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These are the proceedings from meetings of the Open Space Institute.
  • Title: November 2021 Board Meeting Minutes
    Meeting Date: 16 Nov 2021

    OSI-US Board Meeting November 16, 2021

    In attendance: Harold Shinsato, Karen J. Davis, April Jefferson

    Annual Membership Meeting

    We could have a session as a room in Peace and High Performance for members as our official one to reset it to the beginning rather than the end of the year. Make membership a value and do that at Peace & High Performance. April moved that we do that. Harold seconded. We approved unanimously.

    Peace & High Performance

    We've agreed not to use Eventbrite and we'll continue to use QiqoChat connected to our website (civicrm). The time zones need to get worked out. Having two openings each day. January 14,15, & 16. EST 10-3, and another circle. The Asia opening will probably happen earlier. Harold will copy the current invitation text into the website. Much work has been put into the invitation between Karen, April and Suzanne Daigle.

    Next Meeting December 14, 2021 6-7:30pm EST.

    It will be both our final board meeting of the year and the Annual Membership Meeting.

  • Title: October 2021 Board Meeting Minutes
    Meeting Date: 19 Oct 2021

    OSI-US Board Meeting October 19, 2021

    In attendance Karen J. Davis, Harold Shinsato, April Jefferson, Myriane Ouellette

    Minute of silence and then check-ins.

    Women In Agile Sponsorship

    The Women in Agile online in QiqoChat was a beautiful space. It was wonderful seeing OST community from OSList popped in supporting people. The first circle was global. All facilitators were new. April felt honored to have them. She is planning the Future of Work, 24 hour open space. Excited for a new iteration which will be the third year and giving facilitation opportunities to other people. She is walking in the vision where others are owning it.

    Our sponsorship wasn't a financial sponsorship. It was a media sponsorship. Our community showed up and it was nice. Attendees appreciated that. It helped support them. Other communities showed up. 149 registered. Beatuiful space (nice art work). A global team supporting it. Learned how to create a store as a fund raiser. Learned a lot about how to make QiqoChat look beautiful. April has made a lot of spaces and this is her favorite. They had a graphic recorder live in the spaces attended.

    We are excited by the Agile Open initiatives for the Agile Alliance.

    Peace and High Performance

    Some are working with Karen on next year's Opening Space for Peace and High Performance.  There is excitement.

    WonderMe and StormBoard was used last year for the online QiqoChat Peace and High Performance (PHP). We might consider Miro. The subscription is reasonable, something like $20 a month. Miro doesn't work for screen readers. Padlet does allow screen readers. When people register we can ask about that. Karen and April will speak more after this meeting. Karen believes it will make a big difference. One of the biggest things she learned, How can we keep meeting? We can improve upon the circle to share it with our community during the event so it's not just staying there stagnant. We can share it with people there to have a more engaging community. We can use QiqoChat to realize the vision we had in our mission and vision work. We can talk to Lucas to have an OSList integration.

    Karen had hoped to get the dates fixed on the calendar but it's not done yet. When we create the date and the length of time, that is all we need.

    Look for people in our community for graphic recording. Like with Flourishing Futures, people in the community want to help out. Just because you could do it, doesn't mean you should. Always we want to put a call out to get help to put this on. Suzanne Daigle set up the four of us to set up roles. (Karen, April, Suzanne, Myriane). January 14-16, 2022 will be the dates. Would be helpful to have the start and end times since this is an online event. Karen isn't sure what role that Harrison will be willing to take for a morning talk or something.

    New Board Members

    A new candidate was discussed.

    Next meeting Tuesday November 16, 2021. 6-7:30pm EST

  • Title: September 2021 Board Meeting Minutes
    Meeting Date: 21 Sep 2021

    OSI-US Board Meeting September 21, 2021

    In attendance, Jake Yeager, Karen J. Davis, Harold Shinsato, Myriane Ouellette, April Jefferson

    Minute of Silence and then check-ins.

