Yesterday Ashley Cooper posted a question on the OSLIST about the enigmatic principle of “whatever happens is only thing that could have:
Feeling those gathered in San Francisco, swimming in the hearty open space soup, I find a myself pondering a topic I would host if I were there… a topic I’d love to have a conversation around.
I’m curious about the wording of the principle, “what ever happens is the only thing that could have”. I know John Engle brought this question up in the past http://www.openspaceworld.org/news/2007/05/11/whatever-happens/ and I’m still curious about it.
I find that people sometimes use it as a block to reflection, a reason to not look back and learn from what didn’t happen because “whatever happens is the only thing that could have.” Yes, and…
I love the principle for the acceptance that it invites. And I struggle with it because there is a sense of finality that it also invites (if you want to let yourself go there). We did what we did and that’s, that. Which is true… And…
I appreciate how in Haiti they are playing with What Happens is what happens – learn and move forward. I like the learn and keep moving part.
Are there other ways that people phrase this principle? How do you invite the spirit of acceptance and invitations to be with what is alive and happening in the moment, while also inviting reflection and learning from what has and has not emerged?
If anyone at WOSonOS is reading this and you find this conversation springing up in your face to face time, please do share your harvest with us. I’m contemplating posting a skype session tomorrow morning on this topic… and I’ve not yet been able to commit myself to being inside at the computer tomorrow morning!!
I put the question to a few folks here and recorded about a half hour of their answers. Wisdom follows from Larry Peterson, Michael Cook, Viv McWaters, Peggy Holman, Susan Kerr, Michael Pannwitz, David Barnes, Jeff Aitken, Lisa Heft, Aine Corrigan-Frost, Alan Stewart, Phelim McDermott, Elwin Guild, John Engle and Brian Bainbridge, You can listen to the interviews here:
I mentioned some of the blogs that are here in San Franciso…here are a few more:
- Stephan List and also this Toolblog
- Winkipod
- Tales of a toy
- Diana Larsen
- Mythic Cartography
Yesterday I convened a session on our greatest “ahas” about the Open Space world over the last year…here is a selection from my report:
We discussed several things we have noticed over the past year or so that have been major “ahas” for us both as seasoned and new Open Space Technology facilitators. These insights fell into three broad categories.
First, it is clear that there is an increasing familiarity with OST and an increasing demand for the process. Furthermore it seems that groups that are using the process are going very deep and using it in very sophisticated ways. As facilitators we are finding less and less need to “sell” people on the idea of the process. This was attributed to a number of factors including the fact that society in general is learning and practicing a lot more of relationship working. Information technology has transformed to relationship technology and collaboration and interactivity has woven its way into many aspects of daily life. Mobility, interactivity, collaboration and tolerance for chaos have become more mainstream. As a result, we are learning more and more about the need to be more tolerant with chaos, as we have been perfected real time course corrections. Wikipedia is a mainstream example now of the power of collaborative technology and this has raised the bar for face to face meeting and collaborative work.
As facilitators we are learning more and more to be collaborative in all stages of the Open Space process, from invitation, to hosting, to harvesting and sustaining results. We are becoming more and more comfortable with the role of creating difficulty and chaos in order to help groups and organizations find new levels of innovation and collaboration. More of us are finding ourselves playing the archetypal role of The Fool in our work.
A third and very interesting development is noting the mental health benefits of participants experiencing greater integration as a result of being in active community experiences. Open Space seems to not only produce high quality results but also high quality relationships that results in deeper and deeper ways of being and deeper experiences of individual and collective wholeness.
San Francisco
OSonOS 2008 has begun with Lisa Heft opening up space in a beautiful building at San Francisco’s Presidio this morning for 120 of us from more than 15 countries to get into what Open Space is all about. This is my third worldwide OSonOS and I love these gatherings because I get to hang around with people for three days that I don;t have to explain myself to! That, I think may be a good working definition of a community of practice.
THis one is different for me as I am here with my whole family, and my kids are actively participating. I sat with my seven year old Finn today in a session on facilitating Open Space as a kid. For him I think it was an experiment in what it is like to post a session and see who will come and find out how the whole thing goes. There was a small group of us talking about a number of issues having to do with working with children both in Open Space and facilitating Open Space, and a few insights came to light.
First, when working with kids, it’s important to know that the principles of Open Space will always be pushed to the max, and probably beyond what most adults are comfortable with. We had a story of a gathering that my kids were a part of that was hosted by adults, but in which the outcomes were predetermined and “the best face” was put on the event. Working with kids means whatever happens in the only thing that could have happened and that might also mean that nothing of significance happens. Being okay with this, especially if resources have been sunk into something, can be hard for adults tied to outcomes. Working with kids will always teach you something about your practice.
We heared some good points about the kinds of ways adults need to show up with kids in Open Space, notably around the issue of time rhythms and silence. Kids operate on a different time engine than adults, sometimes speeding ahead, other times slowing down. Often kids won’t speak until they know they are safe and they will silently canvas a circle of their peers to see who might talk first. This can seem interminable to adults who are expecting answers and yet this relationsl field is very important to kids.
We talked too about making sure that spaces are meaningful for kids. If we are doing work that involves kids voices, we need to make sure that these voices will have impact and that we may be prepared to be changed by the experience. Adults can be advocates to kids – even in child-based organizations – to make sure that children’s wisdom is heard.
Finally we talked a little about a real world issue going on in our home community of Bowen Island, where some trees are being taken out of a playground to build an all weather playing field, something Finn is pretty interested in. The need for children to have spaces in which unfettered social self-organization can occur is critical. While there are many forested areas on our island, there are very few in which all the island kids can meet and in which the co-create self-organized worlds. In this sense kids already know how to live and be in Open Space. Helping them to actually run meetings like this might benefit from drawing on these expereinces.
My son really co-convened this session with me and at times he was lost for words. I think for him, there was a little experiment going on: what is it like to call a session? Who will come? How does the power work in this process? He learned a few things about this, including the fact that if you call it, people will come. He also learned about checking in and checking out and knowing that that is okay, but it reminded me that for a wide open learner it may be true that working in Open Space is equally about learning about the content and playing with the process. Fascinating all round.
San Francisco, CA, USA
The annual world Open Space on Open Space is upon us, and I am here with the whole family in San Francisco in anticipation of two and half days of meeting with friends old and new. Tonight Harrison Owen was here making a brief appearance to launch the 3rd Edition of the Open Space Technology User’s Guide, which has been updated with several stories and tweaks to the process that the community has evolved since the last edition, published in the 1990s. It was good to see Harrison again, although ever so briefly, as he was off to perfrom the wedding ceremony for his daughter this coming weekend, so he won’t be with us.
A nice evening reception though down at Fort Mason on the waterfront. Several bloggers are here this year, so I expect to see stuff posted from Viv McWaters, Jeff Aitken, Christy Lee Engle, Doug Germann and Kaliya Hamlin among others. Hopefully we’ll have some connectivity in the conference site and I’ll be able to post the odd reflection or two.
In the meantime, we’ve been here for a few days already, visiting Alcatraz, downtown and around the waterfront. I have some photos up at the flickr site, won’t be labeled for a while though.