<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT">Dear Suzanne:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT">Do you know the book "Tales from Open
Space"? It is now outdated.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT">I think that what we need is a similar book, with
recent stories - maybe "New Tales From Open Space".<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT">If you have the passion, <b>go for it!</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT">And a lot of help will appear (it is already appearing). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT">But please be careful to separate valid stories from
self-promotion material, that will also appear, has it has already began. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:PT">Artur<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div> </div><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><br><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Suzanne Daigle <sdaigle4@gmail.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Sun, May 16, 2010 5:30:16 AM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [OSLIST] 4 July: 25 years of Open Space<br></font><br> Dear Harrison (and others), I have a story/book? burning inside of me<br>as a former journalist, a former corporate minion sitting high at<br>times on the esteemed corporate hierarchy and someone who has since<br>been deeply touched inside by OST. For me, it is not the story you<br>describe. The story
of a) event b) participants c) initiating<br>conditions d) venue and logistical considerations e) highlights, etc.<br>etc. does not stir my passions or lead me to want to take<br>responsibility. Some form of indexing and cross reference… Of this<br>story, you say: "The entries need not be massive, but of sufficient<br>size to have some weight. They should be substantive and carefully<br>done, meaning less emotion and more fact. – Oh yes, OS is emotional<br>stuff, emotions are important -- but in this case I think the facts<br>need to create the emotions (the WOW! factor). The reverse never works<br>too well, I think – especially with great “unwashed” world community.<br>This is not about “proving” Open Space. I don’t think we have to and I<br>am sure we could not do so even if we wanted. But we can lay out the<br>facts as we see them."<br><br>The invitation above does not move my pen, drive my fingers to the<br>keyboard or
inspire my soul. Yet I feel passionately that this other<br>"emotional" story I see and feel must be told, over and over again in<br>a way that is sensitive and responsive to this unwashed? community.<br>Facts have had center stage for too long; perhaps now it is time to<br>share that space more equally with emotion, not hiding from it but<br>speaking to it in words that invite and feel safe.<br><br>Now before I begin, I want to leave empty space here inviting you on<br>the OS list to use the LAW of 2 FEET as I again apologize to have<br>written long, not being able to speak short about what is in my heart<br>right now. The fact of the matter is that here in historic Berlin,<br>sitting in my hotel room in this 25th anniversary year of Open Space<br>after a wonderful WOSonOS, I cannot NOT speak my voice on this, no<br>more than Juan Luis could not NOT make the impassioned invitation that<br>he did for us to be in Chile next year or Matilda, in her
creative,<br>unique and inspiring invitational way, not NOT entice us to be in the<br>theatre capital of London for WOSonOS in 2012. I am French Canadian<br>with Latin blood (we speak long with our heart and our hands) who now<br>lives in the US world (which values short and to the point).<br><br><br><br>SPACE…..SPACE…..SPACE…… (Goodbye to bumble bees or butterflies)<br><br><br><br>Welcome and thank you for being in this circle with me. I will get<br>straight to the point: I don’t think the “facts” of Open Space are<br>the way to entice and to invite. I’ve decided to rebel, take a stand<br>and be an activist. For me, it’s ALL about stories and spirit, not<br>facts. My intuition has always felt this. I saw sparks of it in the<br>OST technology book and Wave Rider. I was then taken to magical places<br>with Spirit that I read on line and other books of Harrison’s that I<br>bought like The Practice of
Peace, The Power of Spirit, The Spirit of<br>Leadership, and Expanding our Now.<br><br>I discovered the power of Stories within me in those books. It made<br>me hear more clearly and feel more strongly the stories inside of me<br>and the stories of others that I hear in my everyday life. These<br>stories ARE the spirit and the spirit IS in those stories. They are<br>the antidote to the “soul pollution” and “data driven” lives that<br>consume so many. I cannot believe that “facts need to create emotion”.<br> In my mind, they are a big part of the problem. Time to make room for<br>something new.<br><br>In my journalist ways, I recalled other voices who spoke as I feel. I<br>remembered, for example, how mad I was to read the description of Open<br>Space technology on Wikipedia. Like a slap in the face, I cringed to<br>see their blaring banners at the top of the page, knowing that<br>clients, friends and colleagues read this about
