Harold: Thanks for the information and links. Some further comments bellow:
________________________________ From: Harold Shinsato <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wed, June 9, 2010 4:51:39 PM Subject: [OSLIST] Detroit Social Forum - Open Space? The OST at the Detroit Journalism That Matters event last week (http://jtmdetroit.org) was truly amazing, as was the January Seattle JTM event (http://jtmpnw.com/) I attended after being invited by Anne Stadler at the Leadership in a Self-Organizing World event (http://www.openspaceworld.org/cgi/netwiki.cgi?SelfOrganizingWorld) where Harrison Owen gave some great talks in the midst of an OST event. I'm a bit baffled right now - because I am reading about the Social Forum http://www.ussf2010.org/ being held in Detroit Jun 22-26. I'm reading about it in Yes! magazine, after purchasing it in my Missoula health food store. (Yes! magazine showed up in spades at the Seattle JTM Open Space). The organizers of this event - which is expecting 20,000+ attendees showed up at JTM Detroit last week. Here is a quote about the event on page 11 of the latest Yes! magazine in a commentary titled (in very Open Space terms) "A Personal Invitation to the US Social Forum": Are you referring to this: http://www.yesmagazine.org/ ? (I cannot see in the invitation the paragraph you quoted below...) "we come together in open space to share and learn best practices for movement building, get inspired, connect across work and distance, and see ourselves as part of a larger force. It's that open horizontal structure, instead of the usual series of top-down aspirational speakers, that allows the deeper relationships and movement building to happen... USSF is a self-organized, decentralized process..." I've looked at the program, and it doesn't look like a pure OST event at all, but they mention "open spaces" quite a bit. I have not probably see the links to the event with the same attention that you did. But some comments came to my mind. First, a distinction must be made between "Open Space" and "Open Space Technology" (and please note I am using "Open Space", as a kind of meeting, and not in other senses, like the "contact with nature in Open Space" as in http://www.osiny.org/site/PageServer). Second, even when talking about Open Space Technology a further distinction must be made separating "full presence f2f meetings" (where the opening of the space is done in a real circle at the beginning of the meeting) from: 1) meetings that are completely mediated by computers; and 2) meetings that are in part mediated by computers. Third, in these last types of situations many different things may happen, like for instance: the "circle is "virtual" and not "real", the call for topics, and the marketplace may be done before to the session begins, etc. In these cases the Spirit of OST is IMHO still present, even if the letter is not. (To make a clarification, if I am invited to a f2f meeting, supported by some sort of Internet platform, where anyone can propose a session, and people have the capacity to talk with the proposers to suggest changes, fusions, etc and later sign for session, I would consider that an OST-like meeting; on the contrary, if people are invited to a meeting, sit in circle, OST principles are explained and then a list of topics pre-arranged by the organizers are proposed, or anything where the facilitator disempowers the participants giving them instructions to do this now, and that later, is not, IMO, an OST-like meeting). Fourth: a lot of different types of meetings (and methods) are being held (or developed) al around the world that are really opening space to a new kind of sustainable society, a new kind of democracy, and of economical organization of the world, that are really "self organizing". Even if many of those are not pure OST-events, when we consider the whole picture of all of that it is substantially self organizing. Fifth: Due to new technological condition and to the evolution of some closed related methods (I mean other methods that try to empower people and facilitate their self organization and that are the contrary of others where the participants are "controlled" by the facilitator) OST will inevitably evolve. Lastly, due to the fact that "Open Space" (at least the expression, if not the foundations) is spreading around and becoming mainstream (with that name or another, like bar camps, unconferences, etc) we will soon come to a state where no one can say any longer where the "orthodoxy" is. (I think that, by that time, the main question to make the distinction will be this one: does the facilitator lets people self-organize or is "giving instructions" that disempower people and act against self organization?) Having said that, can you please clarify why you don't think that this Detroit event is an OST-like one? If Open Space ideas are being used in an event that is attracting 20,000 people - I'm curious why we're not talking about it here. Me too. Why do you think this is happening? What do others think? Regards Artur ------------------------- Does any one know more about this event? Anyone going? What is the relevance to major big time adoption of Open Space ideas in things like barcamps, USSF, etc., albeit impure, to the relevance of OST itself? -- Harold Shinsato [email protected] http://shinsato.com twitter: @hajush* * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
