From my friend Roq Garreau: “Visioning means imagining. At first generally, and then, with increasing specificity, what you really want. That is what you really want. Not what someone else has taught you to want and not what you have learned to settle for. Visioning means taking off all of the constraints of assumed feasibility, of disbelief and past disappointments and letting your mind dwell upon its most noble, treasured, uplifting dreams. Some people, especially young people, engage in visioning with enthusiasm and ease. Some people find the exercise of visioning painful because a glowing picture of what could be …
I am pleased to announce the release of a small book I have been working on for the last three years. It is called “The Tao of Holding Space” and it is a collection of interpretations of the 81 short chapters of the Chinese classic Tao te Ching as they apply to my experience of holding space. I started this book three years ago, when I began noting parallels between Lao Tzu’s words and my experience of leadership, facilitation and living in Open Space, something many of us have done. In some ways this book chronicles the essence of my …
I am trying to book a flight from Vancouver to Penticton. The Air Canada website is giving me all kinds of errors tonight and I have been ploughing away for about 45 minutes trying to secure a booking. In an effort to just cut to the chase, I called the reservations centre. They normally have a $20 fee for booking over the phone, but I assume that they will waive that to get me a booking as the web site is clearly down. To my faint surprise and astonishment, Kevin, the reservations agent, says he can’t do it. …
At the Open Space List, there has been an interesting little discussion about the evolution of Open Space Technology. Michael weighed in with a lovely observation and then Harrison Owen himself summed it all up: Michael You said, ” i would say that i think there is *definitely* a next generation of ost… and another and another… but it’s not the *process* that’s changing — it’s the facilitator!” I think that is a marvelous insight! It is certainly true for me. The essentials of OST, and the way I “do” them has changed so little in 20 years (with the …
Many of you know that I have been writing for five years about living on Bowen Island, off the west coast of Canada. With the advent of Artisan Radio, a small community radio station that also streams to the web, I have returned to my radio roots with a show produced by my family, called “Island Time.” The first episode of Island Time is online, as a podcast. You can find it hosted at the Internet Archive, where you will also find show notes and three different audio formats. Download the mp3 here. Shownotes 00:00 Intro 00:38 Bowen Moment – …