirted Work sorts
of ways, where business and others come to us... where we are just busy
being who we are and doing what we do in Open Space sorts of ways and
they come get a look and go away to do for themselves.   at least then
we can leave the chairs and posters in place <g>

personally speaking, i've been thinking more and more about dissoving
*into* some business.  being space on the "inside."  i just have to get
over my fascination with what is unfolding globally so i can tear myself
away from all of that and pay more attention to just one place, trusting
that the rest of the world is unfolding just fine.  makes me wonder...
what else would i have to stop doing in order to go out of the "OST"
business?

and finally, i notice that murli, our friend who set up the OSLIST but
hasn't been heard from around here for some long time now, might already
be the model for this!  so i say, "all hail murli the invisible!  long
live murli the list-owner!"  <big grin>

michaelh



Harrison Owen wrote:

>And now - at long last - back to Open Space Technology as a halfway
>technology. A halfway technology, in case you don't know, is something you
>do just to get started. It may seem grand and glorious, not to say wonderful
>and elegant at the beginning. But over time the true colors appear. It is
>just plain clunky. Why on earth should it be necessary to sit in a circle,
>create a bulletin board, open a market place - just to be what we already
>are? Seems like an awful lot of wasted effort, useless work. We have been
>accused with some justification of inventing the ultimate scam in which the
>client does all the work, and even writes the report - while we do little or
>nothing. I find myself wondering how to radicalize all this - so that we
>totally go out of business. All being. No doing.
>
>I don't expect the answers immediately, or even tomorrow. But it could be
>fun to think about.
>
>
>

--

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
300 West North Avenue #1105
Chicago IL 60610 USA
(312) 280-7838

http://www.michaelherman.com - consulting & publications
http://www.globalchicago.net - laboratory & playground
http://www.openspaceworld.org - worldwide open space

...inviting organization into movement

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