"Online Climate Summit" A Learning Opportunity!

Sun Jan 13 10:05:07 PST 2008

Dear Harrison, (and colleagues)

Thank You so much for your great statement! I totally agree: Open Space can make a particular contribution to help our good old blue planet! I am just back from a face-to-face (traditional designed) climate expert conference, which followed our OpenSpace-Online climate summit. I was just a guest there.

The bad news for me there was to hear how serious the the global situation really is. More serious than our media in generell say. The middle and longterm effects are more serious than any Hollwood movie. I had a one-to-one talk with the key speaker (an international high standing climate expert) after his presentation and he said to me ... "If the human beings are not able (not willing) to stop global warming boost (goal: not more than 2 degree Celsius within the next 15 years) than the middle and long term effects will become a real global desaster ... for example, within the next 100 to 150 years towns like Hamburg will disappear and Berlin will become a coastal city. This means, that OUR generation has the present duty to wake up and to do what ever we can do to reduce as much as possible global warming." The experts also said, that we need as much as possible local-oriented activities worldwide. .... And the good news for me was, that my client really wants to see more OpenSpace-Online events and also OST conference(s) on this subject in the next years. I look very much forward to these tasks.

.... I began to dream how it would be if many many OST colleagues around the world would initiate and faciliate in their home towns/regions OST meetings on "How can we help to reduce global warming in our families and local community?". The time is right to find more easy than in the past financial sponsors and other partners for such good concepts - our OST work do not have to be for free. It could become a self-organized global Open Space movement without a movement leader in order to foster local awareness and local actions. And it would help to show and to spread the wonderful power of Open Space (passion and responsibility based on self-organization). Maybe the story about our First German OpenSpace-Online Climate Summit can help other OST colleagues to initiate and facilitate Open Space Technology projects together with good partners in their regions. This would be great!

My hope is that the human EGO's, who caused the "environmental rape" during the last industrial 150 years, will wake up and will also have the same power in stopping global warming - in own interest. Finally, we have not received the globe as a gift from our parents - we have only borrowed this beautiful planet from all generations (human beings, animals and nature) which will be borned after us.

Hope to be able to share next good news from our project next fall.

Love and Peace from Berlin
Gabriela

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Harrison Owen 
  To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU 
  Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 3:29 PM
  Subject: Re: "Online Climate Summit" A Learning Opportunity!

  Well done Gabriela! And if it turns out that face-to-face Open Space has a continuing role to play in the program that will be marvelous. I believe that Open Space has a particular contribution to make in the environmental area and in fact the media is the message - to use an old phrase from Marshall McLuhan. 

  In simplest terms, groups operating in Open Space have an immediate and direct experience of consciously working in and through the phenomenon of Self-Organization - which is the way of all Nature. People become aware (particularly if effort is made to bring them to awareness) that hugely complex issues and systems will come to flowing synergy, not by the exercise of external control - but rather through their own internal process. Which after all is what self-organization is all about! For 14 billion years, the natural world has managed to progress in this fashion - until we humanoids came along and thought we should take charge. Our job, we thought, was to control nature! And goodness knows we have tried, and now we must face the consequences of our efforts.

  Why we got into this situation is an interesting question, probably caused by equal parts of Ego, perceived necessity, and the fact that we really didn't see any alternatives. The role of Ego has received a lot of attention and rightfully so. Somewhere along the line Homo sapiens came to the conclusion that we were the King of the Heap disregarding the fact that our place in the cosmos is a very small one and we are definitely late comers. But in all fairness it would seem that there were good reasons to make the attempt (perceived necessity). The natural world can in fact be an uncomfortable place what with flooding rivers, hurricanes, typhoons, and odd meteorites stopping by. Surely we must do something about all that! We could see the problems so we had to find a fix.

