Stories of OST: Goa l989 and OSI

[anne stadler]

Hello everyone.  I have a couple of stories to offer re. the beginnings of
Open Space Technology and the forms it has taken.  AND there is a whole
issue of At Work published by Berrett Kohler in 1997 (which I believe can be
accessed on their website archives??) which I put together that has a number
of stories in it re. the application of OST in a variety of venues as well.

1. My entry into Open Space:
Goa India. l989.  Ft. Aguada Beach Hotel:  the conference: The Business of
Business is Learning

My Goa experience was a lesson in following what had heart and meaning for
me and then going with the flow.  To begin with, it was a conference for
invited business people‹and I was a television producer (not a manager nor
an executive)  at the NBC affiliate in Seattle, WA.  But when I learned
about it from Dee Dickinson, a friend who was invited, I knew it was for me!
The business of Television was about learning what is going on in the
community and telling the stories-- and TV¹s informal culture was definitely
a learning culture!

When I made it known I¹d like to attend, everything fell into place with
ease: a welcome from Harrison Owen and V.S. Mahesh who were organizing the
event, my rooms at the Taj Hotels in Bombay and Fort Aguada; an airplane
ticket to Goa. 

As the event began, and we introduced ourselves, I felt shy.  People were
asking me what I was doing there.  Was I going to do a television story on
the conference? I knew that was not why I was there. I wondered myself why I
had come all this way to meet people I didn¹t know at a conference to which
I wasn¹t (initially) invited.  So, my story of OST¹s beginnings is a typical
OST ³Welcome the Stranger!² experience!
 
V.S. Mahesh, Vice President for Human Resources of the Taj Hotel Group,
began our open space gathering by lighting an oil lamp which was placed in
the center of a lovely mandela of flower petals. He told a story about the
King¹s goldsmith. When the goldsmith was summoned to accept an award from
the King for the beautiful objects he made, he told the King, ³I cannot take
this award, my lord.  Please give it to God.  I am only an opening for His
light to come into the world.²  And he reminded us to keep this in mind as
we did our work together.  To me, lighting the lamp, and telling this story
was the opening to Spirit which made that gathering such a profound and
creative encounter.

Harrison Owen began our practical interactions by explaining a sign on which
were stated a few organizing principles hand-written in his back-slanting
prep school printing style.  After wondering if he was serious, I realized
that the form we were using to organize ourselves was simple‹almost
kindergarten-like-- and empowering. It was a pattern I recognized. I had
seen it time and again in my seventeen years of television story-telling.
These were the essentials people use to self-organize when they take care of
what they really care about.  I felt ³Okay. What we¹re doing makes sense to
me².

Then I realized that one of the four principles Owen had posted up on the
wall was ³Whoever comes are the right people.²   So I felt reassured:  even
if I didn¹t know anyone, didn¹t ³fit² the profile of those invited, I was
one of the right people.

And one more reassurance came when the marketplace started to emerge up on
the wall.  Roger Harrison invited people to come to a session titled: ³Work
is Love Made Visible: What would it look like if workplaces reflected that?²
³Ah², I thought. ³ I¹m in the right place. At KING-TV¹s 40th Anniversary
Party, Ancil Payne, our CEO, had told us that this was what the founder,
Mrs. Bullitt, believed.  I guess I¹ve been working in something like that at
KING.  So I AM in the right place!²

As I experienced the three days, I realized that Open Space--the form we
were using for self-organizing-- was profoundly grounded in familiar human
patterns which foster creativity and community.

I noticed that taking responsibility for what had heart and meaning (going
to Goa), and learning by opening to Spirit (meditating each day, noticing
what made me uncomfortable and embracing that, trusting I was in the right
place)-- was what powered my full participation and contributed to the
evolution of the whole.   And we did evolve.  Leadership and form emerged at
Goa itself, and afterward‹and that is what is so fascinating.

At the ³Business of Business is Learning² conference, we had all the
elements of what some years later emerged as an organizational network: the
Open Space Institutes.  We were an international group.  Our meetings
happened in two different locations: Goa, India and then at Coolfont ,West
Virginia. We used Open Space Technology to self-organize. Our
communication¹s technology included video and computers.  In Goa, I took
responsibility for over-seeing a couple of videographers so we got some
video of the proceedings there.  We had Internet hookup thanks to Metanet
and the Taj Hotel.  Unfortunately the Indian telephone system wasn¹t good
enough to help us upload our proceedings. One of the artifacts to come out
of the Goa meeting was a very funny jingle someone composed about the Goa
telephones. (It¹s now lost to posterity, thanks to the inadequacies of the
phone system!) But computers were present and Frank Burns  from Metanet
helped us sign in and post our offerings.  At Coolfont, West Virginia we did
better. The proceedings were recorded on Metanet, an on-line conversation
followed, and a Report was issued.

After the Goa and Coolfont gatherings, I was still working as a television
producer.  I was practicing Angeles Arrien¹s Four Fold Way and I was
enthralled by Open Space as a complementary means of facilitating collective
action. So my question to myself was: How do I now take responsibility for
what has heart and meaning for me?  The answer: I am really jazzed about
Open Space Technology. And what should I do about that?  Find out how it
works in other environments, then tell that story on video.

