hi you open space
friends,
I want to ask you a
question.
since years I take part in
this list, although I never led an OS and maybe never will. I took part in at
least a dozen of OS, led by Katrina Petri, Harrison Owen, Michael Pannwitz,
Ingrid Eveling and some others. I was there as a visual recorder, sometimes
paid, sometimes not. And I am reading your network conversation, and owe you a
lot of touching ideas.
One idea came to me
yesterday, in the early hour between sleep and waking up, and I want to share it
and bring it to a question.
As I understand, Open Space
was invented by HO watching a coffee break and an African tribes meeting - no
agenda, no organisation, just life at its best.
When I walk through the
groups in an OS, listening here, taking visual notes there, I am like a dog
sniffing around, or like a bumble bee following the energy of honey smell.
During the day I gather lots of images I draw this way, images which I bring
together. So I am actually more like a bee, not a bumble bee. And if I show my
honey to the group afterwards, many of the others like it to have a visual
overview of the proceedings, the ideas that have developed, sometimes also the
unspoken energy that I felt and drew. So I found out that I create a group
memory this way.
In a very special OS in
Oberursel some years ago a group gathered around the theme 'and how about
ourselves as OS leaders?' The group soon decided to take no notes, because it
was all so personal, about being a workoholic, missing the separation between
private and business life, or having experienced an accident which gave life a
new meaning. I followed the energy and stayed at this group the whole time. And
when everyboda came back to the group and was asked to gove a brief feedback to
the plenum, "my" group only said:"our report hangs already there, Reinhard did
it".
Of course I know, that just
a tiny percentage of OS has a visual recorder, out of cost reasons for
example.
Now I come to my question.
In this net you often talk about 'holding space'. But at African tribes
meetings, at coffee brakes there is nobody holding space, or it is everybody.
Self organized.
Wouldn't some of you
like to test a service to the group similar to the one I am practizing? Holding
space in another way?
Just start walking
around drawing little images, not as a participant talking and arguing with the
others, but wandering to and fro silently and open minded? And thus producing
something wich no written protocol of the groups can substitute? As a stepping
stone for sustainability, something to come back to, to show
others?
And maybe this way also
participants would follow the example and draw a bit, like in World Cafè
meetings using the table cloth for visual notes?
What do others
think?
Reinhard
VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE
Kuchenmüller & Dr.
Stifel
Munich Germany
Tel: +49- 89- 202 447
48
Fax. +49- 89- 202 447
49
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