    Harold note taking, Myriane facilitating

    Jake announced he needs to step away from the board effective at the end of this meeting.

    International House

    We will just do another virtual Opening Space for Peace and High Performance in 2022. An in person one will be expensive. Don't see it being an option. Also, many people's finances are not ready for in person events. There might be special insurance impacts. If we do it online in QiqoChat, April can help make it amazing because of her involvement in developing QiqoChat.

    Think about in person open spaces outdoors next summer maybe. We will go virtual and with QiqoChat. There are a ton of improvements in QiqoChat especially with managing and production. April thinks we should start planning in October. Our circle has over 400 members there. We have large Facebook and LinkedIn groups and the OSList. We will take our learnings from the last Peace & High Performance and Flourishing Futures. Just design the program we want to put out, and how we want to reach out. Do we do a committee? We don't usually do the planning in the board meetings. Usually it's between Karen, Suzanne, and Harold. It did not start as an OSI event. A save the date was out maybe in October. Maybe the board could be more involved this time to ensure sustainability to keep this up beyond this year. Karen J. Davis and now also Suzanne Daigle have been carrying the spirit of Peace & High Performance. Karen won't be convening forever, and she is up for us all as a board getting involved.

    Harold expressed how this event may be our most important legacy to maintain and carry forward into the future.

    Looking forward to having the space in Peace & High Performance where they dream up and continue beyond those three days and we have a space for them to do so. We have a generative community. Our Flourishing Futures was by donation. And trusting that it will work itself out. It could live on. And they could donate to that space to keep it alive. Jake had a thought of the framework for the OSI funding project. Suzanne is busying traveling.

    Women In Agile Open Sponsorship

    Harold moved that we sponsor the online Women in Agile Open hosted by the Agile Alliance as an online event. Karen seconded. Approved unanimously.

    OSI Funding Proposal

    No further actions? We're planning to allocate funds from Flourishing Futures via this process which we will start in October. There was some feedback from a lawyer which we will consider as we move forward.

    Mission & Vision

    From the vision work we did, would be good to set some actions for this. We talked about this today. Is what we are doing aligning with our purpose. It is a great reminder for what we are taking on. What do we need to add to our list of action items?

    What is the meaning of membership? We will try to support our members. We can do member events.

    For website improvement, they would get us something that would improve it.

    Pair writing? Karen can't commit until the middle of October. Calling for volunteers, that can be useful. Harold puts things out to the community to get others to be involved. We need to put our vision work currently expressed in snippets in the visual Miro Board into words for the website. What are the key elements we want to see? Sense making of existing documentation and copy on the website, and understanding key messages. We are talking about legacy and the past, and far distant creative future and balancing the two.

    Next Meeting Tuesday October 19, 2021 6-7:30pm EST

    Checkouts

    Much gratitude to Jake Yeager as a wonderful person. Grateful for our direction in conveying our best through our website. Looking forward to the future of the board. Spirit and love and belief around Open Space both here and in other contexts. We ended at 7:30pm edt.

  • Title: June 2021 Board Meeting Minutes
    Meeting Date: 22 Jun 2021

    OSI-US Board Meeting June 22, 2021

    In attendance: Karen, Harold, April, Myriane

    Minute of silence and then check-ins.

    Some items of interest from the checkins (shared here to provide color and context for the meeting): OSHotline today, the Future of Work, Indianapolis Open Space, ODNetwork conference virtual (spirituality, music, dance, bringing in the whole person), Jabron from DC, 10 day sustainability week marvelous speakers from around the world, waiting to be let into Canada, craving connection to nature

    Supporting Each Other

    Have we ever considered taking a break for the summer as some board members experienced on other boards. It is not something the OSI-US board has done, but it was proposed and unanimously approved the OSI-US board skip July and August this year to foster each others health & balance. Our next meeting is September 21.

