A Book?

Michael Herman mjherman at gmail.com
Fri Jan 28 10:56:50 PST 2005


yes... what he said... with emphasis on somebody doing the book they
want to read.  in the case of our non-guide project, i literally could
not stop myself from cutting and pasting the gems.  i was driven to
make sense of them, for myself.  only after i got them all pasted
togehter into an order that made some sense to myself, did i send to
one other person, chris, and asked only one question: am i crazy.  he
of course said yes, but that the book thing was brilliant.  not my
brilliance, yours of course.  anyway, this was a project taht i could
not avoid.  if anyone can avoid doing another collectoin on any of
these recent topics, they should.  we all should.  if you, on the
other hand, find yourself totally immersed in a cutting and pasting
frenzy that your spouse and kids and friends and neighbors don't
hardly recognize as you, fantastic!  do your thing and then bring it
to a few others, or the group if you dare.  do it for yourself,
totally.  and then give it away if anybody wants it.  maybe long way
fo saying what i said to start.  yes, what chris said!  michael


On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 10:09:39 -0800, Chris Corrigan
<chris.corrigan at gmail.com> wrote:
> When Michael and I did the User's NON-Guide in 2002, it began life as
> an MS Word file on Michael's computer.  He had collected a bunch of
> conversation bits from several conversations that got at the
> underlying spirit of OST and strung them together into a book.  I
> helped him proof read, edit and format and then Reinhard Kirchenmuller
> came along with some wonderful drawings and the result was the Guide.
> We always intended to give it away, and someone (I think it was Peggy)
> shopped it to Barrett-Koehler, but there was no interest.  No matter
> to us.  The writing was freely given to this list and we just
> recombined it and freely gave it back.
>
> The lessons from that experience for me include:
>
> * Start with something, and build from there.
> * Get permissions as you go.  There will be a lot of voices and this
> will be tedious, but it's important to be up front about it.
> * Passion bounded by responsibility trumps a plan.
> * Do it always with the intention that it will be free.
> * Assemble the book you want to read, not the one you think the world
> SHOULD have..
>
> My two cents.
>
> Chris
>
>
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 22:06:29 +0100, Lucas Gonzalez <lgs0a at yahoo.es> wrote:
> > Ok, it depends on what interested people want.
> >
> > Maybe there are a few "important" (felt as important or relevant for
> > some personal reason) threads that could be collected and PDF'd so
> > people may print them and share them outside the internet or with
> > "their networks" (I love that concept!).
> >
> > Maybe some "specialists" (long-time practitioners with an interest in
> > one particular aspect that does tickle them a lot) want to do that with
> > their pet subjects.
> >
> > Maybe downloading the whole lot means we could have a go at "big report
> > analysis" to look for issues and threads and so on.  This would be
> > interesting for World Forum 2006 which is said will be "distributed".
> >
> > Lucas
> >
> >  --- Harrison Owen <hhowen at comcast.net> escribió:
> > > Lucus et al --
> > >
> > > I think we are making a relatively simple task much more complicated
> > > than it
> > > need be. Working much too hard, so to speak. My thought when I
> > > suggested
> > > this to Doug was simply that since he had asked the question, "What
> > > does it
> > > mean to live in Open Space?" he might think about assembling all
> > > those
> > > replies in the order of appearance on OSLIST -- and editing out other
> > > themes
> > > that popped up (delightfully) along the way. There is no need to
> > > write any
> > > material (of course he could if he wanted.) Nor is there any need to
> > > decide
> > > which among the multiple replies are "suitable." They all are! --
> > > After all
> > > somebody cared enough to post them!! Once done the whole great opus
> > > should
> > > find a happy home on www.openspaceworld.org (Michael Herman -- Where
> > > are
> > > you?)
> > >
> > > Now that I think about it, Peggy Holman might feel called upon to do
> > > the
> > > same thing for all of the postings that showed up following her
> > > question
> > > from Juanita Brown of World Café fame. Peggy we're calling :-)!!
> > > After all,
> > > Peggy and Doug posted their passion on this great Electronic Bulletin
> > > Board,
> > > and we all know what happens when you do that in Open Space.
> > > Remember? You
> > > are simultaneously accepting the responsibility to make a report!
> > > Although
> > > in this case you don't have to write a word.
