[OSList] WOSonOS 2014/2015/2016 invitations

Harrison Owen hhowen at verizon.net
Mon May 20 07:43:20 PDT 2013


Lisa - Hate to say it, but you know I will. I think you are working much too
hard! And I'm not really sure it is a question of "design" ("So I love
thinking of the 'devil's advocate' questions when thinking of design.")-Just
do it, just like we always do. For example, when it comes to invitation time
just open the space for Invitations. Kind of an offshoot of "action
planning." Whoever cares stands up with a sign (Spain, Serbia, wherever),
Goes to a corner of the room, and waits until all other invitations have
been made. When all the invitations are "posted" everybody else is invited
to journey to that part of the world they feel drawn to. Time to discuss
practicalities of location and date - and not incidentally put together an
initial Host Team. People can wander from place to place, and after a short
time (45min?) somebody with a mike passes from group to group for a
"report." Report could be: Your invited to Serbia, Spring of 2014. Or maybe
there are several. Wonderful! Or maybe a group concluded it is a wonderful
idea, but not now. Done. No Sweat, no Strain. Alternative: Place a hat in
the middle of the floor (my hat would do) - Anybody who cares deposits a
folded piece of paper with the place specified and their name. Just before
the Closing Circle, the names are drawn - We have the winners: EVERYBODY!

 

Harrison

 

 

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From: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org
[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of Lisa Heft
Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 9:05 AM
To: World wide Open Space Technology email list
Subject: Re: [OSList] WOSonOS 2014/2015/2016 invitations

 

Well that is an interesting thing to think about, and something we brought
up in our own conversation last evening. 

(By the way the fabulous Suzanne Daigle was part of our conversation last
night and you see my brain is fried by so much juicy interaction I forgot
one of the most important people of all, our gracious WOSonOS host!)

 

So I love thinking of the 'devils advocate' questions when thinking of
design.

 

So there are some people who cannot make it physically to a WOSonOS, but
they can ask someone attending to represent them - as Arturo and I did for
the London Team when we were at the Chile conference.

 

If technology was available, and if it worked, and if those
not-physically-with-us colleagues had their own access to technology, and
and.... 

... then perhaps yes someone who felt so inspired (like who knows - Access
Queen gets inspired all the time to hold space for inviting) could post that
session some time in the conference.

 

And then there is the emergent inviter. The one such as Jasmina who felt
called and perhaps surprised that she sprang to her feet and walked into the
middle of the circle to invite.

(Jasmina of course you can describe your own thoughts and feelings - I am
describing a little of what I saw).

 

It is oh-so-easy when there is only one inviter. It becomes more complex
when there is more than one (country) inviter.

 

So my thoughts turn to many things. 

- in our other work, what are other processes for feeling - sensing -
sharing what is invited, and exploring it to see what calls?

- is there a New Games / creative process that can offer this? An Agile /
Scrum process?

How to hold and welcome invitation and sit with it?

How to center the conversation on the inviters, and not our thoughts about
what should or could happen? (after all, it is the passion and
responsibility of the inviting country persons that is stepping into the
circle, and then we get all in our heads about it, and still... the ones who
stood up and invited are the ones who had the passion and responsibility.
How to hold that and not get all 'discuss-y'?

 

I was asked to host the process for invitation / imagining and then sensing
as a face-to-face group (and we had some of you watching and commenting
virtually) - so I used the process I have experienced in the past 11 or 12
WOSonOSs I have been to. But I was not thinking. I did not think of how it
had felt to me in all those past years. It felt not full of life. Not as
vibrant as the discussion sessions. 

On the other hand, people have written or mentioned that that
sitting-in-the-fire-see-what-shifts process was a really interesting
experience. Not so much 'and now we are going to do this.' 'and now we are
going to do this.' But truly - my body goes crazy, it can go on for hours,
and yesterday I realized while doing it it was just like those 'consensus'
processes which feel to me like ' the last person standing / with the
stamina to stay in this conversation remains / gets to make the decision'.
Because it is as nutritious as it is exhausting.

 

So my thought is - and I had said this in Closing Circle - there are some
WOSonOS traditions I really love over the years. You can guess that one of
my favorite traditions is Global VIllage and Silent Auction and all the
Access Queen seen and unseen actions and relationships. But other traditions
may be meant to be released, eh? 

 

Such as this way of invitation and decision.

Call it what you will, decision or otherwise - it helps us travelers and
those with less financial abilities to know in advance where the next one
will be, because for many people it takes quite a long time to generate the
relationships and resources that will help us get there - whether 'it' is in
our own country or across the world.

 

And of course there are and can be OSonOSs all over the place, whenever they
want to happen. But there is something special about this particular coming
together, shared back and forth and across the world.

 

It is morning as I leave Florida for home. 

Just wanted to share some of the thoughts playing in my head this morning.

What do others think?

 

Lisa

(see you in Serbia! - if I say it, I know it will happen...) 

 

 

 

On May 20, 2013, at 3:52 AM, Phelim McDermott wrote:





Hi there, 

 

Sounds like WOSonos was fun! Maybe those who are interested in inviting can
call a session about it DURING the open space and those who have an interest
can go to that session. Even if the decision doesn't get made there a lot of
the issues and questions will already have been processed in some way. 

 

I have to say this part of WOSonOS is the most difficult bit as a host and
it does currently feel very UN open spacey

Best regards,

 

Phelim McDermott

 

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