Found, on a sign on our main road here on Bowen Island.
Technorati Tags: God
The 2005 iteration of a 14 year tradition, the annual Open Space on Open Space will take place this year in Halifax,. Nove Scotia. And despite it being on the other side of our continent, it’s still closer to me this year than it has been since I co-hosted the gathering in 2001. So I’m going.
And if you are interested in Open Space Technology, and free August 4-6, you might consider joining us in Halifax.
Technorati Tags: openspace, conferences, halifax
While I was in Prince George, David Stevenson and I rejigged the OST practice workshop that Michael Herman and I have been delivering around the world over the last two years. We changed it from two days of mostly open space, to four half days of focus on the practices of opening, inviting, holding and practicing. I sent the design to Michael and he pushed the parts around a little and came up with this riff:
“1. practice of opening. it’s about willingness. willingness to see, to know, to open. it’s personal and reflective, but can be felt physically in body and charted in organizations.
2. practice of inviting. it’s about goodness. finding benefits TO others, as in what’s in it for them, and also benefits IN others, as in recognizing what they can add to the process of achieving what is desired personally in the first practice. it makes that first practice social, collective, organizational, and cultural, but also documented in invitation emails, letters, posters.
3. practice of holding. it’s about supporting movement and change. providing space and time, structures that support without making decisions for people, giving attention, carrying in awareness or carrying forward, holding in one’s heart or home or conference room. it creates room for others to expand, explore, experiment… to bring new things out in the world. it is simultaneously logistical, mental, and emotional.
4. practice of practicing. it’s about sustaining, returning, realizing, and making real. this is action, taking a stand, making progress, going somewhere, documenting results. this implies the continuation and diffusion of the above. standing ground, staying the course, seeing things through. it is the personal and individual (I, me, my) pursuit of the good that WE invite, in the space that WE provide. It can look simply mechanical and become deeply meditative, as we go round again, starting with Opening. (note… this might also be called the practice of ‘participating,’ perhaps ‘making,’ or simply ‘doing’ or ‘changing.’ stay tuned”
The first time we offered this workshop was with our friend Judi Richardson in Alaska with a bunch of middle school peer mediators in 2002. This iteration was offered to street involved youth in Prince George. There is something about working with youth in the north that brings out good training designs!
Not only can we offer it in two days, or in a couple of hours, but it lends itself to a four day iteration with a number of somatic exercises built in to anchor these practices in the body. It could be an organizational development workshop, a personal development workshop, Open Space Technology training or a short cut to a deeper practice of facilitation.
We offered the workshop Monday and Tuesday this week. In London, Johnnie Moore has already picked up on it. In four scant days, it has travelled half way around the world. Amazing.
Technorati Tags: openspace, facilitation, leadership
This is being posted elsewhere, but David Weinberger has co-written a little manifesto on the infrastructure of democracy for a conference in Madrid on terrorism, security and democracy.
I especially like this line:
“The best response to abuses of openness is more openness.”
I agree with that and then some. The internet may form an important piece of the infrastructure of democracy, but this principle applies to all processes and techniques that humans use for communicating and collaborating, including conversational processes.
Over the last week in Prince George I did a two day Open Space practice workshop with some young women (formerly drug addicted and/or street involved) and some service providers. We were looking at the the four essential practices that are required for Open Space Technology facilitation: inviting, opening, holding and practicing. The conversation about practices of opening yielded a great list of practices including appreciation, saying “I don’t know”, asking questions, offering, giving, being silent, listening and so on. To me these are the essential personal practices that can then work within an infrastructure of democracy that supports openness.
Technorati Tags: democracy, citizenship
From four-year old Finn today:
“Night comes when the earth yawns and the darkness comes down from space.”
It’s nice to be back home after 8 days in Prince George. Great to reconnect with the little ones and be privy to this sort of wisdom.