hello list,
i am yaari. i am 34 years old and i lve been living in berlin,
germany most of my life. i am a carpenter, product designer and open
space facilitator.
i did my os training in 2003 at an internatonal training in weimar,
germany. since then i facilitated, assisted and helped in about
50something open space conferences. i joined the list quite a while
ago but am not so writeative ... though i enjoy following the
discussions...especially when i am not space trucking it helps me to
stay on the track and remember and reconsider.
thank you all a lot for this - respect.
hello brendan,
you asked for stories of cross-cultural/gender scenario...it has been
discussed quite a lot on this list ...
i would like to share an experience which might be interesting to you.
last summer i had the great pleasure to facilitate an open space at
the second international conference earth and people in shongui
village (close to murmansk), russia. it was a conference of
indigenous people - the saami - most of them from the (kola) region
but also from scandinavia.
having agreed to facilitate spontaniously ... i was aked by marju
from estonia (who i got to know at my open space training the year
before)...concernes grew fast. i, us citizen, black, male, grown up
in west berlin, germany ... going to facilitate the main part of a
conference of indigenous people in russia north of the polar circle
at a tipi conference....and i do not speak any russian.
it went beautiful!
around 50 participants joined the conference. looking back a few
issues come to my mind:
preperation and design
in the preperation i forced myself to rather concentrate on rocking
the sponsor about the design and organization than on if i was the
right person...
one of the results was that we could have a prep-meeting with some of
the early participants at the evening befor the beginning of the
conference. expectations were mind-mapped and a theme was chosen:
nature, our craddle - yeserday, today and tomorrow!
i believe the prep-meeting helped us to clearify that the open space
was theirs and i was support.
a prep-meeting can also give the chance to discuss special needs
(vegetarien food...) religeous habbits, vacations....or... one
should concider. since then i try to prevent getting too deep into
that before...like having interviews...but organize and focus on a
good prep-meeting.
appropriate conditions
a decision is needed yesterday.....travelling to russia i found it
difficult to check before leaving if it was urgent to the
participants....it was!
if it is really urgent to the participants they will care/concentrate
less on who is facilitating male or female, black or white, us
citizen or russian but appreciate the support.
the team
i always work in a team when facilitating. for this one three people
spontaniously joined in! anna caroline,22 as assistant and
frederik,22 (both german) and cees, 37 (netherland) as helpers. this
allowed me to concentrate on holding time and space and got a whole
lot of work off my back...especially doing an open space outside in
the woods at a tipi conference where we had to improvise every
minute. it was wonderful to have anna caroline (open space
facilitator herself) with me to reflect and discuss at all times!
thanx a lot to the crew!
design
we went for half a day plus one whole day os and half a day reading
the book/reading gallery and action planning. i believe that
especially on occasions like this a three day os is a must...even
though if one does it outside in the woods this is quite a thrill for
the team!
language
in this case most of the participants and one of the two sponsors
only spoke russian. for me it was unexpectedly helpful not to be able
to understand most of the participants since it was a lot easier to
stay out of their business and just not even beeing able to answer
questions. we had very intensive talks with the two translators to
make sure they got a clue what it is all about.
....i hope you can read something helpful out of these lines...feels
like writing a lot more since the whole trip was quite an adventure
and the open space was a pleasure... i would/will do it again...right
away...not too much thinking...just doing... most likely the sponsor
and the facilitator are the ones who are most concerned!
love from berlin
yaari
...if i make it to moskau next year i will make sure to bring the slides!
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