[OSList] Critiquing a WOSonOS - [formerly titled 'Peggy plus OST Linkedin'] -2

[Lisa Heft]

(to continue - part 2 of 2 parts)

A WOSonOS as an opportunity for a host team to explore ideas:

Why not marvel at a host team for creating a sticky-wall out of office  
supplies (clear packing tape) in an historic building where one cannot  
post onto the walls? All over that space there were imaginative work- 
arounds for the ways we OS folks like to use a room in the round: Tall  
T-shaped banner holders made of bamboo leaned against the walls to  
hold up the principles and law posters. Beautifully illustrated  
animals on signs attached to bamboo poles attached to chairs to form  
moveable small-group discussion areas - in a way that helped us easily  
navigate a large room. A sticky-wall that taught me quite a bit - and  
a host team deeply considering the advantages and disadvantages to  
having made that super-stickiness and naming its advantages and  
limitations out loud and with humor and grace. Why not to marvel in  
that and be amazed at how much we learn for our own next 'cannot-post- 
on-walls' events?

Critiquing a WOSonOS as having evolved into something more than  
what... than a host team wishes it to be?

There is something really amazing about a WOSonOS - I save my pennies  
to get to them whenever possible. Being in a room full of people from  
other lands, other cultures, other experiences - it is so nutritious  
to me. Celebrating each other through some of the traditions that have  
arisen from meeting to meeting - not as a rule, but as having some fun  
together. Using it - really using it - as an OS user's conference -  
where my diversely-experienced colleagues and I can stretch and  
explore and ask why and share lessons learned about this very  
interesting process. WIth others who know about it - whether they read  
about it in the book or have convened meetings using it for years. I  
for one do not bring clients to a WOSonOS - though I do invite them to  
the OS meeting within my workshop if they like - because this is a  
rare opportunity for me to act like myself - my joyful playful self -  
with my tribe who mostly welcomes me in my fullest most joyful form -  
rather than my practice of respecting a client and a group I work with  
by being my self (to be sure) but a more subdued self when I am out  
there facilitating for clients. Because my client's meetings are not  
about me - rather, about them and their work. This one thing? This  
coming to a WOSonOS or OSonOS? It is about my community, but it is  
also about the pure, undiluted me.  How relaxing for me!  But nobody  
is stopping anyone from inviting clients, and indeed: people at  
WOSonOS have always invited clients when they wished to.

The returning thread about why a WOSonOS at all, or that it is not the  
way you would have done it:

Why not an OSonOS - whenever you want to, wherever you are, however  
you yourself would like to do it? What is stopping you from doing  
that, if you feel it should be done in a different way, in a simpler  
way, in another way?  I host an OSonOS each year - have done for  
years. Mine is in the San Francisco USA region, usually each March.  
And you are all invited to join me - dates soon to be announced. It is  
much simpler than a WOSonOS - I rent a room, you come, we have a pot- 
luck dinner, we learn from one another. That's the freedom of it all -  
whatever you want to invite to happen - do it. We welcome it. It's  
wonderful. I highly recommend it...

Thank you Phelim and team, and everyone in this conversation (both you  
speakers and you witnesses), for all I am learning and reflecting upon,

Lisa
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