    International House

    Karen is still in conversation but no conclusion on their intention and the pricing. Things are opening up. May be possible to have an in-person event for Opening Space for Peace & High Performance 2022. What about a Hybrid event? Some people report success. Many are hostile to the idea. Karen has had positive experiences as a participant, but there was a lot of work behind the scenes. An international meeting in Thailand with a small number there depending on the virus, but otherwise it is advertised as a virtual.

    Looking at QiqoChat - you can have communities. For us to have our community there, we can do it there, it is under that umbrella. https://openspace.qiqochat.com/

    Garden of purpose to grow - doing more seeing finding more folks to join us.

    Global nature.

    Next Meeting

    Next Meeting September 22, 2021 at 6-7:30pm edt.

    Checkouts at 7pm edt.
     

  • Title: March 2021 Board Meeting Minutes
    Meeting Date: 16 Mar 2021

    Board Meeting Minutes for the Open Space Institute-US - March 16, 2021

    Present - Karen J. Davis, Harold Shinsato, Myriane Ouellette, April Jefferson, Jake Yeager
    Absent - Barry Owen

    Checkins.

    Karen facilitating. Harold taking notes.

    Budget

    Clarify on our Own Budget - decided last time not to spend very much until we do the purpose work.

    Sponsoring Future of Work 24 Hour Gathering (May 7-8)

    We spent $250 plus a little more for one attendance, $24. Harold will reimbursed OSI. April is saying that everyone on the board can get a free ticket.

    OSI-US Funding Proposal

    Jake - thank April and Karen for all their feedback and help. Consolidated the feedback received from the community and incorporated it into a new draft - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w_MyQ-hjqxq1S0TnRWoYBV9c0b11gLf_TjQ4dJ5guPg/edit. Jake will send it out for review to the board with a due date. The subcommittee believes it is in a good place. Jake mentioned a few larger changes. How to make sure we don't exhaust all our funds with a deluge of applications. At the beginning of a 12 month period how much of the funds to allocate, and divide that by 12 for a maximum monthly amount. So if there are applications we can't fund one month, we can roll over to the next month. Jake has seen that method used by organizations in the past, to at least try out and adjust as we move forward. Also tried to streamline the document, and put everything under question headings to make it more understandable. There will be a description on the website and they can apply via the website. The info itself would be on the website, but maybe use google forms. Make the process more open spacey - but for now just move forward with straight forward approach and add open spacey elements when we get moving.

    The intention is the subcommittee that supports this is something that comes out of it to create sustainability, not just that it be until the well runs dry. How to create a community that supports funding this kind of work. This is partially a community building mechanism to invite people to co-create and is open to modification as we go.

    There are open questions. Some are around the funding for the board as to how much is funded for the coming year, to understand how much we can spend. Can we put the funds in a separate account. We don't have to have a separate account, but we create enthusiasm around the initiative. As the funds increase and deplete, showing that. Having the capability to solicit and donate, not just one way.

    It might not be so easy to make separate accounts, but it is possible. We can use GNU Cash software to set up a budget and other fund allocations.

    A fun question - is this possible to set up a new email? Yes - either as a real email address with a mailbox, or as a forwarding email address.

    Ideas for a snazzy name? If you come up with anything, let Jake, April or Karen know.

    Purpose Facilitation

    We planned to schedule time, not to actually start in this meeting. April 13, April 20 - 6-8pm edt. Myriane will set up a Miro board.

    GDPR - Add a Privacy Policy to the Website

    Harold shared a draft of the privacy policy. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bof9SfQTJ_qYsUD5vVB1iH7_aWZg0E_UBzZlUDrsN5w/edit?usp=sharing

    OSList Update

    Learning more about GNU Mailman 3. Harold is doing more research. Tom Brown might be able to help.

    OST Wikipedia Article

    Was fixed about seven years ago, but has had more problems recently. Michael Hermann tried to fix some issues recently and was barred from making changes. Karen says she will look into this.

