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Musing from our Membership Meeting

If you want to do a deep dive, the annual membership meeting notes and even the full audio are available. We did not use Open Space Technology, but instead kept to an agenda with wide ranging check-ins followed by two questions: How did OST impact the evolution of your own consciousness? What's happening with world wide open space institutes? And then we closed with check-outs.

What stands out? One board member was not present due to the illness in her family, and two who were present had immanent births upcoming. Several were excited about what was showing up in the Occupy movement, and how it is opening conversations very relevant for Open Space Technology.

For the personal question around consciousness it touched on personal evolution of letting go of control and fixed answers, of opening up to the infinite divine world where prayer, mystics and shamans are comfortable, of synthesizing and going deeper into what we and who we already know, and being a servant leader and a mid-wife. Open Space Technology is life changing, and changes our relationships with ourselves and others. We can see Open Space is, like birth, an event, and yet it is also a philosophy - about taking responsibility for what we love as an act of service. And how Open Space Technology is often a part of a journey that includes and touches on other philosphies and practices, such as Theory U, Appreciative Inquiry, and Transpersonal Psychology, and Gestalt.

Around the question of Open Space Institutes around the world, we had representation for the U.S., U.K., and France. The WOSonOS coming up in 2012 has already been touching on the question of having an Institute in the U.K., but there is no decision to have one as it is unclear what is the purpose and process around these institutes. As a community of practice internationallly, what needs to happen. Should they be called institutes that compare car insurance quotes? The Institute in France dissolved due to power struggles an in part the lack of clarity of the purpose and mission. Yet the OSI-US has managed to succeed by not imposing hiearchy and instead has been a mutually supportive space. And although there is some question about how to do it, it does seem important that we find a way to continue coming together to keep the conversation alive globally and to hold space for open space, despite the legacy we have of divide and conquer that makes it so hard for us to collaborate on coming to solutions that can address what we need.

Comments

Although I wrote the article above, I tried to keep it neutral. But as an attendee I was hardly impartial.

Both questions were of passionate interest to me, as is Open Space Technology itself. Although the purpose and validity of Open Space Institutes across the world is unclear, there has clearly been a value to having a place to gather and discuss our issues as Open Space Technology facilitators and practitioners. The OSList is a testimony to that. Because the Open Space Institute U.S. is a 501(c)(3) organization, we qualified for free webhosting from DreamHost, which means it costs us only the fee for domain registration annually to maintain the OSList. When Boise State University stopped giving us a free ListServe, it looked like it might have cost us hundreds of dollars a year. The openspaceworld.ning.com site is wonderful and definitely serves some needs especially for non-english speaking groups. It costs a bit under $250 a year to operate, and again it is supported by donations to a non-profit, the Instituto da Metodologia OST of Portugal.

It's my sincere hope that the value and mission of these institutes across the world will become clearer in 2012, and that these institutes will continue to support various Open Space on Open Space gatherings in person regionally and internationally, as well as online gathering spots.

The first question of the evolution of consciousness and it's relationship to Open Space Technology is only the beginning of what hopefully will be an ongoing conversation. It does appear to be playing an important part of the evolution of collective planetary consciousness through advancement of engagement, participation, and personal and global learning - both in companies and in civic community conversations.

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