[OSList] celebrating 30 years of Working With Open Space Technology

Tue Apr 5 20:30:39 PDT 2022

Dear Birgitt,

thank you for your story.

I happied myself with the memories rising from the contacts with you in 
the past, all still very alive.

One of the stories I tell is the intervention you offered at the WOSonOS 
in Moscow when invited by  Raffi Aftendelian, the sponsor, to help in a 
wicked situation:

"Please get up, take your chair and recreate our circle."

Folks did exactly that. Stood up, grabbed their chairs and created a 
perfect circle so different from the disarrayed one.
It was the selforganized basis for a productive and actionoriented 
continuation of our gathering.

This happened in 2006.
At the end of WOSonOS 14 five women from the Ukraine invited us to the 
WOSonOS 15 in 2007 in Kyiv.

Today, probably all of us know about Kyiv and I know that new circles 
are in the making... also at the WOSonOS 28 in the Basque Country this 
September.

Greetings from Berlin
Love and Peace
mmp

Am 06.04.2022 um 00:01 schrieb Birgitt Williams via OSList:
> Dear friends and colleagues,
> this month I am celebrating 30 years of working with Open Space 
> Technology. What a grand journey it has been, giving me a vehicle to be 
> of help to leaders and  their organizations...while simultaneously 
> growing me. I benefited a lot from in depth four day trainings in OST 
> with Harrison, attending, co-sponsoring seven training sessions in 
> Canada. I continue to facilitate in the ways that we were originally 
> taught, with adjustments made to adapt OST for the online environment. I 
> refuse to facilitate an OST less than four hours, with sessions never 
> less than one hour.
> 
> My two favorite experiences of being a participant in OST meetings: the 
> first OSONOS in a hotel near Dulles airport in which just over 30 of us 
> gathered to explore our learning with OST and the excitement of 
> participating in what was then pioneering work with organizations. The 
> second of my favorite experiences was the Expanding Our Now event in 
> Oregon in the mid 90's sponsored and facilitated by Harrison Owen and 
> Anne Stadler. Five full days within an OST container, exploring and 
> accomplishing ways to expand our now. Again, about thirty of us came 
> together, from a number of countries, with profound experiences within 
> which each of us experienced personal transformation and the expansion 
> of ourselves, and the expansion of our NOW. We who gathered understood 
> that the bigger our NOW, the better we facilitated. The power of a 
> multi-day OST is not often the current offer...however, it is powerful 
> beyond what can be imagined.
> 
> In those early days, I experimented with how short an OST meeting could 
> be while still retaining what I believed was valuable about OST. Four 
> hours was the shortest I would go...and in those days I did so as a 
> means for following up from a multi-day OST for the purpose of moving 
> topics forward that had been prioritized from the multi-day OST. At the 
> time, I believed a short (ie 4 hour) OST was valuable only after a 
> multi-day OST in the organization. I believe that OST was initially 
> devised for multi-day meetings.
> 
> I also experimented with frequent OST meetings in the same organization 
> ie: monthly. The story goes that the first two monthly OST meetings were 
> loved by our staff and Board as the newly preferred way to have  our 
> monthly meetings. At the third meeting, I sat and said to those gathered 
> (about eighty people) that they need what to do so please post their 
> topics. Everyone stayed seated until someone said "we know what to do, 
> however, there is something important in this opening that you do that 
> helps us to determine what we want to post and to get on with it. We 
> need you to do the opening. It is not sufficient to tell us that we know 
> what to do." And so I learned that the opening, even with a well 
> seasoned group, gave benefit from the ritual and was to be included. At 
> the fourth monthly meeting, as I entered the room, a staff member stood 
> up and said "we don't want to do these kinds of meetings anymore. We 
> come up with all sorts of ideas for going forward but after the fact, we 
> find out what the barriers are to taking action and it is very 
> disheartening to us". We sat together and talked this over. Two gifts 
> emerged from this. The first was the concept of the 'givens', providing 
> the shape of the OST meeting (defining the playground to which people 
> were invited) by clarifying beforehand any non-negotiable barriers. Once 
> we worked out the givens together, we successfully had years of OST 
> meetings. The second gift was the emergence of another meeting method 
> Whole Person Process Facilitation (WPPF), designed to be used in between 
> the OST meetings to examine what had come out of the OST meeting and 
> what would move forward into action..and how. By alternating OST and 
> WPPF for our monthly meetings, more actionable items moved forward than 
> would have moved forward with OST alone. And the participants, with the 
> addition of the givens, and the bi-monthly OST/WPPF meetings were well 
> satisfied that we had a new way of working...during meetings and then 
> into the daily life of the organization.
> 
> My favorite examples of facilitating OST meetings is difficult to narrow 
> down. One that stands out as dear to my heart is for Saving Newborn 
> Lives, a global project of Save the Children USA. Representatives from 
> eighteen countries participated in the OST that evolved into the 
> strategic plan and was a significant part of their organizational 
> transformation from a research program to a service delivery 
> program.Another one that stands out is an OST for the exploration of 
> issues and opportunities for housing hard to house marginalized people. 
> In our Regional government at the time, the idea of one-third of the 
> spots designated for the homeless themselves was a big challenge 
> resulting in skepticism about it all working, one-third of the spots 
> were for government, and one-third of the spots were for non-profit 
> organizations. The people were in genuine contact with one another, and 
> a lot got accomplished, much to the surprise of many of the 
> participants. I heard just last week that one of the task forces 
> developed from that OST is still active and has been making a big 
> difference for almost thirty years in getting marginalized people 
> housed. A testament to sustainability of results from a single OST meeting.
> 
> If you know me, you know that I was attracted to the genuine contact 
> that is experienced in every OST meeting...genuine contact with self, 
> with other, with the collective, and with 
> Creator/Spirit/Creation/Conscious Energy. I developed the Genuine 
> Contact Program and way of working, with Working With Open Space 
> Technology as one of the essential modules of this program
> 
> I appreciate the journey, the blessings inherent in the journey, the 
> miracles I have witnessed with OST, and its role in my life,
> 
> in genuine contact,
> Birgitt
> Picture*
> *
> 
> 
> *Birgitt Williams*
> *Senior consultant-author-mentor to leaders and consultants *
> *Specialist in organizational and systemic transformation, leadership 
> development, and the power of nourishing  a culture of leadership.*
> www.dalarinternational.com <http://www.dalarinternational.com>
> 
> 
>  >> Learn More & Register 
> <http://www.dalarinternational.com/upcoming-workshops/> for any of our 
> upcoming workshops here.
> 
> 
> PO Box 19373, Raleigh, NC, USA 27613
> Phone: 01-919-522-7750
> Like us on Facebook 
> <https://dalarinternational.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=35ed818c946a88ba7344da05f&id=6677c35b38&e=e7zyhHfiqG>
> Connect on LinkedIn 
> <https://dalarinternational.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=35ed818c946a88ba7344da05f&id=c26173f86b&e=e7zyhHfiqG>
> 
> _______________________________________________
> OSList mailing list
> To post send emails to OSList at lists.openspacetech.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to OSList-leave at lists.openspacetech.org
> To subscribe or manage your subscription click below:
> http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
> Past archives can be viewed here: http://www.mail-archive.com/oslist@lists.openspacetech.org
-- 
Michael M Pannwitz
Draisweg 1, 12209 Berlin
+49 30 7728000     mmpannwitz at gmail.com