I'm curious what David meant when he suggested that our process was not representative of Open Space, and have copied him on this reply in case he would like to weigh in, as I don't believe he is on the list serve.
For me, it was a prime example of self-organizing, so while we may not havve "done" OS to have the conversation, the spirit of OS was very much alive. And in that conversation, the group discussed all the issues and questions raised in this thread, e.g. having more than one WOSonOS in a year, asking what sort of "voting" we were going to use, asking if we felt it was important to make the decision in that room and much more. And I'd say we got clear "answers" to all those questions, usually right away. Personally I found it stressful because I had a plane to catch, wanted to stay for the entire closing circle and also have time for some good-byes. Instead, because it took more time than "allotted," I left with the closing circle about 95% complete, which wasn't so bad. And, had I used my smart phone to check on the status of my flight (can you tell I'm not a Millenial?!), I would have found that it was delayed 35 minutes and I could have stayed to the very end. Lessons on many levels! One thing that was interesting for me about the process was how uncomfortable I felt suggesting that we should try to bring it to a close. My sense is that I was far from alone in that discomfort, and that even folks who were not under time pressure might have been censoring themselves. This speaks perhaps to a set of unexamined social agreements around making sure we have thought through every single possible dimension of something before moving into a decision-making phase in order to "honor the group" and avoid being hierarchical. I would like to suggeswt that this tendency might not always serve us. As I tweeted, quoting words I heard Erwin Chemerinsky speak many years ago, "all decisions are made based on 'insufficient' information." A clear preference did emerge in the room and once we accepted a process for discerning it, we were done. Perhaps, my point above notwithstanding, we waited to mvoe into a process of taking the temperature of the room until we all knew inuitively that something had coalesced. Seeing that display (I would estimate about 80% of the room standing on the Serbia side of the carpet), Gerard, who was acting as a proxy for Spain, more or less immediately accepted Serbia's invite on their behalf. I felt completely satisfied that we had honored everyone, and was surprised by David's comment to the contrary in the closing. I also think we made an excellent choice for many reasons. Not that I would have had any problem with Spain either (as I expect was the case for most people in the room, and that may also have been a source of our slowness). One final note about Harrison's questioning of the decision being made by the people in the room (and here I thought he was the one assuring us we were the right people!). In fact, it was not just us. Not only were other people particpating virtually, but one of the prospective hosts wasn't there himself (Ian from Spain). What struck me, as I made clear in speaking to the circle at the time, was that Ian could have done any number of things to make his invitation more compelling had he wanted to. He could have Skyped directly into the room--something I had let the OS-list know was possible on several occassions over the previous days. He could have written a letter for Gerard to read. He could have recorded a video, as the Chinese group did to offer their 2015 invite, etc. etc. The fact that he apparently chose not to do anything like that (and that his proxy, Gerard, seemed rather ambivalent about the whole thing himself) stood in stark contrast to the passion and energy that Jasmina was communicating. That made it a no brainer for me, once I let go of my fear of "making the wrong choice." So all in all, I would say that what happened was the only thing that could have (fancy that!) and that it was a valuable and thought-provoking experience on multiple levels. Peace, Ben Roberts -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kári Gunnarsson Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 1:31 PM To: World wide Open Space Technology email list Subject: Re: [OSList] WOSonOS 2014/2015/2016 invitations Invitations full of wonder. Perhaps we have the chart in front of the horse. I do not see the invitations to next years wosonos as some resolution from our current discussions, but more of a invitation to continue the celebration of our common growth from the years past and future. Is it essential to do the next years invitations at the end of the event, we could just as easily do it at the beginning and use the Open Space to work with our hopes and sorrows where we can sleep on it and open more discussion in the morning news of the second day if needed. -- Kári Gunnarsson [email protected] gsm: +354 8645189 _______________________________________________ OSList mailing list To post send emails to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] To subscribe or manage your subscription click below: http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org _______________________________________________ OSList mailing list To post send emails to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] To subscribe or manage your subscription click below: http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
