thought for the day...and more

Raffi Aftandelian raffi at bk.ru
Fri Jul 1 08:09:01 PDT 2005


If OST is in part about high play, might it be appropriate to call OST
a Large Group Intervention Toy?

Raffi
charter member, founder
Society for Constructive Obnoxiousness

p.s. anyone else wanna join?

p.p.s. membership is free, a courtesy donation to the Access Queen
Fund would be welcomed, though

p.p.p.s. Peggy, I read the Columbian street children story today. A
bit belatedly I take my hat off to you and bow deeply. A breathtaking
story. Thank you. And your story challenged me in my thinking about
where a facilitator intervenes and where not. I see that my notion of
facilitator non-intervention has had too much of a head space, and I
saw your heart come out. Loud and clear. Thank you thank you. And I
look forward to our meeting in H-land...come August 4th...


                          mailto:raffi at bk.ru

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>From  Fri Jul  1 13:00:56 2005
Message-Id: <FRI.1.JUL.2005.130056.0400.>
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 13:00:56 -0400
Reply-To: john at theexperiment.info
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: john engle <englejohn at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: What has been your biggest surprise in an Open Space annual
 meeting?
In-Reply-To: <MEECLBNIOGPHBDBEPMKIIEKMECAA.judir at accesswave.ca>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed

fremy's and my colleague, steven werlin, wrote an article about the open 
space on open space haiti gathering and other interesting stuff. here it is 
with a link to the rest of it:

Life Goes On: Part Two

Life goes on in the midst of the current difficulties in Haiti, for better 
and for worse. Last weekend, I got a heavy dose of the better and it seems 
worth sharing.

I spent most of the weekend at the Villa Ormiso. It’s a guesthouse run by 
conservative Protestant missionaries, here in Haiti to convert the masses. 
They would not normally be my cup of tea, but the guesthouse they run is 
valuable to us as a pleasant and accessible place where we can organize 
inexpensive meetings that last several days. Last weekend, more than forty 
of us gathered there for the fourth annual meeting of the Haitian Open Space 
Institute. I missed last year’s meeting, but had attended the others, so I 
was anxious to attend this year’s as well.

Open Space meetings are something special. They were designed around the 
notion that the most productive time that groups spend together is often the 
unscheduled time: the coffee breaks, the lunches, the unforeseen delays in 
otherwise tight agendas. Those are the times during which meeting 
participants talk with the people they want to talk with, and talk to them 
about the things that are important to them.

At an Open Space gathering, the participants create an agenda for the a 
meeting – ours was to be two-and-a-half days long – during its first few 
minutes. The agenda consists of a schedule of group discussions running 
parallel to one another on themes chosen by the participants who propose 
them. Each participant then chooses the small group discussions he or she 
wants to attend. The guiding principle is that you should not be part of 
anything you’re not interested in. The underlying assumption is that, given 
the freedom to do so, people will make good decisions about how to use their 
time.

For me, the most important thing about the structure of these meetings is 
that it allows me to find time to meet individually with various people I 
want to talk with. I find that I don’t often attend many of the scheduled 
conversations, but that I get a lot accomplished nonetheless, much more than 
I could accomplish if we were all following a carefully planned schedule.
I was especially grateful this year for the opportunity to meet with people 
on the edge of the meeting because I was actually able to attend rather 
little of it. Life goes on here in Haiti even as the political situation 
seems to spin into chaos, and that means work goes on as well. I had a busy 
schedule of meetings to attend in various places as the large Open Space 
meeting at the Villa Ormiso was going on.

We arrived at the Ormiso on Thursday afternoon. It’s located in Bizoton, a 
neighborhood on the road from Pòtoprens into Kafou, its overcrowded southern 
suburb. The opening ceremony was Thursday evening, and it was unforgettable. 
My partner Frémy used the meeting as the occasion to get married.

click here to continue: 
http://www.apprenticeshipineducation.com/ow.asp?LifeGoesOn2


http://JohnEngle.net
email: john at johnengle.net
P.O. Box 337
Hershey, Pennsylvania 17033
tel. 202-236-6532



>From: Judi Richardson <judir at accesswave.ca>
>Reply-To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
>To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
>Subject: Re: What has been your biggest surprise in an Open Space annual 
>meeting?
>Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 13:25:10 -0300
>
>Fremy -- wow, I am deeply touched at the image of the wedding rings being
>passed around the circle -- how brilliant you are to tap into that level of
>wisdom in the group -- to hang out in the realm of all possibility.
>
>I send you my ha, my breath, the gift of life -- many blessings,
>
>Judi
>
>__________________________________________________________
>Judith Richardson, MA
>Pono Consultants International
>Consulting and Executive Coaching
>Optimizing Performance, Potential and Profitability
>Winner -- International Coach of the Year!
>www.ponoconsultants.com
>www.emergentfeminine.com
>
>Subscribe to our newsletter at www.emergentfeminine.com
>
>Nova Scotia, Canada
>Phone: (902) 434-6695 Facsimile: (902) 435-1085 E-mail: judir at accesswave.ca
>
>If you live your life as gracefully as you know how, as playfully as you
>know how, as kindly as you know how, as joyfully as you know how, you are
>bound to influence, inspire and uplift others by your example.
>
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU]On Behalf Of fremy
>cesar
>Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 2:41 PM
>To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
>Subject: What has been your biggest surprise in an Open Space annual
>meeting?
>
>
>Dear Open Space collegues,
>
>In the fourth annual Open Space on Open Space meeting in Haiti, everyone
>received a big surprise. My wife and I were married during the first day of
>the meeting. Nobody knew ahead af time that this was going to happen. After
>I opend the first session on the first day of the three-day meeting, as
>co.coordinator, I turned the coordination over to  one of my collegues. 
>Then
>he annouced that there was a surprise, which began the wedding celebretion.
>We passed the wedding rings around the circle and each person expressed
>their thoughts and wishes for my wife and me. Then we were married in a
>brief service.
>
>Thank you all.
>
>
>
>Fremy Cesar
>Aprenticeship in Alternative Education
>Tel: (509) 409-0192
>E-mail : fremycesar at hotmail.com
>
>http://www.aprenceshipineducation.com
>
>http://www.eksperyansla.info
>
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