[OSList] Certification?

[Harrison Owen]

Paul – it ain’t Dogma – just experience. If the experience changes, change
the story. And that is what we are – Story Tellers. And the Tale has yet to
be fully told. One thing I am absolutely clear about. We didn’t invent it.
And certainly I didn’t invent it. Been going on for 14.7 billion years, and
we are just catching up – just barely. Wherever it happens is the right
place. We just have to keep out eyes open. And Be prepared to be surprised.
I will be the first to cheer the departure of Open Space Technology. It is,
and always has been in my mind a “half-way technology.” Something we do
until we can easily and openly do the real thing. Which paradoxically is
nothing new and nothing strange. Just what we do, and what we are. So relax
Paul... the story is just getting started....

 

Harrison

 

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Dr.

Potomac, MD 20854

USA

 

189 Beaucaire Ave. (summer)

Camden, Maine 04843

 

Phone 301-365-2093

(summer)  207-763-3261

 

www.openspaceworld.com 

www.ho-image.com (Personal Website)

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From: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org
[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of paul levy
Sent: Friday, August 09, 2013 7:23 PM
To: World wide Open Space Technology email list
Subject: Re: [OSList] Certification?

 

The problem, dear colleagues, is that if you fix this as dogma...

 

For me it all comes down to this:

·         5 Conditions of Use

·         A few logistics

·         Circle

·         5 Principles

·         Law of 2 feet

·         Be Prepared to be Surprised

·         Trust the People

... Then you have killed the space for change. What Harrison calls (also
dogmatically) "the genuine article" sets up a tragic polarity between
genuine or NOT genuine.

 

George W Bush did the same in the Iraq war: "Either you are with us or you
are against us"

 

Harrison will take this "genuine article" dogma to his grave. Shame. 

 

Certification even arises at all because of this false dogma. It has drawn
it in by becoming a blueprint. Oh dear.

 

There is no genuine article other than what we create in the moment of need
and service. If we rediscover Open Space in the same format 25,000 times
then it still isn't a rule or a dogma of genuineness. It simply the beauty
if what it is. 

 

It's an act of beautiful magic, renewed and new in the emerging now.

 

Stop with the minimum lists already!

 

Burn the user guide. Just for the hell of it. Forget it all. Then go to
work. Watch the circle form. Watch open space technology escape again,
breathing better and fresher - possibly in the same form, possible it might
surprise you.

 

Paul 

On Friday, 9 August 2013, Suzanne Daigle wrote:

Certification, it keeps coming up and most likely it will keep coming up as
more and more people experience Open Space. 

My story is that perhaps if there had been certification in 2009, I might
not have jumped in as I did, recklessly and blissfully. In that first 12 to
16 months, I committed to one Open Space a month.  And oh my, it was the
best training ground ever. I know I botched it up many times, forgetting to
say something, not being as clear in my instructions or worse, feeling so
darn nervous with that dark shadow of control and desire for a predictable
outcome still in my being.  Funny thing is; I can confidently assert that it
didn’t make a darn bit of difference. The space opened and people found each
other and soon forgot the facilitator was ever there, except at the close
and then only for a brief minute or two.  It was again their turn to speak.

In the weeks and months preceding WOSonOS 2013, a big gang of Millennials
got to experience Open Space.  It rocked their world as it had rocked mine
and they are now running with it.  Early on, one USFSP student couldn’t wait
to integrate it into one of his study groups.  What happened is probably
nothing like Open Space. As he tells it, he arrived late, explained it in a
rush and somehow students got it, whatever version of Open Space that might
have been.  Today that same guy is eating and sleeping Open Space; he
invented stuff for the newsroom at WOSonOS and keeps making plans on how he
and others will be bringing Open Space to student government and community.
He is not alone; others are just as ignited.

For me it all comes down to this: 

·         5 Conditions of Use

·         A few logistics 

·         Circle

·         5 Principles

·         Law of 2 feet

·         Be Prepared to be Surprised

·         Trust the People

The simplicity of it all still astounds!

An invitation to see life and be in life, with all its beauty, awe and
wonder! Infinite and indescribable!

Timeless in the awareness it has created in me, how it has enriched my life
with others, in the doing and not doing. 

>From clarity to confusion, from knowing to not knowing, from joy to sadness,
hope and despair
it’s all there like breathing in and breathing out. 

Oh the twist of fate, the serendipity that led me to Open Space or Open
Space to me!  It was not even a real Open Space, just enough to spark
something that made me long to know more.  

How grateful I am to have met OS. How appreciative to have stood on the
shoulders of giants who came before me and who are here in this community.
And how much I want others and everyone to “experience” it too; however they
experience it, wherever it leads them!

In the spirit of “one less thing to do” that is embodied in Open Space, it
is where I believe we find that 1% sweet spot that ignites it all: the
individual and collective “passion” and “responsibility” that leads to the
life cycles of high performance that is in nature everywhere around us.  By
opening space and doing less, we are clearing the space for what matters
most.

