[OSList] An invitation for future invitations to WOSONOS

Thu Oct 1 10:35:16 PDT 2015

i like your question, christine: "who will decide?"  and i want to twist it
around a little bit.  i want to suggest that everyone, all of us, are
already deciding.  and the question is "what are all of us already deciding
and agreeing to?"

in any open space event, what would happen if the facilitator put up a grid
of 50 post-it notes and set chairs in all the breakout spaces, but the
group politely pulled only one sticky per time slot, because they were in
the habit of all meeting together at the same time.  it might work fine,
but we as OS veterans would probably think they'd lost something of the
juice that is possible when the group breaks out into many different work
areas, and everyone is moving around, buzzing back and forth, and so on.
back to osonos now, when harrison got it started, the annual timing was an
arbitrary choice that fit other groups' customs and having only one site
was just the practical thing to do, as there weren't very many of us in
those days and it wasn't easy to connect multiple sites.

so what about "what are we all deciding?" ????

in the beginning, harrison decided to invite a bunch of people to osonos1.
 then some of those folks decided to show up, do the dance, go home, tell
friends... and harrison decided to do it again.  when he said "no more for
me" others of us stepped in and said "i will host next year" and the rest
of us all individually decided if we would attend or not.  sometimes
decisions are made for professional development reasons but also because of
friends or other activities somebody might have in that particular locale.

just like participants in an OS event, where people talk at lunch about
"what are you going to this afternoon?" and might try to convince each
other to go here or there, we sometimes had side conversations between
osonos events... "it's time it goes to europe, no?" and "maybe it should
rotate between continents."  some people decided to offer invitations.
 others decided not to, or asked more experience people to help them host.

along the way, hosts and attendees jointly determined that it was okay to
have additional osonos events and those things happened, because
individuals decided to invite and others decided to attend.  at some point,
in one of those side conversations, somebody decided it was a good idea to
call one event a year "the World osonos" and some others agreed.  in the
same way, for a time there was talk and many seemed to agree that the
wosonos should go to "underserved" areas.  i never cared for this view,
myself, but it's an idea that enough people decided was valid that it did
hold some sway in people deciding to host and attend these gatherings.

what i am aiming at here is that we are, all of us, already deciding
exactly where we will and won't have an(y) and all osonos events.  there is
absolutely no restriction on who can offer an invitation, to where or when
it can be offered.  there is no reason for invitations to be offered only
at the end of a physical osonos event.  there is no reason why haiti or
nordic or other osonos events aren't called wosonos haiti and nordic
wosonos, because of course all of us from all around the world are always
invited to these things.

the reason we have only one "wosonos" each year, continuing to gather about
100+/- people each time, is because nobody decides to offer more than one,
nobody decides to call a second one "wosonos", so nobody can decide to
attend it.  i don't know how many invitations were offered in krakow this
year for 2016.  if there were several, then it certainly was possible for
those different inviters to get together and decide for themselves to not
have any voting.  they could have decided to host them simultaneously, and
pushed all of us to decide for ourselves which of these to attend.
 instead, somebody decided to call a vote and a bunch of others agreed,
including the inviters.  the vote happened and the losers decided to accept
that as the decision.

my invitation to all of us is to give some extra attention to what we are
each deciding about osonos gatherings globally.  have you decided osonos is
not for you so you just stay silent?  or that it's always far away?  have
you decided that you will go because the people there will know a lot more
than you and will teach you?  or that your stories matter so you must go
tell them?  do you have "side" conversations to arrange to meet distant
oslist friends at one of these?  have you decided that the people who show
up to a "wosonos" event are somehow different from those who would show up
a "nosonos" or "osonosinOz?"  perhaps you've decided that conversations
held face-to-face in two seats next to each other are better than two seats
joined by computer cameras?  have you decided that your voice or invitation
doesn't matter in this question?

it's almost as if many of us have decided that it's important to keep
adding one more to the series... osonos7, osonos10, osonos15.  karolina
sent out something about wosonos15 and then corrected herself... it's 2015
and wosonos23.  what if we counted it this way....

osonos 1-4 in dulles, toronto, monterey, chicago, berlin, vancouver,
melbourne, svenmark, goa, halifax, moscow, kiev, san fran... i get a little
fuzzy here... but krakow makes 23... plus at least 8 haitian gatherings? 8
nordics? 2 by the sea.  2 osonosinUS.  one virtual.  i'm going to guess 4
in Oz?  so that makes the one upcoming in melbourne OSonOS49 and manila
OSonOS50.

you can decide to ignore this, or wait and listen to others.  if you reply,
you can decide to call manila wosonos24 or osonos50.  you can decide to
correct my math or delete this whole thread.  maybe you decide that
OSonOSinOZ (whatever the number) sounds jazzier than OSonOS49.  maybe the
location matters more than the count?

maybe we need to talk more about what osonos is really for?  it's almost
like we, a tribe with no hierarchy and titles, collectively succumb to some
inner calling to elect a "president" above all others (in the form of a
single marquis event) each year.  why do we do that and how does it serve
or diminish what we are working to be and practice in the world?  that's
what i'm trying to decide for myself this morning.

