In meetings in the Aboriginal community, it’s not uncommon to have prayers end with “all my relations” an utterance that invites attention to everything we are related to, and everyone from whom we are descended. As someone with a mixed ancestry, I sometimes like to think of an Open Space meeting that might have all 128 of my seventh generation genetic ancestors in the room. It would be crazy! Imagine them in a room looking at each other,perplexed, wondering what they could possibly have in common. And then imagine inviting them to create something together. And imagine that at some …
I have recently come into a set of three nice 1/2lb juggling balls from Higgins Brothers (“The Physical Intelligence People”). Teaching myself to juggle has been a great learning practice. I first learned how to juggle in 1984, with three tennis balls, in my parents basement. The flow kicked in while I was watching the CBC news magazine program “The Journal” as Barbara Frum was interviewing the Ethiopian foreign minister about the famine in his country. That is how sharp my awareness was that evening: I can remember exactly what was happening when I finally got three balls to cascade. …
My friend Viv McWaters sends this note from Australia: “I’m just back from three days at the Port Fairy Folk Festival where I immersed myself in great music and bands and came away with lots of thoughts about how facilitators can learn a lot from musicians. The stand out performer was Harry Manx – a Canadian Blues/folk performer who combines traditional blues, amazing slide guitar, mohan veena, mandolin and harmonica and vocals with traditional Indian music. He says on the CD notes “Mantras for Madmen”: ‘When the silence between the notes says as much as the notes themselves, like the …
On Monday I was up in Kamloops taking part in an annual gathering called the “Stop Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth” Conference. That’s a mouthful but it’s a truly wonderful annual gathering hosted by The Justice Institute of British Columbia (itself a great thing we have here in BC). I was asked to come and deliever a workshop on dialogue and deliberation methods with youth, and so I showed up to do that. In my design I though it would be cool to see if I could give people a tast of what it feels like to be engaged …
As I have been updating my website and moving things around I have finally gotten to re-organizing the Open Space Resources page. The page now contains resources on the nuts and bolts of of Open Space and deeper learning organized by practice area. There are also links to articles, books, stories and internet resources to support practice and learning about Open Space. I’ll continue to update the page (having it in a wiki makes that a LOT easier) and I’ll be adding a lot more stories of my own. I’m also looking at giving that page it’s …