OSLIST Digest - 29 Jun 2005 to 30 Jun 2005 (#2005-180)

[Pat Black]

Hi Peggy,
You wrote:
Sometimes the question is obvious, it just leaps forward when people =
begin to answer questions about why invest the time and energy?  What =
are their dreams, hopes, aspirations?

On several occasions, when it is a board or group of some size, I've =
played with paired interviews using 2 questions:

When did you fall in love with "X"  (as in the arts, aviation, software, =
etc)?
What three wishes do you have for the future of "x"?

When people start comparing notes from their stories, a compelling =
question, loaded with energy invariably surfaces.

How do you uncover great questions?

from a beautiful night in Seattle,
Peggy

	I had an interesting experience with the question recently.  I do some work with people who work for a state agency.  Every year for the last 10 years they have put on a conference.  It is called Artist and Educators Institute.  Nine of the ten years the conference has happened in Open Space.  People come from all over the state to attend.  There are always new new people but there is always a core group of returnees.  This year there ws someone from Canada and about 10 people mostly students from Kazakhstan.  We spend 5 days in Open Space.  Typically, we start working on the question in the fall.  This will include people who regularly work on pulling the coference together and  it involves a trip a two to some rural areas of the state to get community input.  Budget cuts, a warring legislature and threats that the conference would not happen forced a less expensive approach to the process.  So this year the question was developed on the list serve that exists for past and present participants of the conference.  We spend at lest a month but it seems like longer coming up with a question which really articulated the act of questioning.  We are a large diverse group but there is probably a greater density of artists, of all kinds visual, performing, poets, than you would find in a typical group.  Because there are som many artist we have to consider how movement or the body or the visual is represented in the question.  I am sure you get the point that for this group the question is not just about the words used in the question.  Long story short we ended up with no words in our question.  We used symbols, the question mark, in the way they are used in  Spanish before and after the words but we just let them cleave an open space.  No words just the symbols.  The inviting graphic was the symbols surrounded bits of confetti and the words Spirit of Inquiry.  
	We had many discussions about who comes and doesn't come because of the question. What the impact of the question is.  We had more people than ever this year.  Everyone involved in the planning, some have been involved for the whole 10 years, that this 10 year anniversary had us perched on the threshold of something new and that this new way of entering into the question was facilitating the passage.  We havn't had time to debrief the conference yet.  It ended just a short time ago and the state is closed for business now but I will curious to know of other's experience this year.  Mine was different than it has been in the past.
pat black

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