Chris Corrigan Chris Corrigan Menu
  • Blog
  • Chaordic design
  • Resources for Facilitators
    • Facilitation Resources
    • Books, Papers, Interviews, and Videos
    • Books in my library
    • Open Space Resources
      • Planning an Open Space Technology Meeting
  • Courses
  • About Me
    • Services
      • What I do
      • How I work with you
    • CV and Client list
    • Music
    • Who I am
  • Contact me
  • Blog
  • Chaordic design
  • Resources for Facilitators
    • Facilitation Resources
    • Books, Papers, Interviews, and Videos
    • Books in my library
    • Open Space Resources
      • Planning an Open Space Technology Meeting
  • Courses
  • About Me
    • Services
      • What I do
      • How I work with you
    • CV and Client list
    • Music
    • Who I am
  • Contact me

Category Archives "Open Space"

Where am I now?

April 24, 2009 By Chris Corrigan Being, Emergence, Facilitation, First Nations, Open Space, Travel, Youth One Comment

I was talking to my daughter tonight on the phone.   I was walking out of The Forks in Winnipeg where I had just eaten a pickerel (that I learned was from Kazakhstan…W.T.F!) and my daughter requested that I get a GPS that could beep and show where I am on this epic trip.   After being on the road for eight days already, with another 12 ahead of me, I don’t even know where I am sometimes.

Yesterday I was wrapping up the 2009 Good Food Gathering in San Jose and I took a CalTrain up to SFO, hopped an Air Canada flight to Calgary, spent the night there, and flew to Winnipeg early this morning where I joined national gathering of Aboriginal youth who are meeting to thinking about how to renew a very successful federal government program.   That’s a lot of travel, but it doesn’t stop there.   I fly to Ottawa tomorrow and spend most of the week at an Art of Hosting in Pembroke, Ont. before flying to Kelowna for a one day Open Space and then down to California again, this time to Hoopa, to work with a small Native radio station, KIDE.   I get home May 6 after 20 straight days on the road split between five different gigs.

The Kellogg gathering was a lovely experience, and I was especially tickled by how we dissolved the traditional conference model.   Day one was all speakers and plenary panel presentations, with a little bit of conversation built in around the ballroom set up with six foot rounds.   Day two, we got rid of the tables and held the whole day in Open Space.   Day three, a day that we deliberately left free for an emergent design, featured us getting rid of the chairs.   When the participants arrived, the room was empty save for a few pieces of tape on the floor.   Although half the participants called it a day right there, about 250 stayed on to engage in a beautiful piece of intergenerational work.   Led by our youngest team members, Norma Flores, Manny Miles and Maggie Wright, the participants self-organized into a spiral by age, with the youngest person at the centre and the oldest on the outside.   Looking around that spiral was to see the journey of a person growing in the Good Food movement.

We then people gather with the ten people closest to them on the spiral and figure out a song, chant, slogan, sentence or movement, that captured what their small demographic had to say to the whole.   The next 20 minutes consisted of people bot speaking to the centre and speaking from their place.   A voice and story of life in the movement unfolded all the way from the energy and optimism of the youth to the stretch of middle aged people to the tired, but persistent presence of the movement’s elders.   After we took a breath we moved to another room and ended it with a drum circle.

Fun.

Tomorrow, a day of Open Space with youth who   are designing the future of the Urban Multipurpose Aboriginal Youth Centres Program and then it’s off to Ottawa to run this Art of Hosting with dear friends Tenneson Woolf, Teresa Posakony and Kathy Jourdain and a great local team.

I’m twittering more than blogging these days.   The microform works well.   If you’re interested (yes Aine, YOU!) my twitter feed is here.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Twittering Open Space

April 6, 2009 By Chris Corrigan Open Space

Just a note that if you are an Open Space facilitator and you twitter, the hashtag #openspace is a useful way to tag what you are doing.   There are lots of great real time reflections in that feed, and I love especially the fact that the tag has been set up and is used extensively by people not involved in the centre of the Open Space Technology practitioner community, meaning of course that the Open Space Technology practitioner community has finally dissolved into the world like Harrison always hoped it would.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

What is the foundation of what we do?