How can we certify that? It does not even really exist.  It’s just life. 

This is what the “certification conversation” inspired in me as I felt the
knots in my stomach, the old confusions surfacing, and the feeling of so
much to do that I’m not doing, so much more to know that I don’t know.  The
“not good enough story” that struggles to re-emerge poked its ugly head out.


So I had to reground myself once again, to the sheer simplicity of Open
Space.

Am I “being” this way yet? Heck no! But maybe by reminding myself a bit more
every day and speaking it out loud,  I will do less and say less (on that I
have a long way to go).  When there is pain in the world, it is awfully
difficult to believe that doing less is for the best.  

I’ll take a glass of Pinot Noir now if there’s any left. 

Suzanne

 

 

On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 1:37 PM, Chris Corrigan <chris.corrigan at gmail.com>
wrote:

Hiya ,Chris!

 

I have no trouble with givens as a practice. I learned that from Birgitt too
although these days i talk about it as working in context. For me it is all
part of setting the container for the work. In the Art of Hosting workshops
many of us do we spend a lot of time on design, reasoning that the methods
are simple actually but understanding the pre and post meeting work, working
with the context and setting and holding a container for cocreation are
essential to good work getting done. 

 

I have no problem with people receiving certificates for attending workshops
but one simply can't guarantee performance with certification in this field.


 

Pass the wine. 

 

C

-- 

CHRIS CORRIGAN

Harvest Moon Consultants

www.chriscorrigan.com

 

 <http://aohrivendell.withtank.com/> Art of Hosting - Participatory
Leadership and Social Collaboration, Bowen Island, BC November 11-14,2013
<x-apple-data-detectors://5> 


On 2013-08-09, at 12:48 AM, "eiwor at gatewayc.com" <eiwor at gatewayc.com> wrote:

Dear Chris I agree about all you said, especially about the givens. I would
even dare to say that the prework and the discussion there is what opens the
space. What I do at the beginning of an OST meeting is ritual, also
important but still ritual. 
Thanks for your story.
Eiwor

Skickat från min HTC

----- Reply message -----
Från: "Chris Weaver" <chrisgweaver13 at gmail.com>
Till: "World wide Open Space Technology email list"
<oslist at lists.openspacetech. <mailto:oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> org
<mailto:oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> >
Rubrik: [OSList] Certification?
Datum: fre, aug 9, 2013 06:45

 

Greetings All,

 

Ah, I can't resist jumping in to stir the pot.  It is an honor to join a
thread peopled by so many folks whom I respect (and appreciate and love) so
much.  I invite you to settle in for rather a long story, which may, at some
point, have something to do with "certification."

 

After learning of Open Space in Anne Stadler's kitchen, I walked around as a
newbie at the OSonOS in Monterrey (the one fifteen years ago, from which
Harrison was unexpectedly absent, due to a nasty flu, I believe), with my
jaw hanging open to meet so many bold and brilliant facilitators (I remember
especially Michael P, Alan Stewart, Brian Bainbridge, Roxy, and Birgitt
Bolton) sharing stories that I sweetly strove to wrap my head at least
half-way around.

 

For a few years I engaged actively on the OSLIST as I began to facilitate
some OST meetings (without even "finishing the book," as I recall) in the
Seattle school where I worked as a teacher.  In 1999 I landed here in North
Carolina, where I attended my first OST workshop as part of the Genuine
Contact Program with Birgitt (Bolton) Williams who had recently landed a few
hours away.

 

Now I will say that I have an assumption only that at around that time there
was something of a "falling out" between Birgitt and her work and the work
of some other OS facilitators.  I do not know, nor need to know, the
details.  But I do know that there are some points of practice that have
generated some heated passion in the community and that I think are worthy
of putting on the storytelling table.  (I know that there is not supposed to
be a table, but I suddenly imagine myself with Jeff, Chris, Peggy, Harrison,
Michael in a pub somewhere with a rough wooden table, on which I am happily
uncorking a bottle of pinot noir.)

 

When I completed the Genuine Contact "Working with OST" workshop, I received
a certificate, but not a certification.  (The distinction is important
because there was no intention on the workshop leader's part to evaluate my
"competence" in any way.)  Based on my participation in the four-day
experience, I could, if I cho

Suzanne Daigle
NuFocus Strategic Group
7159 Victoria Circle <x-apple-data-detectors://12/0> 
University Park, FL 34201 <x-apple-data-detectors://12/0> 
FL 941-359-8877;  
CT 203-722-2009
www.nufocusgroup.com
s.daigle at nufocusgroup.com
<javascript:_e(%7b%7d,%20'cvml',%20's.daigle at nufocusgroup.com');> 
twitter @suzannedaigle

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