Colleagues: I opened the space the other day for about 70 people here in Vancouver. Just thought I'd let you know how it went.
These folks were a motley collection of rubes, rogues and spirited tricksters, dopplegangers, shapshifters and ghosts. Some were old, and some were very young. Some were sick and some were tired and some were infected with enthusiasm that made me reel with giddiness when I was in their prescence. They had nothing in common with each other, which was kind of cool. As the vast majority of them were OST facilitators, it felt to me a little like telling jokes to comedians. In some ways it was the hardest OST I have ever done and in other ways it was easy. We gathered in the Sty-Wet-Tan Great Hall at the First Nations longhouse at the University of British Columbia. The theme of the gathering was "Improving our practice of OST" or something like that. The 70 folks who were there came from Canada, America, Taiwan, Australia, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Israel, Belgium, Portugal, and Haiti. There were tranplanted Americans from Taiwan, a transplanted Turk from Germany, a transplanted Australian from America, a transplanted Pole from America and a transplanted Ojibway from Bowen Island....that's me. It was a decently eclectic crew. Walking the circle was not too hard, and I managed to remember pretty much everything I needed to say. Folks were polite in that they didn't rush into the middle too fast, but they didn't hang back so long that I broke into a sweat. We had lots and lots of sessions proposed for the 2.5 day meeting, and it took a while to get everything up on the wall. In retrospect i probably should have allowed for more time for the posting, but as each session was 1.5 hours long, shaving a half hour off the first one was no big deal. We had lunch breaks of one hour scheduled from 12:30 to 1:30 which was a good move I think. Holding the space was harder than I expected, partly due to the fact that I had a migraine and a nauseous stomach (Caused by? Chicken and egg? You be the judge...). For the first time in my life, I took a nap during an OS meeting, over the lunch break, which worked out fine except that I missed out on a feast of alder-smoked salmon and bannock. Rats. I felt better after that and after the eight hours of shut eye I had overnight. My colleague Laurel Doersam (whose name means "breath of fresh air, bringer of light and saver of bacon" in my own private language) did the morning and evening news sessions both days. On the second day, morning news went on and on and on with lots of interesting material, but the cool thing was that it ended itself. People just collectively realized that they had two feet and they put them to use. Some of the participants remarked on how much more silence there was and attributed this to the fact that we had a much more diverse international crowd, a large part of which may be used to silence. Other remarked that the silences were too short, so I guess the observation was right! The closing circle was a very profound experience for me, listening to people talk about their experience of this particular OST meeting. Many people talked about the depth of discussions, the solid friendships made over 2.5 days, the unwillingness to leave, and the generosity of spirit that pervaded the room. i was in a kind of grief during the whole closing circle, becasue as a facilitator, I had really not experienced the event in the same way. I was privately mourning my inability to have connected in that way, and in some small way secretly regretting that I had volunteered to be the one person in the room who was not available for that kind of experience. That was hard. I felt, as my dear partner/teacher Caitlin said when she was in labour, like a ghost, living between two worlds. I felt like an actor finding his way through the darkness of the wings, or like a goalie whose team is scoring goals at the other end of the rink all night. Sure I was a part of it, but in a different way. I ended by giving away a few things: the talking stick that we had acquired for the event, carved by a Nisga'a carver, a carved wolf plaque to our silent partner Gabriel Shirley for his help in putting our conference online, and my small bag of tobacco, with which I had been making offerings for success, to my colleague Laurel Doersam (whose name means "spirit buttress, one who cradles and nutures the soul, strength of ages" if you say it differently). This confirmed my hunch that to have a successful OST meeting, you have to give away something...something really meanigful. There is an element of sacrifice that is not in the User's Guide, or on Michael Herman's website or in any of the training that I have ever taken. And yet it is known by all OST facilitators after they do their first one. Anyway, it worked out pretty well in the end, and next year it seems like this gathering will be repeated in Australia, which is great news. If you want to read to proceedings, they are onlilne at http://catalyst.bigmindmedia.com/osonoslogin.html or at http://www.openspaceworld.org in the near future. Cheers, Chris -- CHRIS CORRIGAN Consultation - Facilitation Open Space Technology http://www.chriscorrigan.com cor...@interchange.ubc.ca RR 1 E-3 1172 Miller Road Bowen Island, BC Canada, V0N 1G0 phone (604) 947-9236 fax (604) 947-9238 * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