April 3, 2009 By Chris Corrigan Art of Hosting, Collaboration, Conversation, Facilitation, Open Space, Organization, World Cafe 6 Comments

Lovely day here in Marin County hanging out with friends and charting some interesting paths forward on a few projects.   One highlight of the day was spending time with Amy Lenzo, who I have known for a while but met only one time previously when we were on an diverse and eclectic team of facilitators holding space at the Pegasus systems thinking conference a couple of years ago.   Amy is, among other things, the web goddess for The World Cafe community and we spent a lovely lunch at the excellent Buckeye Roadhouse talking over the nature of our work, the ways in which we look at the art of hosting within rich social spaces and what is at the core of our approach to things.   We were reflecting on what the World Cafe, Open Space, Berkana and Art of Hosting communities (among many others) have in common and it comes down to these four things – archetypal patterns if you will:

  1. The source pattern for our understanding of group process is the circle
  2. The source pattern for leadership within that process is “hosting” or facilitative (or “holding space“)
  3. The source pattern for design of process is diverge – emerge – converge
  4. The source pattern of our worldview is living systems

These four patterns form a set of foundations about our practice.   They stand in contrast to foundations of group work for which:

  1. The source pattern for understanding group process is the traditional school room.
  2. The source pattern for leadership is the teacher or command and control
  3. The source pattern for design is linear: moving from point A to point B
  4. The source pattern for worldviews is mechanistic.

These distinctions are useful because the source patterns serve as an invitation.   If you find yourself in alignment with the first set of patterns, you’ll probably find kin in the Cafe, Open Space, Berkana and Art of Hosting communities.   If you relate more to the second set you ‘ll probably find yourself engaged with people from more traditional training backgrounds.   There is certainly a time and place for both, and the skillful application of one or the other sets of foundations is what is brought by artful process practitioners.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Face to face

March 31, 2009 By Chris Corrigan Collaboration, Open Space 5 Comments

Interesting stuff popping out today around the net on social tools and face to face.   On the OSLIST, there was a little discussion on using twitter and facebook and the pros and cons.   I posted these thoughts:

I love the social tools because they allow me to connect with and get to know people in far flung areas who are closer to me in thought and spirit than those who are nearby.   For me, twitter, facebook, skype and blogging are a means to an end, and that end os sharing open face to face conversations with folks that are in disperate places, but with whom I learn a lot.

And something to think about intergenerationally is that there are teenagers now who have lived their entire lives in a world with blogging, skype, and facebook.   Think about that for a minute.   These people don’t consider these technologies to be old at all.   They consider them the default setting.

In a time when intergenerational conversation is becoming more important (how do we talk to the people with whom we have saddled with a trillion dollar debt, to explain to them to follies of our excess?) knowing a little about how these technologies enable self-organizing behaviour among digital natives is very important.   And learning to use them I think is as important as employing other powerful social technologies like, say, Open Space.

So I don’t begrudge the unwillingness to particiapte in the collective monkey mind (thanks Karen!) or the pining for real contact, but I do encourage people to learn about and play with these tools, just like we have with OST and see what happens…

And then today, a couple of posts in the feed.   Wendy Farmer-O’Neil dives back into blogging with a piece on “Web 3.0” and my neighbour and friend Emily van Lidthe de Jeude offers a lovely reflection on working with real world intimacy and global connectivity.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

A great hybrid Cafe design

March 30, 2009 By Chris Corrigan Open Space, World Cafe, Youth One Comment

Micheal Herman posted a cool cafe design to the OSLIST today.   It marries the best of Cafe and Open Space:

i just facilitated an afternoon program with 120 “high potential” high school seniors as part of a final selection process for full-ride scholarships to two excellent universities.   it was a cafe format, but the first session was used to write questions that these young leaders thought they and other young people should be addressing.   then we did three rounds in which table hosts picked the questions and raised them with whoever rotated to their table for one session.   after the first question-making session, the 20 tables went in 20 different directions, like an open space with so many small stakes in the ground.   and i went around picking up cups and the last bits of box-lunch trash in cafe-style, with a small tray and quiet “can i take that out of your way?”

UPDATE: Michael has posted an excellent detailed write up of this design at his blog.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

1 … 11 12 13 14 15 … 30

Find Interesting Things
Events
  • Art of Hosting April 27=29, 2026, with Caitlin Frost, Kelly Poirier and Kris Archie, Vancouver, Canada
  • The Art of Hosting and Reimagining Education, October 16-19, Elgin Ontario Canada, with Jenn Williams, Cédric Jamet and Troy Maracle
Resources
  • A list of books in my library
  • Facilitation Resources
  • Open Space Resources
  • Planning an Open Space Technology meeting
SIGN UP

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
  

Find Interesting Things

© 2015 Chris Corrigan. All rights reserved. | Site by Square Wave Studio

%d