Detroit Social Forum - Open Space?

[Artur Silva]

Harold:

Thanks for the information and links. Some further comments bellow:



________________________________
From: Harold Shinsato <harold at shinsato.com>
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Sent: Wed, June 9, 2010 4:51:39 PM
Subject: [OSLIST] Detroit Social Forum - Open Space?

The OST at the Detroit Journalism That Matters event last week (http://jtmdetroit.org) was truly
amazing, as was the January Seattle JTM event (http://jtmpnw.com/) I attended after
being invited by Anne Stadler at the Leadership in a Self-Organizing
World event (http://www.openspaceworld.org/cgi/netwiki.cgi?SelfOrganizingWorld)
where Harrison Owen gave some great talks in the midst of an OST event.

I'm a bit baffled right now - because I am reading about the Social
Forum http://www.ussf2010.org/ being held in Detroit Jun 22-26. I'm reading about it in Yes! magazine,
after purchasing it in my Missoula health food store. (Yes! magazine
showed up in spades at the Seattle JTM Open Space). The organizers of
this event - which is expecting 20,000+ attendees showed up at JTM
Detroit last week.

Here is a quote about the event on page 11 of the latest Yes! magazine
in a commentary titled (in very Open Space terms) "A Personal
Invitation to the US Social Forum":

Are you referring to this: http://www.yesmagazine.org/ ?
 
 (I cannot see in the invitation the paragraph
you quoted below...) 

"we come together in open space to share and learn best
practices for movement building, get inspired, connect across work and
distance, and see ourselves as part of a larger force. It's that open
horizontal structure, instead of the usual series of top-down
aspirational speakers, that allows the deeper relationships and
movement building to happen... USSF is a self-organized,
decentralized process..."

I've looked at the program, and it doesn't look like a pure OST event
at all, but they mention "open spaces" quite a bit.

I have not probably see the links to the event with
the same attention that you did. But some comments came to my mind.
 
First, a distinction must be made between "Open
Space" and "Open Space Technology" (and please note I am using
"Open Space", as a kind of meeting, and not in other senses, like the
"contact with nature in Open Space" as in http://www.osiny.org/site/PageServer).
 
Second, even when talking about Open Space Technology
a further distinction must be made separating "full presence f2f meetings"
(where the opening of the space is done in a real circle at the beginning of
the meeting) from: 1) meetings that are completely mediated by computers; and
2) meetings that are in part mediated by computers. 
 
Third, in these last types of situations many different
things may happen, like for instance: the "circle is "virtual"
and not "real", the call for topics, and the marketplace may be done before
to the session begins, etc. In these cases the Spirit of OST is IMHO still
present, even if the letter is not.  (To make a clarification, if I am
invited to a f2f meeting, supported by some sort of Internet platform, where
anyone can propose a session, and people have the capacity to talk with the
proposers to suggest changes, fusions, etc and later sign for session, I would
consider that an OST-like meeting; on the contrary, if people are invited to a meeting,
sit in circle, OST principles are explained and then a list of topics
pre-arranged by the organizers are proposed, or anything where the facilitator
disempowers the participants giving them instructions to do this now, and that
later, is not, IMO, an OST-like meeting).
 
Fourth: a lot of different types of meetings (and
methods) are being held (or developed) al around the world that are really
opening space to a new kind of sustainable society, a new kind of democracy,
and of economical organization of the world, that are really "self
organizing". Even if many of those are not pure OST-events, when we
consider the whole picture of all of that it is substantially self organizing.
 
Fifth: Due to new technological condition and to the
evolution of some closed related methods (I mean other methods that try to
empower people and facilitate their self organization and that are the contrary of others where the
participants are "controlled" by the facilitator) OST will inevitably
evolve. 
 
Lastly, due to the fact that "Open Space"
(at least the expression, if not the foundations) is spreading around and becoming
mainstream (with that name or another, like bar camps, unconferences, etc) we
will soon come to a state where no one can say any longer where the "orthodoxy"
is. (I think that, by that time, the main question to make the distinction will
be this one: does the facilitator lets people self-organize or is "giving instructions"
that disempower people and act against self organization?) 
 
Having said that, can you please clarify why you don't
think that this Detroit event is an OST-like one?
 
If Open Space ideas
are being used in an event that is attracting 20,000 people - I'm
curious why we're not talking about it here. 

Me too. Why do you think this is happening? What do others think?

Regards

Artur

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

Does any one know more
about this event? Anyone going? What is the relevance to major big time
adoption of Open Space ideas in things like barcamps, USSF, etc.,
albeit impure, to the relevance of OST itself?




-- 
Harold Shinsato
harold at shinsato.com
http://shinsato.com
twitter: @hajush*
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