Mystery of Open Space

Raffi Aftandelian raffi at bk.ru
Wed May 10 21:03:33 PDT 2006


Indeed, Harrison, I was quite amused, quite tickled by the
piece. I am very grateful that your muse was able to amuse. And we being human we all have our tickle bone in different
places...Some may re-fuse to appreciate it...

Your piece (re-?)starts a number of important conversations.

One conversation I would like to be part of *live* some day is to
hear more of the questions about whether "self-organization rules," as
your November 2005 Practice of Peace workshop announcement in Berlin
put it. My understanding from my very superficial knowledge of the
topic is that there are a number of questions about your proposition
and I don't know if that conversation has ever fully played itself
out.

It is hard to have a complete conversation about this onlist because of the
sheer two dimensionality of this space.

And curiously, I find that in some ways an OSonOS also has elements of
a two dimensional space, a space where I wonder if we as participants
feel we can easily choose to be ourselves. (An excellent book
describing what I mean by living in two dimensional space is "Four Arguments for
the Elimination of Television)

I think something that happens quite naturally when we have reached a
certain level of renown in a field is we acquire a reputation, maybe
at times fall into an image. I wonder if what happens in an OSonOS is that when in a space
where literally anyone can participate that it is not
easy to let go of our image fully, to fully bring ourselves to any and
all conversations.

The two OSonOS'es I have participated in have given me a little bit of
this sense...and I enjoyed them immensely. Is it possible to park the ego in the disabled parking
zone before an OSonOS? Don't know. It's a tall order.

quizzically and in anticipation,
raffi

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>From  Thu May 11 08:47:36 2006
Message-Id: <THU.11.MAY.2006.084736.0400.>
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 08:47:36 -0400
Reply-To: hhowen at verizon.net
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net>
Organization: HH Owen and Co.
Subject: Re: Mystery of Open Space
X-To: Raffi Aftandelian <raffi at bk.ru>
In-Reply-To: <1558045998.20060511080333 at bk.ru>
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Raffi Wrote: " One conversation I would like to be part of *live* some day
is to hear more of the questions about whether "self-organization rules," as
your November 2005 Practice of Peace workshop announcement in Berlin
put it. My understanding from my very superficial knowledge of the
topic is that there are a number of questions about your proposition
and I don't know if that conversation has ever fully played itself
out."

Raffi -- not a doubt about it. Virtually everything I have to say is
definitely "questionable." Which is a major reason why I typically advise
people not to believe a word that I say, at least not until they have tried
"it" for themselves. Another variant on the same theme is, "The Open Space
Experiment." Truthfully (for me at least) the 21 years in Open Space has
been one wonderful, continuing, natural experiment. And the thing about
experiments is that you can only develop a degree of confidence in the
results when they have been run repeatedly. If the results come out with
some degree of uniformity, confidence levels build -- but then you are left
with the interesting question of interpretation. What does it mean?

With Open Space, I submit that we (collectively) have now run that
experiment multiple times. Further more, the results have been pretty
consistent across facilitators, cultures, organizational types etc. So it
would seem that something is definitely going on which largely contravenes
current organizational theory and practice. In a word, from the point of
view of most current organizational theory and practice -- Open Space simply
could not happen. But it does :-)

When your theory is at odds with your experience, that would be some
reasonable indication that a change in theory might be a good idea. It is
also true that for many people this disconnect between accepted theory and
present experience is a very uncomfortable one -- which is more often than
not resolved in favor of the theory. Thomas Kuhn gave us the history of all
that with his work on paradigms -- and paradigm shift is a most painful and
traumatic event. I think we are at a moment of paradigm shift, at least we
certainly have most of the usual signs.

But what is the new paradigm? What is the new theory? -- What does it all
mean anyhow? How would you make sense out of this (OS)experience?

I think what we have learned to date about self-organizing systems offers
the best framework for understanding. But that is a personal judgment, and
doubtless there are many other possibilities. Which is wonderful and
definitely provides the "start point" for many good conversations.

It is all questionable, it is all conversable. And I also think this may
just be the most important question to be addressed and conversation to hold
with anybody, anytime, anywhere. We have had bits and pieces of it here on
OSLIST and at several OSONOS's -- and we need more. But first and last --
don't believe a word I say. Try it for yourself. And then we can talk about
it. . . :-)

Harrison






Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland   20854
Phone 301-365-2093
Skype hhowen
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com 
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website www.ho-image.com 
OSLIST: To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the
archives Visit: www.listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html


-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Raffi
Aftandelian
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 12:04 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: Mystery of Open Space

Indeed, Harrison, I was quite amused, quite tickled by the
piece. I am very grateful that your muse was able to amuse. And we being
human we all have our tickle bone in different
places...Some may re-fuse to appreciate it...

Your piece (re-?)starts a number of important conversations.

One conversation I would like to be part of *live* some day is to
hear more of the questions about whether "self-organization rules," as
your November 2005 Practice of Peace workshop announcement in Berlin
put it. My understanding from my very superficial knowledge of the
topic is that there are a number of questions about your proposition
and I don't know if that conversation has ever fully played itself
out.

It is hard to have a complete conversation about this onlist because of the
sheer two dimensionality of this space.

And curiously, I find that in some ways an OSonOS also has elements of
a two dimensional space, a space where I wonder if we as participants
feel we can easily choose to be ourselves. (An excellent book
describing what I mean by living in two dimensional space is "Four Arguments
for
the Elimination of Television)

I think something that happens quite naturally when we have reached a
certain level of renown in a field is we acquire a reputation, maybe
at times fall into an image. I wonder if what happens in an OSonOS is that
when in a space
where literally anyone can participate that it is not
easy to let go of our image fully, to fully bring ourselves to any and
all conversations.

The two OSonOS'es I have participated in have given me a little bit of
this sense...and I enjoyed them immensely. Is it possible to park the ego in
the disabled parking
zone before an OSonOS? Don't know. It's a tall order.

quizzically and in anticipation,
raffi

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist

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------------------------------
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