    Next Meeting

    Purpose Meeting April 13, 2021 6-8pm edt.

     

  • Title: Board Minutes 2021 February 16
    Meeting Date: 16 Feb 2021

    Open Space Institute - U.S. Board Meeting Minutes, February 16, 2021

    Present: Barry Owen, Myrianne Ouellette, April Jefferson, Karen J. Davis, Jake Yeager, Harold Shinsato

    Began with a Moment of Silence followed by Check-ins

    We celebrate State of Arizona's 109th Birthday (Thanks Jake!). Karen mentioned that New Mexico's birthday is almost the same.

    April Jefferson's Induction

    All voted in favor to add April to the board after her third consecutive monthly board meeting attendance.

    Wrapping up 2021 Peace & High Performance

    Karen reported we had almost had 80-90 at a time, and over a hundred each day. Almost half the attendees were from other countries, good chunk from Canada. Added dimension. The proceedings have gone out. Lots of phenomenal work that Suzanne Daigle pulled together creatively. Lucas Cioffi was a real gem for facilitating the technical side. Harold helped behind the scenes with registrations. Some real involvement by everyone in different ways. In terms of the dollars and cents, we have $2k after expenses are taken care of. Suggestion is that the money be a part of the OST Peace & High Performance in the future. When we get back on site at International House, there will be big expense. Other big thing related to that, is a potential video project related to the event. Suzanne Daigle is really beginning to focus on the video, and she has someone in mind and has backup people, and see what happens between now and the next meeting in terms of the cost.

    Harold moved to reserve $10k. Motion passed unanimously. We also had a conversation about a website and branding upgrade.

    Purpose Facilitation

    We will schedule this next meeting, using Genuine Contact. Maybe invite the community. Shifting from Holding Space towards Opening Space.

    Funding Proposal

    Jake sent out a request for feedback to many in the OST community and gotfeedback. He shared the feedback as a set of slides. The overarching themes were:

    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion. Look for more ways to include underserved and underrepresented.
    • Simply. Had extracted the $ amount, but one person asked to simplify. If you are providing microgrants, application should be simpler.
    • Networks + Initiatives. We are focusing on Individuals and organizations. We aren't including looser networks and initiatives that are not entities, which is common.
    • Tax Implications. If we are sending grants oversees. Are there tax implications.
    • More "Open Spacey" Models. Other models were shared, more slides about them. And they are more "open spacey", as our proposal is very standard. There are upsides and downsides. Maybe we can make a hybrid that makes.
      • Showed a graph with separate donors and separate grantors.
      • Crowdfunding + dialog - GoFundMe, Kickstarter, people put up posters and people fund them.
      • Giving Circle - The group decides together.
      • OST w/ funds available

    Open Questions - Funding size amount? Funds available? How to prioritize proposals? Tax implications?

    Next steps, subcommittee (April, Karen, Jake) review. Slim it down, have it focused. We can grow to something bigger.
    This will all be influenced by the purpose. It will be influenced by working with Canada. It might take a couple sessions. Might be opening a can of worms.     This will take three two hour sessions, and will be an ongoing project. We can't start in March because of the non-profit financial year ends then, which would prevent Myrianne's being able to contribute.

    Movement to Nominate Harrison Owen for the Peace Prize

    Is it a lot of work? Barry has some info and energy to support it. It has to do with educational institution doing the nominating. Had some discussions and he will put energy into it. Only certain people can nominate. Then need to be nominated by qualified individuals or institutions. Barry will dig into that. Myriane is happy to help after March/April. The nominations are due in October.