and while we're at it... is there not something in this analogous to
oslist, other email lists, various facebook groups, linkedin,
openspaceworld, qiqochat and so on.  does our assumption and agreement on
one gathering or one conversation being more important than a number of
others limit what we and this practice and story can be in the world?  does
letting go risk losing something of the history we've created and the
wisdom of those who've been around for a long time?  in this way, are we
not a microcosm of the tensions playing out in so many places around the
world?

so how many osonos gatherings will there be in the next year or so and how
many can we organize and support and connect at the same moment?  and as
long as i'm here inviting more invitations... would it be helpful to
capture here something about what are the essential core elements of an
osonos, anyway...  invitation, circle, bulletin board, marketplace,
pulsation, storytelling...  book a meeting place, provide some snacks, the
theme is open space... what else is essential or required?  ...or is
everything else just one more thing to not do?

these are some (many?) of the things i think we might discuss together and
decide more actively for ourselves.

michael

--

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
http://MichaelHerman.com
http://OpenSpaceWorld.org

On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 10:51 AM, christine koehler <
chris.alice.koehler at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone
>
> I find really interesting to observe what is happening
> On one hand, there is the theory (Harrison, I don't mean that you "are"
> the theory, but you remind us on what is important and yes, we do hear your
> voice as a very important one)  : a self-organized community , living (or
> trying to live with) its principles, no organizational structure, so no
> trouble of decision making processes. As Harrison says, it's simple, be the
> first to invite , if there is someone, you'll have it next year, or do it
> at different places and that's all. Let's have fun and do one less thing.
>
> On the other hand, there are things we can observe : people or teams
> working very hard for wosonos (I did it for osonos, so I know what it mean
> very well ;)) , decision processes that make some people very
> uncomfortable, people who care very much and also people who don't care and
> who don't understand the tension they can feel when the topic comes out.
> Hey, we are humain, we tend to make things complicate because we are not
> just mere brains but have opinion  and feelings about how things should go
> or could go, about who is doing what and taking this particular position in
> the community etc..
>
> So this create what Pernilla calls tradition. rituals. Groups tend to need
> rituals, don't they ?
>
> What I saw in Krakow is people uncomfortable with the way things were
> being made and other people trying to suggest new ways of doing them. But
> then, how do we do ? Who can decide ? How can we stay "true to open space",
> not make things too complicate and still be fair for all, especially when
> "all" is the community, ie not only the people in the room but also people
> who feel part of the community (most of them on this list).
>
> I must confess that I am very curious to observe how this conversation
> evolves, as I will learn from whatever happens. This topic for me could be
> : how can we make decisions that engage the whole community in a
> self-organized community without decision making process, only with
> conversation, and moreover, online conversation ? (ouch this is a long
> sentence)
>
> No doubt a very interesting topic for most of us these days.
>
>
> Christine
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 4:40 PM, Marie Nelson via OSList <
> oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> wrote:
>
>> A more integrative vision, in so many ways.
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: OSList <oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org> on behalf of
>> Michael Herman via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2015 4:42 PM
>> To: Lisa Heft -; World wide Open Space Technology email list
>> Subject: Re: [OSList] An invitation for future invitations to WOSONOS
>>
>> thanks for raising these questions, pernilla.  what you're proposing in
>> terms of people (rather than countries!) coming forward at the beginning of
>> the gathering makes great sense to me.  these invitations can be offered at
>> any time, of course, including a week or a month before the wosonos
>> gathering time.  if our tradition were to evolve in that direction, there
>> could be some commenting on that in advance of the gathering.
>>
>> at the same time, the thing that makes for the pressure and scarcity and
>> overall un-OS feeling of this situation isn't really a question of when the
>> invites are offered, but that we have developed this habit of having only
>> one of these gatherings at once, or one per year, or more specifically that
>> we designate just one as *the* world osonos, even though nordic and haitian
>> and camden and oz folks and some other have had significant series of
>> osonos gatherings.
>>
>> i really like the idea that these things could happen on several
>> continents at once, so the wosonos had multiple sites.  progress of tools
>> like qiqochat offer interesting possibilities of being able to easily
>> bumblebee across oceans.  we've also been growing a tradition of spinning
>> these things up into major productions, perhaps drifting some from the
>> simple power of our core practice.  if we met in more places at once and
>> traveled shorter distances, maybe the hosts would feel less pressure to
>> "work too hard" an planning and organizing these things?
>>
>> what if the wosonos could evolve in the direction of a kind of
>> world-around OS carnival/retreat/learning exchange week?  many invites,
>> many parties, i mean working sessions?
>>
>> michael
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Michael Herman
>> Michael Herman Associates
>> http://MichaelHerman.com
>> http://OpenSpaceWorld.org
