"Open Space" vs opening space

Fri Feb 9 08:31:07 PST 2007

Ralph,

This had me in silent stitches.

>P.S. I have only had one opportunity to open space with a group whose
>mission it is to preserve lands.  But I could not convince them to call the
>meeting ³Open Space on Open Space².  

Might it be high time for not just high learning, high play on this list,
but also High Humor, or perhaps "Hi You...more"?

Perhaps a You-More laureate?

Or a Natural Lands Preservation Ko(s)mic ("K" in deference to Kenny "Four
Kwadrant" Wilber)?

If there are any takers for creation of this new award, I'll collect Natural
Lands Preservation You...more examples for the next month (examples of
OST/OS humor)...and we can choose a U...more laureate (remind me how we
choose the po-ette low-ree-ate). 

Winner will get a bottle of essencebubbles bubble solution, an essence-all
tool for preparing the space of our lives, our work, our play, and of an OST
meeting.

warmly,
raffi

Glossary
to be in stitches- laugh very hard

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>From  Fri Feb  9 18:58:34 2007
Message-Id: <FRI.9.FEB.2007.185834.0100.>
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 18:58:34 +0100
Reply-To: thomas at openspaceconsulting.com
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Thomas Herrmann <thomas at openspaceconsulting.com>
Organization: Open Space Consulting
Subject: SV: Open Space -- A Quiet Revolution
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.0.20070209134738.01ef5970 at iprimus.com.au>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
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Thanks Brendan for sharing
This got me inspired to briefly share from an OS-meeting I facilitated a
couple of weeks ago. The 7 major public organizations in a region of Sweden
have decided to explore if they can create a "qualified training in
projectmanagement" with special focus on intra-organizational cooperation. 

The idea was to engage the Universities in this area to design and offer
this training - in cooperation (walk your talk). After having one-to-one
talks with the Universities they were a bit hesitating. Most didn´t really
see a point in cooperating with others...

I guess you have the same situation down under and in other places -
Universities are always not that eager to cooperate. So I tried to explain
that they´d better be open to outcome as we had only one full day of Open
Space.

The day was very interesting - participants pending between hopes and
fears...lots of energy and good discussions. In the final out of 4 sessions
all Universities were gathered in a discussion - a lot happened during that
session.

Before the closing circle the 20 participants were gathered in the circle
and the important remaining questions were raised and dealt with. And just
as the organizers had hoped one of the Universities took on responsibility
to be the administrative part and invited the others for a follow up meeting
to start the collaborative work of designing the training.

Closing circle was very strong and the crowd was amazed at: 
* That all of us are gathered in the same room
* That we´ve had open and respectful communication
* That we went so far in one day - eager to go on...

...the story is still unfoalding.
Warmest regards
Thomas Herrmann

-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] För Brendan McKeague
Skickat: den 9 februari 2007 06:12
Till: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Ämne: Re: Open Space -- A Quiet Revolution

Thanks for the prompt Harrison - I've just had an experience that 
confirms the paradox...

On the first half of this week, I was facilitating an Open Space 
Facilitators Co-Learning workshop at one of the local universities - 
about a dozen professional development/teaching & learning/training 
staff from within the university system - who had all signed up to 
come - most with some responsiblity for staff and organisational 
development - and the program went a bit flat on the second day and 
virtually fizzled out on day three - there could be many explanations 
for this - anxious to get back to work, upcoming start of the 
academic year (in Australia), they already learned what they needed, 
over-tiredness, hot weather and so on....who knows...those who 
remained to the end (six people) were really interested and convinced 
of the potential of OS to be used in their work areas.

I then opened space for two days at the annual 'retreat' for senior 
leaders at a neighbouring university - it was pretty awesome walking 
the circle of 125 academics and administrators (more than half of 
them with PhDs) especially when I knew just how big a 'risk' the 
Executive team and the Organisational and Staff Development  had 
taken in signing up to sponsor  OST.  As we know - when the question 
is right and the invitation appropriate, the right people show up and 
deal with it - and that is exactly what happened...the spirit and the 
levels of engagement were extremely high and, thirty topics and nine 
action plans later, it was declared the best of the four 'retreats' 
they've had so far....I was even offered a job by the Head of 
Psychotherapy who gave high praise to the 'therapeutic properties of 
this process' evidenced by, in his words, 'the positively healthy 
dynamics so unexpected in such a meeting of highly disparate interests'....

So - the mystery of the process unfolds yet again....and the profile
expands...

Cheers
Brendan

At 02:20 AM 8/02/2007, you wrote:
>Right then and there I knew we were in serious trouble. If Open Space
>somehow caste into question many (most?) of the activities and practices of
>mainstream management, whole careers and reputations were in jeopardy. And
>attempting to sell Open Space could obviously be quite hazardous to your
>health, not unlike selling powerful space heaters to Ice cream factories.
If
>somebody actually bought the heater, and it worked - everything would melt.

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