The world has lost a fine young fiddler.
Danny O’Connell, from Ottawa, left us too young and too suddenly and with only one CD to his name. I had the pleasure of playing with him last year in a magical session in Ottawa at the Celtic Cross pub on Elgin Street, and boy, was he going places.
You can here a very short clip of his playing here or go to the Ottawa Folklore Centre website and see if they can ship you a copy of his album Green Fields of the Valley.
My condolences to his friends and family.
On the OSLIST, the list for Open Space Technology practitioners, a conversation about using Open Space Technology as part of the design charette process elicited this story from Zelle Nelson in North Carolina:
My experience with Open Space and an architect/design project is actually from a project I worked on with BP in Scotland. The 60 person business unit I was working with was moving from one part of the building complex to another (most would agree the space they were moving into was the worst space in the building). I started with an Open Space Visioning meeting where in addition to the usual markers and paper for Open Space I added magazines (design, nature, home furnishings, etc.) a big roll of paper, scissors, and glue. I invited the group to talk about what they envisioned the ideal work space to be and to cut out pictures from the magazines, use words, and pictures to create a collage of what the new space might feel like.
We took this collage, along with the results from the Open Space and shared this with the architects and designers (the designers/architects were invited to be at the visioning Open Space) assigned to the project. Some incredible ideas that I could never have thought of on my own, along with the many concerns about moving to “the worst space in the building” were folded into the design process which also took into account budget constraints and site needs/requests.
The design team then came back with a design for the new work space (which included skylights and a “yellow brick road” gleaned from the first Open Space). We took these sketches/blue prints and went back into Open Space with cut out furniture options and pencil and paper. Each team then looked at the areas available and filled in the design details specific to their needs. Conversation and negotiation took place between the different teams and a consensus design was reached.
The final result was an exceptional work space that was loved by the business unit and the “worst space” in the building is now considered the best place to be.
Along the way, I worked with individuals and teams around learning how to create places that work for them instead of trying to fit into someone else’s design. I gave them, tools and a language to find the best mix between personal and team needs.
This is a brilliant application of the process and continues in a long line of stories about Open Space being used to design everything from pavillions to shoes to aircraft doors to landscapes. If you want to know more about Zelle’s work, visit the website of her company Know Place Like Home
This is a classic example of intrinsic motivation:
My daughter is six years old and she is learning to read. At night we have been reading her The Hobbit and she has declared that it is the best book ever written. She is keen to read have more Tolkein read to her, but we’re wary of reading Lord of the Rings to her at bedtime. It’s a little gory for her age right now.
Last week, my daughter confessed to her grandmother that she was secretly teaching herself to read so that she could read Lord of the Rings by herself, without us finding out about it.
Naturally, I am doing nothing to dissuade this! She is indeed teaching herself to read (she is a homelearner, so no school for her). And she is starting to show a rather indiscreet interest in someone called Frodo.
That’s what it’s all about. Learning from the inside out.
Jim McGee points to a great post from Jevon McDonald on the price of silence in organizations, and what to do about it. Opening up communications starts from the bottom:
A change in the prevailing culture of an established organization cannot come from the very top-down approach that is being reevaluated. It must come from people, like Harry in our previous story, who will lead by example. Facilitators and early adopters are key to the success of personal publishing in your organization. By bringing key figures into the picture, such as Presidents, Vice Presidents, and prominent people within departments, on board early on, the real need for openness and communication will be understood by the rest of the involved community.
Our new focus must move from the problem to the person. Much like Harry, we must empower people (or allow them to empower themselves) at all levels of our organization. By recognizing the power of discourse, we can encourage all levels within the hierarchy to speak freely. When �“Breaking the ice�” becomes a cultural norm, a powerful new way of working emerges. No longer are we stuck in a world where we can�’t act creatively.
Creating a space where this kind of interaction can take place becomes a high priority. The problem with this type of change is that a Memorandum regarding a corporate cultural change would be the antithesis of itself. We must foster this change carefully, in a safe and comfortable space for everyone.
This is one of the reasons I love using Open Space Technology within organizations or in communities where there are people who have been traditionally disenfranchised by the power structure. Open Space opens up the agenda for passion from everyone involved in the enterprise and creates conditions where new ideas which challenge the conventions can be put forward in a constructive manner. Having leadership on board means that change can be created from the seeds that live in everyone who want to improve the present and seek a better future.
Howard Rheingold blogs Wes Boyd, the founder of Moveon.org who recently spoke about the power of self-organization:
We got involved in the run-up to the war in Iraq, and that’s where our big growth happened. People were disturbed about the rush to war. When the political establishment is not addressing people’s concerns, that is when the Net can afford a way for those people to come together. A little more than a year ago, we said that we’d done petitions and lobbying congress — should we try advertising? We asked for $35,000 for an ad in the NYT. In 48 hours, $400,000 came in. We ran an ad about ‘let the inspections work.’
Then the war happened. During that period, our list grow to around 1.3 million — it tripled during the run-up to the war. All these people came together originally around an issue. We wanted to know if they were interested about other issues. We asked how people felt about the budget and tax cuts, and we did an ad about a school in Oregon that had a blood drive to raise funds. While leaders in Washington were used to getting a few dozen comments about media consolidation issues. People were passing email petititions aroung the Internet about the proposed FCC rule changes that would allow even greater consolidation of media ownership, so we raised the issue and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in days, so we very actively engaged in issues, helped citizens meet with members of Congress and Senators, who were very surprised at the numbers of citizens who were coming in to talk about FCC rules, which had previously been followed by small numbers of media owners and policy wonks. We ran an ad featuring Rupert Murdoch about media consolidation. We enabled hundreds of thousands of communications to Congress, which responded.
The Internet is a powerful tool for connecting people who are trying to live in truth, self-organize campaigns and connections to express that truth and crack holes in the armour of complicity that surrounds the status quo.