Stories of OST: Goa l989 and OSI

[Chris Corrigan]

Thanks Anne...I so enjoy the stories of our beginnings, and in the telling, 
and receiving, find myself learning something new and renewing my own 
commitment to learn.

Every community has its Elders, the people who have walked that ground long 
before us and who can guide us in our own travels. I consider you to be one 
of the fine teaching Elders of the OS community, and it's great to read this 
piece of our practice community's history.

Chris

On 8/16/05, anne stadler <annestad at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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 TV's informal culture was definitely a 
> learning culture! 
> 
> When I made it known I'd 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 didn't know at a conference to which 
> I wasn't (initially) invited. So, my story of OST's beginnings is a typical 
> OST "Welcome the Stranger!" 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 
> King's goldsmith. When the goldsmith was summoned to accept an award from 
> the King for the beautiful objects he made, he told the King, "I cannot take 
> this award, my lord. Please give it to God. I am only an opening for His 
> light to come into the world." 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 "Okay. What we're 
> doing makes sense to me".
> 
> Then I realized that one of the four principles Owen had posted up on the 
> wall was "Whoever comes are the right people." So I felt reassured: even if 
> I didn't know anyone, didn't "fit" 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: "Work 
> is Love Made Visible: What would it look like if workplaces reflected that?" 
> "Ah", I thought. " I'm in the right place. At KING-TV's 40th Anniversary 
> Party, Ancil Payne, our CEO, had told us that this was what the founder, 
> Mrs. Bullitt, believed. I guess I've been working in something like that at 
> KING. So I AM in the right place!"
> 
> 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 "Business of Business is Learning" 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 communication's 
> 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 wasn't 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. 
> (It's 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 Arrien's 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 wasn't yet using Open Space in his 
> corporate consulting practice. So I couldn't 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 didn't 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, I'd 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 space–as 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 "work is love made visible". 
> 
> 
> 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 "base". 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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-- 

CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com
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