> > >
> > > This really isn't new of course -- Michael Herman and Chris Corrigan
> > > did
> > > basically the same thing with the "Non-User's Guide." Anybody can
> > > read it,
> > > and print it out if they care to. And a lot of people have. Traveling
> > > around
> > > the world I have seen any number of well-thumbed copies. As a matter
> > > of fact
> > > I would bet that more copies of the Non-User's Guide have been
> > > printed,
> > > distributed and read than any number of similar sorts of books coming
> > > out of
> > > "real" publishing houses -- my own books included.
> > >
> > > And when we come to the whole question of Public Domain -- there is
> > > no
> > > question. OSLIST is, and always has been, completely in The Public
> > > Domain,
> > > even as Open Space Technology is totally free and available to
> > > anybody who
> > > cares to use it. But, as I have been at pains to say ever since, the
> > > free
> > > gift of Open Space carries with it the responsibility (cost) of
> > > freely
> > > sharing what we have all been learning. OSLIST is a great repository
> > > of all
> > > that shared learning -- freely given and free for the use of anybody
> > > who
> > > cares.
> > >
> > > Harrison
> > >
> > > Harrison Owen
> > > 7808 River Falls Drive
> > > Potomac, Maryland   20845
> > > Phone 301-365-2093
> > >
> > > Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
> > > Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
> > > Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm
> > > OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> > > To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives
> > > Visit:
> > > http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of
> > > Lucas
> > > Gonzalez
> > > Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 5:56 AM
> > > To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> > > Subject: Re: How do you live in open space?
> > >
> > > A book might be written cooperatively using, just as an example,
> > > mediawiki + primarilypublicdomain + some software used to make things
> > > easier.
> > >
> > > 1) Mediawiki is the software behind http://www.wikipedia.org and can
> > > be
> > > used for the purpose of creating such a "book".  If participants here
> > > would care to cooperatively create an index, then fill it in with
> > > messages taken from the list or with original/new contributions ...
> > > it
> > > might be done.  Then of course, people might also use their two feet
> > > to
> > > go somewhere else.  One unpredictable issue is How many people would
> > > participate?  A small self-organised team might go for a small
> > > project,
> > > and scale up if more people e-congregate.
> > >
> > > There are other things different from Mediawiki.  The OST community
> > > has
> > > long had wikis - that could be used to try the book idea out.
> > >
> > > 2) Primarily Public Domain http://www.primarilypublicdomain.org means
> > > "public domain except noted".  We can't assume past postings in this
> > > list are like that, so Editors would have to ask permission to each
> > > contributor whose contributions to the list are used in the "book".
> > > Maybe there could be a "policy change" from now on, and state that
> > > postings to this list are "public domain except noted".  All my
> > > postings here are like that, so no need to ask me!
> > >
> > > 3) There's a computer program (for those who like such details, it's
> > > a
> > > Perl script) that makes it easy to download all the messages in a
> > > yahoogroup.  I would think a similar thing could be done with OSLIST,
> > > if and only if someone is interested in having all the messages in
> > > their local computers to fish some threads and compose some chapters.
> > >
> > > Any other issues worth considering for such a task?  We may all walk
> > > around the idea, touching it with a very long stick, and pretending
> > > we're not really interested.  But comments might help those with
> > > enough
> > > passion about the idea to, maybe, try it out.  (No, not me.)
> > >
> > > In fact, I'd think we're much more interested in "helping write
> > > reality", so to speak.
> > >
> > > Lucas
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ______________________________________________
> > > Renovamos el Correo Yahoo!: ¡250 MB GRATIS!
> > > Nuevos servicios, más seguridad
> > > http://correo.yahoo.es
> > >
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> > http://correo.yahoo.es
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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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--
Michael Herman
http://www.michaelherman.com

Small Change News Network
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