Open Space. In spite<br>of the great work of Larry Peterson and others to provide better<br>descriptions, citations, references, etc. many of the searing words<br>remain and I quote: “the purpose of Wikipedia is to present fact, not<br>to train. Please improve this article either by rewriting the<br>how-to-content or...” Last year we formed a team on this Wikipedia<br>project and wonderful work got done (by others and not me). Brian<br>Bainbridge had accepted to be part but we never got that far. I quote<br>him now as I feel it is relevant to the discussion on emotions and<br>facts.<br><br>“I’d be quite interested to help in this task; though I’m not sure we<br>should bow to the world of academia and follow down their infallible<br>line of thinking and presenting. So I’m of the opinion that we should<br>be true to Open Space and the truth of it, and say what we see<br>happening, rather than academic-ising any such
documentation. IMHO.<br>(Brian’s “in my humble opinion”)<br>As one writer (I don’t know who) said, if we keep doing things the<br>same way as we have always done, then the outcomes will be the same as<br>they have always been. In Open Space, as I see it, we are really<br>turning the “traditional way of doing things” on its head…”<br><br>Perhaps as a woman in corporate life and elsewhere, I revolt<br>remembering the silent messages that I felt so often: “emotions not<br>welcome here”. I believe the pathway to the future is not to go from<br>fixing problems or describing and validating data first; it starts and<br>ends with the emotional stories of our lives, filled with data, love,<br>action, passion, hopes, joys and dreams. We just have to create a safe<br>place for stories to be spoken and heard and Open Space does that.<br><br>If we place too much emphasis on data as the way to describe the<br>experiment of Open Space,
there is an implied promise of outcome and<br>results which is not in the spirit of what we invite. Rather than a<br>bunch of someone else’s case studies, I prefer the simple analogy of<br>Open Space igniting the same energy of a “coffee break” in meetings,<br>gatherings and conferences. Vivid, to the point, few words, speaking<br>much truth on which we all seem to instantly agree! In that basic<br>description, one can easily imagine the benefits and opportunities of<br>what is possible when the energy of people is HIGH compared to what it<br>is when the energy is LOW? Do we really need to talk about all that<br>other data and fact stuff or even present it in a book?<br><br>That said, I honor the “the conversations where people are” which is<br>in the data world. How do we help people shift away from that world<br>of “facts” and “to do lists” that seems to consume their every<br>waking moment as they
seek to “prove” before they start, look for<br>“certainty” before moving forward, wishing everything to be safe and<br>conflict-free?<br><br>There is no recipe for this. We find the answers inside ourselves.<br>Harrison calls it the “Nexus of Caring”. It’s where the dance of<br>relationship begins, from a place of non-judgment, of deep listening<br>and connecting, hoping that in the middle, together from a place of<br>shared passion about real, urgent and important issues, we find each<br>other. The conversation then transforms into a dialogue of trust and<br>shared vulnerability. It becomes the foundation where sponsor,<br>facilitator and organizing team become community long before anyone<br>ever sits in a circle. The Open Space event is a breeze compared to<br>this which Lisa Heft calls the pre-work that is her passion.<br><br>Strange as it sounds and as strongly as I feel about what I have just<br>now
asserted that stories trump data, I still pause and wonder if<br>Harrison and others may be “right” in what they say here. Is the<br>data story what’s needed now as we see Open Space breaking big time<br>into main stream? I try to be open and listen, to understand,<br>honoring those before me who have facilitated hundreds and hundreds of<br>events who may feel this to be the story, a sponsor’s story that gives<br>center stage to facts. Maybe I am not understanding. And yet, as I<br>doubt myself, I feel myself transported back to the conforming person<br>that I was, almost giving up before I begin, abandoning my passion<br>before it gets ignited. This I must not do. I feel violently<br>passionate that our emotional “stories” will never be tiresome.<br>Indeed, I feel they are ALL that we have.<br><br><br>Now I can only speak as the “more aware and conscious” person that I<br>am, who has “just recently been touched”
