Annual Membership Meeting 2011

Open Space Institute - US
Annual Membership Meeting
December 30, 2011

How has Open Space Technology impacted the evolution of your own consciousness?

• This is what mystics have been trying to do forever
• It’s already present, it’s already happening
• Wanting the right answer, but in order to serve customers, we are turning more to this emergent science (physics is doing this too)
• Open Space as a philosophy
• What’s interesting about Open Space Technology is that it can be seen about an event
• different areas of life - how to have a child in America, engaging with the health/insurance system
• Could substitute OST for natural birth
• Open Space is a midwifing process
  • interaction with authority, sense of choice
  • the 5th principle is very important
• Open Space as a direct connection with the Divine
• Open Space has lifted thinking - election time - if I were running for office, I would hold OS meetings and ask people how they would change things
• Think of life as before and after Open Space
  • gratitude for what OS invited into my life.  Life before, I was duty bound, rescuer, fixer...not truly of service, more in control, did not have the depth of exchange and dialogue
  • I could have missed my life if I hadn’t been introduced to Open Space
  • Palpably aware of not being alone in this - well-intentioned but misguided
• How can we anchor the awareness of what’s happening?
• Mission to go at it in 2012.  Going to set up a buddy system, so when I get discouraged I’ll call
• Conversation around language - how to expand
  • Are people really open to new ideas?  Generally not.  They have to be forced to new ideas.  Open Space does that.
• Maybe, in addition to discoveries and ecstatic conclusion of open space, maybe it’s in the follow-up.
  • those who are excited, get them to follow-up and get them to do what they said they wanted to do, could be a way to help cement
• I come to Open Space from a different angle.  It’s been an affirmation of what I’ve been thinking/doing before OST existed.  Intrigued by making connections between human behavior and the scientific world.
• my own evolution and growth in consciousness is getting deeper inside myself, know I am the only one who can change
• Always striving for what open space could mean in my own life. for a long time, I couldn’t say anything - couldn’t make the link
• thought I was open to the ideas but discovered that it was difficult for me to facilitate the open space in Paris because I wanted to control everything.  had to find a point where I could be centered.  
• What does leadership mean?
• Open Space means taking the responsibility for what I am passionate about.  
• Discovered through open space that I could feel connected to people who are not thinking the same way I do or understanding open space the way I did
• Working with Open Space in 1994, completely changed.  Liberating to discover that I wasn’t responsible about their experience.
• I’ve said that many times - what does that mean now?  It affects the work I choose and how I work with people now.  Making as visible as possible that revelation I had years ago.
• Life practice.  Excited to find others.
• Working with a group of Rabbis - looking at it from the point of view of how they can mobilize around core issues facing Judaism
  • being aware of the messy way that things change
  • ask the question - what is the simplest way of thinking about this to communicate the message as accessible as possible.
    • inviting people to take responsibility for what they love as an act of service
    • Opening to the systems implications and the invitation to: take responsibility for what we love as an act of service
• OST made sense to me because of my work as a therapist and my spiritual practices
  • I started with Appreciative Inquiry, I could see how much AI needed Open Space.  It can be a grand part of letting go, letting come at the bottom of the U.
  • I toggle back and forth between being an OS practitioner in my life and looking for ways for people to experience this different way the systems they’re in.
  • When I first met Christine, I was excited to bring OST to AI work, in 2003, we knew how powerful self-organization could be in transforming system.  OST gave us a way to experience being in chaordic structures.

Worldwide Open Space Institutes

• perhaps a legacy of the WOSonOS 2012
• internationally, it would be great to have a sense of what we are as an institute and series of institutes so that people who are interested in creating or joining, they will understand why they might want to call that an institute
  • is there something deeper that we want to communicate about what we are as institutes?
• Left the Institute in France
  • Developed and funded out OSonOS
  • Observed power struggles which were never named because it was “not appropriate” in the context of open space
• What is the purpose of an OSI?  What do we want to share by building one?
• OSI-US has followed our passions, what we care about - has brought us together

• Audios could be made available, in addition to our notes.
  • Agreed:  Harold, Christine

• Important to find a way to get together and work together with others who have a passion for open space
• in Occupy Movement are struggling with power struggles,
• OST provides a means for people to work together, apart.  Not all having to agree.  Work in different groups about what we care about
• Often solutions could interact with one another if people could learn to share power
• divide and conquer - John Young, Rome issue.  Forced people into different groups and divided.  How we tend to solve problems in the military and corporations.
• Open space is a powerful metaphor for midwifing
• It is critical to find ways that we can hold space together to move this thought process together, even if just conference calls or Facebook

Checkout

• Ph: Interested in discovering how to engage - the quality with which I listened is different from the communications when everyone is on mute.  my quality of listening was not as connected and attentive.  Knowing that I couldn’t be heard or engaged in actively listening
• D: Thanks to Peggy for sharing her practice again - inviting....
• S: Feel warmly connected.  Thank Harold of the nice ways he sent the notes,
• K: Wonderful stimulus and example of the beauty of connecting.  feels like it’s just bait - all kinds of wonderful things to delve into more deeply
• E: Thank you, great meeting, looking forward to future meeting and coming year
• P:  Appreciating the people who have kept OSI-US going over the last year.  Thanks for your companionship and partnership
• H: Wish everyone a happy new year.  Gratitude for the level of everyone’s work and what they bring to the field.  breathing in that energy/feeling.  what Open space enables.  Making a stand.
• CK: thank you for this meeting and for inviting me.  How important it is to be connected and be able to self-organize.  
• CWS:  Been hearing about 2012 for many years - curious and excited about the possibilities for this coming year.