Last week I was part of a remarkable Open Space event sponsored by the United Community Services Cooperative. I was able to bring my new friend Wendy Farmer-O’Neil along to introduce her to Open Space. She performed above and beyond duty helping out with the reports and generally sharing the space holding duties. And then she came home and blogged about it: I think that my heart and soul know that Open Space is the possibility realized�a way we can be together in truth and freedom�that it brings out the best of who we are�when we are willing to give …
Indigo Ocean emailed me an invitation to answer this meme: You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be? Hmmm…Am I burning? I can’t remember F451 well enough to remember what I should be here! Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? Kerewin, the Maori protagonist of The Bone People by Keri Hulme I read this book at a time in my life when I had violently lost someone I loved. Kerewin was a timely companion to see me through that grief. The last book you bought is: Thoreau’s Method: A Handbook for Nature …
In the Open Space world, we talk about the four pre-conditions that make for great open space events: diversity, complexity, passion and urgency. The more you have of these, the juicier the event becomes. That is counter intuitive to most ways of thinking, because in most cases it seems that problem solving processes aim to homogenize, simplify, rationalize and slow down. If we can just get a handle on the problem, the thinking goes, we can apply the best possible solution. This mechanistic view does not work with so-called “wicked problems.” It can generate solutions or options or ways forward …
From the excellent The Blog of Henry David Thoreau: “Science is inhuman. Things seen with a microscope begin to be insignificant. So described, they are as monstrous as if they should be magnified a thousand diameters. Suppose I should see and describe men and houses and trees and birds as if they were a thousand times larger than they are! With our prying instruments we disturb the balance and harmony of nature.” In an era where measurement leads to management, and therefore it’s measurement uber alles, this quote reminds us that things have their most powerful place in the whole …
Today at an Open Space I kept saying that the muber of people present was 53. Some folks corrected me, but the truth was that the number present kept changing as people came and went, but I was trying to make a point. Fifty three is a prime number. Prime numbers are good numbers to use to estimate a group’s size in Open Space because they are not easily divided. Ha ha.