this way, who still “feels<br>the stirrings” so strongly inside and from that “feeling place”. It<br>has reactivated the journalist I once was, going on a mission this<br>past year, to ask others: “how do YOU feel”, “what is happening to<br>YOU”, “how did this start for YOU”, “tell me YOUR story”. Then as I<br>listen to facilitators, participants and others, I see the patterns of<br>their unique story, one that they cannot easily write themselves<br>because as they speak it, the story emerges from inside like a work of<br>art and it is a beautiful story of life each time as if for the first<br>time. I see and hear the story in their eyes, in their heart, in<br>their voice and in every breath they take to describe it. This is<br>what amazes me, what humbles me, and what excites me. I am always in<br>awe, can never hear enough, and somehow then, I feel that this story<br>in all its unique
creativity, joy and passion must be written. It is<br>never quite the same and at the same time, it is always the same.<br>Like a work of art, a painting on a canvass with so much in each<br>stroke of the brush. And what is even more amazing is that whether you<br>are a participant or a facilitator, whether you live on one continent<br>or another, wherever you sit in life, the stories have this same<br>“sameness” and rich “diversity”. That's what seems to happen in Open<br>Space and then from this place of being together as one, people<br>connect with others and find their courage to act alone and together<br>to make a difference on what they care about. Maybe one day, I will<br>start this book that tells the "emotional" stories of others in their<br>words, capturing every vibrant nuance of joy and pain knowing that<br>they will inspire others as they always inspire me. And who knows,<br>perhaps its spirit will invite more than
data ever could because we<br>will recognize each other from the "inside out" knowing that we can<br>never truly see each other clearly from the "outside in".<br><br>Suzanne<br><br>P.S. Thank you Berlin for helping me tear down my wall.<br><br><br>On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 12:59 AM, Chris Corrigan<br><<a ymailto="mailto:chris@chriscorrigan.com" href="mailto:chris@chriscorrigan.com">chris@chriscorrigan.com</a>> wrote:<br>> Beautiful....I knew you were deeply in!<br>> My love to all gathered in Pannwitz-land.<br>><br>> Chris<br>> ----<br>> Chris Corrigan<br>> <a ymailto="mailto:chris@chriscorrigan.com" href="mailto:chris@chriscorrigan.com">chris@chriscorrigan.com</a><br><span>> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.chriscorrigan.com">http://www.chriscorrigan.com</a></span><br>><br>><br>> On 2010-05-14, at 9:43 PM, Lisa Heft wrote:<br>><br>> Chris wrote:<br>> ...invitation based, generous in its inclusion,
disciplined in its<br>> representation of the history and use of the method and hefty (which I<br>> suppose implicates Lisa in some way!) in its importance.<br>> Yes, I am hefty indeed (although not massive in size, I do like the fact<br>> that 'impressive', 'powerful' and 'mighty' often appear in the definition of<br>> this word as well as references to size and weight - you never know when you<br>> may need those qualities...<br>> And since I am in Berlin at the WOSonOS, it is appropriate that I take notes<br>> for the discussion sessions I attend, because one of the German translations<br>> of 'Heft' is 'Notebook'...<br>> Lisa, das Heft<br>><br>><br>> * * ==========================================================<br>> <a ymailto="mailto:OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU" href="mailto:OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU">OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU</a> ------------------------------ To subscribe,<br>>
unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of<br>> <a ymailto="mailto:oslist@listserv.boisestate.edu" href="mailto:oslist@listserv.boisestate.edu">oslist@listserv.boisestate.edu</a>:<br><span>> <a target="_blank" href="http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html">http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html</a> To learn about</span><br>> OpenSpaceEmailLists<span> and OSLIST FAQs: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist">http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist</a></span><br>><br>> * * ==========================================================<br>> <a ymailto="mailto:OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU" href="mailto:OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU">OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU</a> ------------------------------ To subscribe,<br>> unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of<br>> <a ymailto="mailto:oslist@listserv.boisestate.edu"
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