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 2:22 PM, Lisa Heft - via OSList <
>> oslist at lists.openspacetech.org<mailto:oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>>
>> wrote:
>> How wonderful, your invitation, in all its richness, Pernilla.
>>
>> Another two things I would like to add:
>>
>> 1) As always, for any team interested in hosting a WOSonOS for a future
>> year, I have a growing living letter of lessons-learned - gathered wisdom
>> from past host teams, that has been growing since 2001 and that I happily
>> offer to whoever wishes to contact me. My request is that if you, dear
>> reader, are thinking “oh that is something I / we will ask Lisa for” then
>> please wait until a few weeks from now, as I will in a few weeks update it
>> with the latest Host Team’s lessons-learned.
>>
>> And 2) As has happened at several years in the past, including at our
>> recent WOSonOS  - you as a Host Team / Host Team representative do not have
>> to be physically present at a WOSonOS in order to invite. Several of us
>> have over the years acted as representatives for teams wishing to invite
>> who were not able to physically make it. And you can make us do whatever
>> you like, to represent you !
>>
>> Looking forward to the conversation,
>> Lisa
>>
>>
>> On Sep 30, 2015, at 12:03 PM, Pernilla Luttropp via OSList <
>> oslist at lists.openspacetech.org<mailto:oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all!
>> At the inspiring WOSONOS in Kraków there were some learning conversations
>> on how this community  goes about when expressing and accepting invitations
>> from countries/places to host the upcoming WOSONOSes.
>>
>> In the big circle there were voices that expressed some confusion and
>> discomfort with the process. Others said that whatever happened, they would
>> trust the process. There was also the mentioning of ‘traditions’ and the
>> ways things are usually done at a WOSONOS. And the reminder that traditions
>> are made in every single now and ‘Whatever happens is the only thing that
>> could have’.
>>
>> If you are new to WOSONOS
>> This is how it’s usually done (I think): the countries that wish to host
>> the next WOSONOS makes an invitation at the closing circle of the WOSONOS
>> and the participants are free to accept any of the invitations. The process
>> of accepting the invitation is sometimes done by some kind of ‘voting’
>> procedure in order to agree on one place. There is often someone who
>> reminds everybody that the only way to ‘vote’ in Open Space is by applying
>> ‘The law of mobility’. There is no need to only have one WOSONOS, there
>> could be multiple since ‘Wherever it happens is the right place’.
>>
>> My view
>> I am personally very uncomfortable to use the words ‘voting’ or to ‘make
>> a collective decision’ within an Open Space. One of the beauties with Open
>> Space is taking responsibility for your own engagement. If we all share the
>> same engagement we will walk in the same direction, eventually. But
>> sometimes it takes time for things to emerge.
>> If a group decides on voting there are many good methods and it’s of
>> outmost importance for those present to understand what they are about to
>> do, in order to make an informed decision. Is it a majority decision? How
>> many is the majority? What happens if some vote no? Is it possible to have
>> a ballot vote? Is it the role of the facilitator to sum it up and make the
>> final decision? In my view, we can only express our appreciation for the
>> invitation at the Open Space, offer help if needed and make use of the law
>> of mobility.
>>
>> An invitation
>> This is an invitation to try something else and maybe to let go of a
>> ‘tradition’. What if we opened up at the beginning of the process in order
>> to see how it self organizes at the end?
>> There seems to be something unclear about the ‘tradition’ on how to get
>> information about who is inviting and why. If that information were
>> transparent from the very start of the WOSONOS, it might enable more
>> dialogue with the inviting hosts and between the hosts.
>>
>> The countries/places that wish to host a future WOSONOS could post this
>> on the OSLIST and Facebook and send a gentle reminder a few weeks before
>> the upcoming WOSONOS. The inviting hosts would then be posted on a flip
>> chart at the WOSONOS and announced as a session when creating the bulletin
>> board or at the evening news. As always there is the opportunity to add
>> places, sessions and news announcements up until the closing circle, both
>> on the spot and via other ways of communicating. This would make it easier
>> for everyone to approach the hosts, express their delight or ask clarifying
>> questions. It would also enable the hosts (or their representatives) to
>> come together in a session and find out how they would like to do the
>> invitations in the closing circle. Maybe some will wait until next year?
>> Maybe multiple WOSONOSes in one year? Maybe in different continents at the
>> same time? Maybe with different themes/urgent questions? Let’s embrace
>> chaos and see what emerges! Or ‘Whatever happens is the only thing that
>> could have’.
>>
>> Since the closing circle have a more definite dead line than ‘When it is
>> over it is over’, due to flights and other time restrictions, this
>> prolonged invitation process will open up time for more dialogues and
>> invitations.
>> But then again, as said in the closing circle in Kraków, there is nothing
>> like a good mess in order to learn something new :)
>>
>> Maybe it has been tried before and in that case I’m interested to know
>> how it worked or didn’t work.
>>
>> Greetings from Sweden!
>> Pernilla
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>
>
>
> --
>
> [image: Christine Koehler, créatrice d'espace de Dialogue et de
> Coopération]
>  Executive Coach, Facilitatrice en intelligence collective
>  www.christine-koehler.fr
>  Tel :  06 13 28 71 38
>   Fax :    09  72  32 36  65
>
> <http://christine-koehler.fr/2013/formation-de-levenement-au-processus-avril-2013/>
>
>
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