Menu

Examples of great websites for communities of practice

August 16, 2005 By Uncategorized One Comment

I’ve been giving some thought to the home of the Open Space Technology practitioner community, openspaceworld.org. A few years ago Michael Herman and I reconstituted this site as a wiki with the intention that it would then be open to be edited by the community, and cared for by the community as well.

Alas, it seems that this did not take as well as we had hoped and constant spamming meant that we had to close the editing function. You can still have a password if you like, and edit to your heart’s content, but it’s one more step away from accessibility. And the result is that a small group of us, and mostly Michael, end up taking care of the site which was not the original intention of building the wiki

And so I’m wondering if there are examples out there of great sites that act as centres of gravity for communities of practice. The Appreciative Inquiry Commons comes to mind, as does The World Cafe site, two communities of practice I orbit within. I’d like ours to be collaborative as well as “heftier.” And not spammable.

So, thoughts?

Open Space on Open Space in the UK

August 14, 2005 By Uncategorized

My friend Kerry Napuk sent me the invitation to the OSonOS in the UK, slated for September 30th in London. It is being dedicated to the memory of Colin Morley who was an Open Space facilitator and who died in the July 7 bombings in London. Here is the invitation:

We would be very pleased if you could join us for the second OsonOS UK on September 30, 2005 at the NATFHE Conference Centre, 27 Britannia Street, London. Conversation will begin promptly at 10.00 a.m. and will be over when it’s over. A good lunch and refreshments are provided in the cost of �35 per person.

In order to set-up the event and finalise the catering, please let us know NOW, as numbers are limited, if you can join us by contacting Kerry Napuk, Open Futures, 10 West Savile Road, Edinburgh EH16 5NG, telephone 0131 668 4377 or email k@napuk.demon.co.uk .

Best of luck to my British colleagues in their gathering. I wish I could be there with them.

Christy Lee-Engle on invitation

August 13, 2005 By Uncategorized

Dig it, from my comments:

thank, chris, for this beautiful description of ‘a life of invitation’! maybe the space of ‘authentic presence’ exerts both great magnetism (drawing towards, inviting) and great radiance (pouring forth, offering) because it’s the space where ‘we’ are ‘not-two’– going through the doors that open we find our self in a place we’ve always known (you know this rumi verse?: “I have lived on the lip/of insanity, wanting to know reasons,/knocking on a door. It opens./I’ve been knocking from the inside!”) and even when we are not yet ‘in that same space or entering it,’ not yet resonant, it seems that being in proximity to someone who very much is (as i imagine Trungpa was; even the words he left behind have gravitational force) can tune us in, blow a sweetness under the door that makes us willing to fling it open. and while it does make sense to me that it’s not an exceptional capacity, that it’s available to all, and our birthright–that also it is still kind of extra-ordinary, and that’s why the way involves Practice(s), willingness, the discipline of paying attention.

Amazing, my friends who stop by here and gift me with their thoughts! Like “blow a sweetness under the door that makes us want to fling it open…” You know how to get my attention Christy!

And in response to your other invitation about the Seattle BlogWalk, I wish I could come down for that but September 2 is my partner’s birthday and there are far more important things afoot…

More on trees

August 13, 2005 By Uncategorized

Someone could probably write a whole book on tree metaphors. Here is another, from William Isaacs’ amazing book on Dialogue. This is Peter Senge talking about David Bohm’s ideas of dialogue:

David Bohm used to say that the tree does not grow from the seed. It is ludicrous to say the tiny seed produces the immense oak tree. Rather, Bohm suggested, the seed is a kind of aperture through which the tree gradually emerges. IN a sense, it organizes the processes of growth which eventually create the tree. Just so, our conversations organize the processes and structures which shape our collective futures. The nature of the aperture rests in the spirit that shapes the undertaking.

Happy At Work Now

August 12, 2005 By Uncategorized

My friend (and one time guest blogger here) Alex Kjerulf is ploughing ahead with his Happy At Work Project and he now has a website up and an international conference in the offing for next month.

In his inaugural English newsletter, he quotes from this article about Southwest Airlines and reiterates the following story:

[One] time, a senior executive spent a day working at the ticket counter and with the ground crew to have a better understanding of their roles. While she was helping direct a plane to the gate using those long orange directional devises, one of the seasoned ground crew members told her to rotate her wrists in a circular manner. When she did this, the plane did a 360 degree turn! She began to scream thinking she had sent a confusing signal to the pilot. In reality, the ground crew had contacted the pilot and told them they had a “greeny” directing the plane and that they wanted to have some fun with her. The pilot enthusiastically agreed to play along. Very cool.