Highlights and Summary - July 2012

 Open Space Institute – US (OSI-US)

Meeting July 16, 2012 – 5:30 to 6:35 EST

Attending:  Douglas Germann, Karen Davis, Suzanne Daigle, Chuni Li and Sharon Joy Chao

Note taker: Suzanne Daigle

The meeting then began with a few moments of silence followed by brief individual check-ins.

The group reviewed items in the bin and focused on the following items:

1.       Annual legal filingas a non-profit entity filing will be done by Suzanne Daigle; Peggy Holman will provide a note authorizing her to file in the State of Washington where we are incorporated.  The Board also authorized Suzanne to complete this filing on behalf of the board. This will be completed by July 20^th 2012 to meeting the end of July deadline. The treasurer will reimburse Suzanne for the $10 annual fee.
 

2.       Access to OSI Site for New Board Members: A bin item was added requesting  that Phelim give access to Chuni and Sharon to our Basecamp Board site;  another request was added asking if Harold could update the OSI US website with the names of the new Board members and changes at the executive level.
 

3.       Guidelines on the Minutes: A brief discussion took place regarding the minutes of our meeting and how detailed they should be. Doug and Karen provided a bit of history and context to this topic while specifying that the past need not dictate the future. It was agreed that items of a personal nature such as what gets discussed during the individual check-ins at the start of our meeting (more related to relationship building) would not be included.  Typical meeting minutes will serve to document highlights, decisions, progress on projects and on occasion a summary of detailed discussions based on relevance and interest to our broader public community.  If certain items are considered to be more personal in nature while also relevant, the practice would be to review with members prior to posting.
 

4.       Future projects: A brief discussion took place for us to open space at a future OSI US meeting to identify projects that we may be passionate about and where we want to focus our attention in the upcoming year.  As has been the practice, projects will always tie to what individuals may have an interest in or be energized by.  

·         In the past, Christine Whitney Sanchez led discussions with Suzanne and Ed around the topic of providing information to corporate and government groups who want to know more about Open Space described in a language that is familiar to them with a focus on outcomes and typical results from the Open Space Technology process.  The goal had been to make something available on the Open Space website that clients from these cohort groups could refer to.  Chuni mentions that business groups typically look for results-oriented concise language.  This remains a topic of interest to be pursued.

·         Karen indicated energy around an initiative that would invite dialogue among the various Open Space Institutes around the world. This too will be a focus during the upcoming year.

·         Suzanne expressed a keen interest for OSI US to consider hosting informal conversations similar to what was done at our General Annual meeting at the end of 2011.  We would plan to experiment with Maestro Conference using Suzanne’s account building on a model that was used by Suzanne and Elaine Hansen on a virtual Open Space experiment around Brené Brown’s work called The Global Conversation.
 

The next meeting is scheduled for August 20, 2012 - third Monday of the month (starting at 5:30 pm EST)