Dear OSLIST I am back again at the list. Since I was not here for more than a year, I would like to present myself again to this community before describing the first OS related activities in Sofala/Mosambique in my next posting to the oslist.
I am austrian. My academic background is physics. Since the early 70ies I worked as a science teacher for several years at different levels of experimental schools, in secondary education and at the university of Vienna. During these years I also worked "for fun" as a trainer for group dynamics and then as a sistemic consultant for organization development (representing a chaotic element of the then emerging Austrian network of systemic practicioneers). All that time I walked around between the educational system, the trainings- & consultancy market and several political events (e.g. the Viennese Arena movement) and tried to find new solutions by cross-fertilizing the different grounds in that triangle with concepts, methods and instruments. In fact I produced quite a lot of irritation because these segments of austrian society where quite isolated from each others at that time. So I never spoke exactly the right language and my 'barn-smell' was never really the right one. The leftist political movement was not very interested in professionalizing the question of self-organization by application of systemic thinking. The established educational system was not really prepared for action learning, the consultants did not go to the places where self-organization took place and with exeption of one mentor (Herbert Pietschmann), my collegues at the institutes of physics did not understand at all, what I was up to. The situation improved in the 80ies when systemic thinking and systemic styles of intervention became a little more part of the mainstream. In the early 90ies my wife Patrizia Bitter (she is specialized in comparative educational sciences) and I decided to leave Europe and continue to live and work in Africa. A two years training in OD by the Beratergruppe Neuwaldegg/iff Univ. Klagenfurt (Austria) gave us both the professional background to do the big jump. In 1994 I left the Institute for Solid State Physics. Patrizia left the Academy of Social Work and we both went to Cape Verde Islands where we then worked mainly in the context of the Austrian Development Cooperation. I started working mainly as a project manager and trainer, 1995-98 I implemented a systemic training to create a pool of national consultants for small enterprises of the 10 inhabited islands of the arquipelago, and continued then after establishing my own enterprise my activities in the area of systemic training & OD consultancy. During these years in Cape Verde I started working with OST and FSC on basis of bare literature knowledge and common sense without having received a proper training in these areas. As far as I can see, these approaches worked even so. I applied them in several small and big group events, trying to combine different methods according to the clients needs. The biggest event was a national consensus conference for the reform of the reform of the education and vocational training system of Cape Verde with several hundred people in 2000 where we merged the TeamUP-PCM method with FS. We then moved on to the other side of the continent and continued in Mozambique. Half a year later I got big health troubles and underwent quite a life crisis. That is perhaps no story for the group but: just at that moment (Nov 2000) I got the chance to participate at the Open Space Learning Workshop with Harrison Owen in Großenzersdorf near Vienna . Being still full of pain and personal grief at that moment somehow everything I saw heard and felt there was a message right to my heart and not to my head. I had come to the right people at the right place at the right time, (although my doctor did not like at all my going there instead of staying horizontal). Instead of then going to OSonOS in Berlin as I had planned long before 'my system had a shutdown' I reduced all my social contacts drastically because I needed all my energy for my own transformation and then my re-insertion into the market. That's the reason, why I disappeared from all discussion lists (even my own one), but now I am back again and proud to announce that the space was opened in the province of Sofala in Mosambique (see my next posting) Bernhard ----- Bernd Weber [email protected], on 08.01.2002 at 21:13:03 Organization Development Consultant "DEVELOP YOUR CAPACITIES - MATERIALIZE YOUR VISION" C.P. 1462, Beira, Sofala, MOZAMBIQUE fone: +258-3-32 98 59, cellfone:+258-82-43 79 77 ----- WB-TrainConsult management- & human resources training, consulting & development ----- Gumpendorfer Straße 88b/18, AT-1060 Wien, AUSTRIA fone & fax: +431 596 86 57 ----- Anti-Virus precautions: 1) All attachments of my mails are mentioned by name in this e-mail Please do not open any other attachment! 2) Please send text documents in Rich Text Format (*.rtf) attachment(s) : None * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