  Take the case of rivers. We know that they often flood, and flooding is deleterious to human communities in the way. The fix seems obvious - build dams and levies. Control The River! All well and good until that wonderful day when Old Man River and Mother Nature say, Enough! And all our Flood Control comes sloshing down around our ears (Think Katrina), creating a disaster out of a natural event. It turns out that the Flood Plain (where we built our towns) was there for a purpose. Come the springtime floods, the waters would spread out quite gently leaving fresh soil and new seeds. It worked that way for millennia until we applied the "fix" - only to discover that we are (literally) drowning in a sea of unintended consequences.

  But what were the alternatives? Of course we should Take Charge because we all "know" that the only way things will work is when we get it all organized. That is what we have been taught. It is what all the books say. 

  I believe that the real significance of Open Space is that it provides a direct experience of the alternative. It is true that many people, particularly those who have just "heard" about Open Space, find it counterintuitive, impossible and wrong. It just couldn't work! Unfortunately it does - and as it works we are confronted with an alternative way of working with each other and the world around us. Symbiosis as opposed to domination. Learning to flow with emerging organization, and trusting that flow. A very different experience for most, but essential if we are really going to become an effective part of our environment as opposed to being antagonists. New learning for sure, but learning that can take us to places that rational argument will never reach. As we all know, experience is the best teacher.

  I grant you that learning in Open Space may be a little too subtle for many and too slow for all of us. However, I think it is safe to say that if we do not take advantage of the OS learning opportunity (along with other similar opportunities) the day will inevitably come when Mother Nature delivers some painful lessons which we cannot avoid.

  One thing I am quite sure of is that should we choose to resolve our environmental issues with the same approach that got us into the predicament in the first place our level of success will be minimal at best. So Thank you Gabriela for creating the (electronic) Open Space class room, and may you be successful in opening many more. And of course I know that there are lots of folks here on OSLIST who will be delighted to help. Me for one.

  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 Gabriela Ender
  Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 4:08 AM
  To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
  Subject: "Online Climate Summit" - held on the basis of OpenSpace-Online (x-posted to Genuine Contact List)

  Dear Open Space friends around the globe!

  Together with the best wishes for an exciting 2008 I am pleased to inform you about a very special project:

  On December 4, 2007 the "First German Online Climate Summit" was held on the basis of the OpenSpace-Online Methodology. Patron of the event was the President of the German Federal Environment Agency, the organizer was the "Deutsche Städte- und Gemeindebund" (German Association of Towns and Municipalities), financial support and sponsorship for the project was provided by Cisco Systems and the concept and technology partner was OpenSpace-Online GmbH. The aim of this event was to enable an improvement in the quality of interdisciplinary, open and - at the same time - result-oriented collaboration, with the involvement of the most important environmental and climate experts in Germany, while simultaneously starting a comprehensive information and communication campaign under the motto "local authorities protecting the climate". The First German Online Climate Summit was intended to be the kick-off event for fast, unbureaucratic and forward-looking collaboration over long distances and across borders for organizations, institutes and universities, as well as public and local authorities.

  For the German Association of Towns and Municipalities the online climate summit and the use of the OpenSpace-Online method was a resounding success. They say: "Our intention is to continue the online climate summit in the coming years, possibly at an international level. The results of the summit will be included in the face-to-face event "Climate Protection and Energy Efficiency - Local Authority Strategies for Action and Methods of Resolution", which will be held by the German Association of Towns and Municipalities on January 11, 2008 in cooperation with the Federal Environment Ministry (with the participation of the Minister of the Environment)."

  We have a few more information about the online climate summit at our website. If you are interested please click here:

  <http://www.OpenSpace-Online.com/en/climate-summit2007.php>

  It looks good, that during the further process an OST conference will play as well an important part within this project. I will be pleased to inform you about next Open Space highlights (offline and online) regarding this project in the future. 

  I wish you all a wonderful start for Year 2008 and I look forward to see many of you in San Francisco this summer!

  Gabriela

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  OpenSpace-Online GmbH - The Power of People!
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  Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg HRB 75583
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