    Future of Work Open Space - May

    Last Future of Work 24 hour open space, the Institute was a sponsor. We were a promotional sponsor and shared the event with the members. The Future of Work is bringing multiple thought communities together, and is similar to Flourishing Futures. It is for 24 hours. It definitely has D. I. & E. involved. Every 4 hours another circle from different parts of the world facilitating. Will have Spanish, Japanese as well as English circles. With funds that were raised, gave honorariums to volunteer facilitators. For each circle two facilitators, one producer, one graphic recorder, and a scribe. For Spanish/English circle, the scribe will summarize. Normally financial sponsorship is $500. The OSI-US has often sponsored at $250 level. Harold moved, Barry seconded, motion passed unanimously to promotional and financial sponsor at $250.

    Next Meeting

    March 16th, 6-7:30pm.

    We closed with checkouts.

  • Title: Board Minutes 2021 January 19
    Meeting Date: 19 Jan 2021

    Board Meeting Minutes for the OSI-US - January 19, 2021

    Present - Harold Shinsato, Jake Yeager, Myrianne Ouellette, Barry Owen, Karen J. Davis
    Guest - April Jefferson

    Began with a moment of silence followed by check-ins.

    Jake - Bin Gardener
    Harold - Note taker

    Peace & High Performance 2021

    We reviewed our plans for the upcoming event January 23-25. Showed the qiqochat setup as developed so far. We can add CSS to make the Join Video button glow. Would be useful to have a video showing the process. April Jefferson has remove the tech support because she's worked through the need for it, and no longer needs it.

    May be a meeting tomorrow for tech support with Lucas. Asked for availability to do support. Friday - stick to the book - with personal variations. One of our previous folks from - Helene from Paris. Everyone will have a chance to participate if they want to, even more than one person. That will evolve as we go. May need support from the board to coach these volunteers from the event participants.

    Harold just saw Marc Trudeau for do a QiqoChat marketplace where he invited participants to bring markers and paper, so they can introduce their topics in the camera. Much better than just typing it into a web page. Myriane recommended doing the process twice to demonstrate. It is useful also to do the opening principles with hand drawn images of the prinicples and law.

    Grant Proposal Process

    Reviewed what was produced by Jake, Karen, April.

    Zoom Protocols

    Be careful about OSI-US Zoom account use - let each other know - or use your own accounts.

    Next Meeting

    February 16, 2021 - 4-6:30pm Eastern

  • Title: Annual Member Meeting 2020 December 15
    Meeting Date: 15 Dec 2020

    The board of the Open Space Institute - U.S. held it's annual board meeting, as announced on the OSList, on December 15, 2020. In attendance were all the board members, Karen J. Davis, Barry Owen, Myrianne Ouellette, Harold Shinsato, Jake Yeager, and Mark Sheffield. April Jefferson joined as a member and as an invited board member to be. We reviewed our progress and our available funds, which were over $25k which has accumulated almost entirely from events we have held or sponsored.

    The theme of the meeting was "What are the issues and opportunities in holding space for open space in 2021?"

  • Title: Board Minutes 2020 November 17
    Meeting Date: 17 Nov 2020

    Present - Karen J. Davis, Harold Shinsato, Jake Yeager

    Started at 6:30pm eastern.

    We had a short meeting. We voted to compensate Lucas Cioffi $250 for QiqoChat support for the Flourishing Futures event held in October. We considered several possible new board members. After the discussion of a few candidates, we agreed Harold will invite April Jefferson to go through the board on-boarding process.

    For the 2021 Peace & High Performance, it will be online on QiqoChat. People get distracted a lot. They are in their home. They float in and out. Taking that into consideration when designing it. So easy to get "zoomed out", maybe it is less time (shorter blocks).

    Harold will look into comparing CiviCRM versus Eventbrite. Benefits of Eventbrite is the integration with qiqochat. We can set up hidden tickets for scholarships. Benefit of CiviCRM on our website is maintaining contact and attendee relationship info, and no Eventbrite fee.

    Next meeting board meeting, also Membership Meeting, December 15, 6pm est.

  • Title: Board Minutes 2020 October 20
    Meeting Date: 20 Oct 2020

    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.

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