[OSList] WOSonOS 2014/2015/2016 invitations

Mon May 20 09:47:32 PDT 2013

Hi Harrison:

In a previous mail you said:

I do find it somewhat amusing that the 75 odd souls who showed up in St. Petersburg feel called upon to “decide” for the “whole” community.

This suggestes me two questions:

First: is not that what is always done in the end of a WOSonOS? Why puting the question this time?

Second: Is not there a contradition between your quote above and the detailed descrition of "how to do" that you provided in this post (below)?

Warm regards

Artur

PS: I suspect that you missed my heteredox contributions, so here it is a new one ;-)

________________________________
 From: Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net>
To: 'World wide Open Space Technology email list' <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> 
Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 3:43 PM
Subject: Re: [OSList] WOSonOS 2014/2015/2016 invitations

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

Harrison Owen
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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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