Open Space Institute - U.S. Board Meeting
Attendance: Harold Shinsato, Barry Owen, Mark Sheffield, Jake Yeager, Karen J. Davis
Absent: Myriane Ouellette
Harold note taker. Jake bin gardener.
Started about 6pm edt with a moment of silence followed by check-ins.
Zoom Link Changing: Problem with the Zoom Link change for the board meeting due to Zoom changes. Harold will fix it again after this meeting.
Flourishing Futures: $2531 net proceeds with 97 signed up. We have more sponsors lined up and more. We have a good shot still of making our target of 1000, but it will be a strong showing. The 12 from the original design team are working well. We have an additional team of helpers and facilitators. Tickets are 50% north america. 35% europe/africa/mideast. 15% Asia. Barry has more bandwidth, he can help. Karen has been spreading the word in IODA. They haven't become a sponsor yet. Karen can advertise herself. April Jefferson helped organize the Future of Work global gathering, Jake & Harold were there. The environment in QiQoChat was stunning. April will help us "sexify" the QiQoChat. They had 3-4 graphic recorders. She might be able to connect us to graphic recorders. It would be very connecting.
Peace & High Performance: In terms of 2020, Harold and Karen are still resolving it. Just a small discrepancy between Harold and Karen's accounting. For 2021, Karen sees us heading in a direction. OSonOS turned into WOSonOS. The Peace and High Performance had Harrison Owen on board after that switch. Ralph Copelman and Karen worked. Ralph changed his "cosmic address". Hesitant to bring individuals in. Somewhere along the line, the Open Space Institute had been a part indirectly became directly involved. Harold took on helping with the registration administration. Has been doing a great job. Since Suzanne became involved with the activity and the gathering. She became behind the scenes with whom Karen worked closely getting it moving. Suzanne did not want to be up front, but writing skills and newsroom, etc. Then last year for first time she was considered an official host becoming more public working together. Then working with the board. That's been a part of the evolution. Where Karen is at this point she is really seeing continuing in a similar direction, but asking the board be willing more of a consulting strategy than being involved with the direction of the whole event. That's the main thing Karen wanted to say about the organization. In terms of timing, we get an invitation out in November. It will be virtual this year. Be dynamic differences. So many of the things Karen has been involved with, the pros and cons. She is pretty sure that Lucas Cioffi will be doing the QiQoChat side of it. So that's sort of where we're at. In terms of International House, it will be April 2021 before they do any events there. And they still would like to be involved somewhere in the future, but for sure not 2021.
More context for switching OSI-US to take a consultative role. Keeping things as simple as possible, doing one less thing. Since there is a great history with Suzanne and Karen. The Institute host is around for whatever is needed. Touchy things we might need to talk with a larger group about. Previously, Karen and whoever else was involved would split the extra.
Now What?! Partnering: The board decided against partnering for flourishing futures give the design team's capacity. We probably don't want to partner in general, as a board, given the purpose of Now What?! is not the same as our mission of holding space for open space. Jake will reply we don't have capacity for Flourishing Futures for partnering. Harold will speak with Ben.
Annual Meeting: Probably simply open up our December board meeting for our member meeting.
More Board Members: We need another board member. Have that on our mind for Flourishing Futures.
Next Meeting: 17 November 2020, 6pm EST.
Check out at 5pm.
OSI-US April Board Minutes from April 16, 2019
Present – Barry, Kevin, Tricia, Harold, Mark
Absent – Karen, Myriane (sick)
Note taker – Harold
Facilitator – Kevin
WOSonOS 2019
We started breaking the tasks down for the event.
What about the invitation? Barry has heard people are excited about the unstructured gathering Thursday night.
What are the next step for the invitation? Cultivating the invitation. The invitation theme from the WOSonOS 2019 Invocation meetings online seemed to circle the word ineffable, which means something too great or extreme to be expressed in words.
The ineffable Spirit of Leadership. Anybody’s leadership. Participation. Engagement. Constructive and Destructive.
From Jake – from the Teal Organization – it’s about accelerating self-organizing. It tied to Genuine Contact. Accelerating is mostly about accelerating self-organization. Amplify – that’s not the right word either. Ineffable Spirit. Those were the two most meaningful words. Spirit has been present before day 1.
At one point in Kevin’s life, Leadership invoked something different. Ineffable Spirit resonates, it’s an element of Open Space because we just kind of create the space for it. In everyday life you don’t always do that. What happens when you let that show up.
Some theme possibilities:
What happens when we invite the Spirit of the Ineffable?
What happens when we invite the Ineffable Spirit of Leadership?
What happens when we invite the Ineffable Leadership of Spirit?
Where is the Ineffable?
Who invites the Ineffable?
What happens next?
You are instilling the spirit. There is a dual purpose. What is happening? We don’t know how it’s going to go.
What is the ineffable spirit of self-organization?
What’s next for Open Space?
Open Space has always been there. People are adding to what is already there. The Operating System is already there. It’s already there.
Harrison was always basically bring and step back, none of the stuff that’s happening you have any control anyway. Even as you’re speaking these words. The illusion of control. What isn’t an illusion is that you are having experiences in the world. It’s Open Space anyway.
What is possible when we truly let go of the illusion of control?
How do we allow for and honor the evolution of the forms of opening space?
How do we honor the ineffable spirit of Open Space?
After all this discussion, we chose this working theme:
WOSonOS 2019: Honoring the Ineffable Spirit of Open Space
Pre WOSonOS 2019 Events
Barry spoke a bit about the Genuine Contact training before because of being with Anna Carolina-Türk at the WOSonOS 2019 Invocation Part 2 meeting. What might work well is a 2-3 day training. They just need 10 participants. Tuesday-Wednesday or Thursday. She’s very excited about the training. There are Genuine Contact people in the U.S. she’d like to come for support. There are 3 that do this program, but probably only Thomas Herman and Anna would lead it. Rather than decide anything they agreed to schedule something with the board, which will happen Monday April 29, 8-9am EDT.
Daniel Mezick has proposed an Open Leadership Symposium on Thursday October 24 before the WOSonOS.
WOSonOS 2019 Registration
Maybe about $400 full price. What other expenses? Catering/food, other than venue. Barry has a friend who does catering, and has some leverage because he does million dollar gigs. They do all the food and beverage for golf tournaments. They have all the contacts for catering nationwide. Have someone good that is local in the Alexandria area.
Maybe grazing food, or always available. Tricia will look into setting up a Google Sheet to do cost calculations.
Next Board Meeting
May 21, 6-7:30 eastern.