I discovered that Harrison Owen wasn¹t yet using Open Space in his corporate
consulting practice.  So I couldn¹t actually find out how Open Space worked
by telling his consulting story.  But we realized that we could tell the
story of open space at Goa  and Coolfont.  We made a video: Learning in Open
Space.  That video and the pamphlet which accompanied it was the first
exposition of Open Space Technology.

    All the elements of the practice of emergence were right there in the
production of that video. From start to finish it was a gift exchange.  I
knew what it took to do quality work in video production. And we didn¹t have
enough ready cash.  So, we itemized what we needed.  We assumed abundance.
And then we invited gifts and help.  I had video from Goa‹a gift from the
Taj Hotel Group.  I asked my free-lance colleagues, Hal Calbom and Phil
Davies, if I could use their editing environment to transfer the parts I
might want to use, and later on to do some editing.  I got more videotape
from friends at KING-5 News who liberated some of their recycled tapes.
Another television Producer/Writer/Director, David Samuelson, was interested
in my tale of the Goa gathering.  So he helped me shoot more video at
Coolfont, in return for which I helped him do a shoot in Washington DC
afterward. Then Harrison came out to Seattle in early December and stayed
with me while we did a script and shot the rest of the video we needed.

   Our production was a matter of taking responsibility for the gifts you
bring and sharing them.   My son, Aaron was just starting his professional
life as a videographer, so he volunteered to be our shooter and editor.  We
sat around our dining room table and outlined the shooting script, then I
lined up locations and Harrison wrote the script.  We shot at KING and other
locations around Seattle.  David Samuelson directed the shoots.  And Jerilyn
Brusseau, a local baker and café owner, (the inventor of Cinnabon!), loaned
us her van and off we went for three days of shooting.  We called ourselves
Cinnamon TV, because she put a pan of cinnamon rolls in the van to sustain
us! 

Goa, Coolfont and that video helped to launch Harrison into his public life
as the originator of Open Space Technology.  As for me, I emerged out of
television work and into the practice of opening space for the emergence of
sustainable leadership and community. By the start of 1990, I¹d left
television and begun my third professional focus as a consultant--using OST,
Appreciative Inquiry and Dialogue as my principal tools.

My experience of the evolution of OST told me that OST was rooted in a gift
exchange.  It was itself a gift exchange, fostering the experience of
community, however transitory.  And it must be shared as such.
 
What I notice about my initial conscious experience of emergence:

Three things were essential:

**Opening to Spirit‹the transpersonal level‹not simply to the material level
of being.

**Taking responsibility for what has heart and meaning and trusting whatever
happens.  

**Acting on my intention to OPEN to the unknown, trusting my capacity for
learning and co-creation.

Open Space as a collective technology puts together those three elements.
So the practice of opening space­as an inner discipline and as a collective
activity‹became the foundation of my personal spiritual life with a work
focus on how groups learn and evolve appropriate form.  I would describe it
as ³work is love made visible².


2. My story of OSI

   The story of OSI is basically the story of an open space organization. In
the late-1990s, Harrison Owen were having conversations about Open Space
Technology having some sort of ³base².  Initially, that seemed to look like
a place‹an Institute-- where Harrison and others would pool their resources,
write books, do research and educate people. It would also be a site for
networking the increasing number of people who were showing up to do Open
Space facilitation in the world.  At that time, we imagined it housed in
Seattle.  Harrison would move there and the OSI would support his work. That
was our initial imagining. But whatever form it took, between us, we agreed
to hold the space for the evolution of OSI.

   So we convened a group in Seattle to organize a non-profit OSI. That
group included Peggy and Neil Holman, Mark Jones, Lee Hartwell, Paul
Gleiberman. Bill Hanson, a lawyer friend, contributed legal support and we
created the non-profit entity.  A similar entity was being created in
Canada. We acknowledged our partnership with the Canadian OSI, and with
their agreement imagined ourselves as the OSI of the US holding the
intention of creating the means for the world OSI to show up.

   Under the leadership of Peggy Holman, and people who volunteer from
various OSIs, an appropriate form for the world OSI has emerged.  OSI is
largely a virtual entity, governed by a self-selected board for whom such
service has heart and meaning. Their meetings are conducted primarily by
phone and e-mail. Once a year they meet face to face during the annual Open
Space on Open Space gathering.

     As soon as the existence of the OSI was announced, a ListServe was
immediately offered by a colleague at Boise State University.  It has grown
to more than a thousand members.  Various people have offered on-line
support and facilitation for OSI websites and other communication.  There it
is‹the essence of community, a gift exchange, exists right at the heart of
the OST network.  
 
    OSI has been a clear lesson of how emergence of form is facilitated by
opening space: identifying intention, convening a circle of interested
people, sharing gifts, and welcoming whoever and whatever shows up.

Love to all, Anne Stadler

 
 


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