Dear all Martin Leith once rather desperately asked in a European OT-conference: How can I be myself and make money with it? This question has been with me ever since. It has a lot to do with the ongoing strand on authenticity and self-discovery in Open Space.
In our recent Swiss Open Space event happily and healthily gay in April, we used portrait sheets to facilitate post-conference exchange. They included address, things I do especially well, things I need support for, fields I would like to cooperate in with others, important life questions and your favourite quote or book. I repeated this question in my personal portrait sheet, under the topic of important life questions. I was the facilitator of the conference, and it was my first OS-conference as a professional facilitator (even if I have lived with Open Space since 1989, co-organized several European OT-conferences and participated in more of them). By the time the conference was over, I knew the answer: In being a professional facilitator of Open Space conferences. I truly loved it. Whoever I may be, I could be me, fully and lovingly! I am very grateful to Lisa Heft for having asked, on this list, for a bilingual facilitator who would work in Switzerland, and to Florian Fischer for having passed on that mail to me and for having prepared the event with me. Unfortunately, due to illness, he has had to resign two days before the event we were both very sad about this (but then, whatever happens ). Fortunately, Wolfgang Fänderl from Munich jumped in for the German-speaking part he was on the team of assistants and has offered to do so. And thank you all who offered advice for community building on the first evening playing typical or happy scenes of ones life as a gay man in groups of 10 proved to be a great door-opener to a wide range of topics, also intimate ones (36 issues addressed by a little over 100 participants, and 12 emerging ongoing projects). Lots of learning involved, too: * Sleep enough. * Ask for enough help. * Talk about office work before with the sponsor, especially if the protocols are written on laptops and need to be perfect for the documentation (the perfectionism swallowed all the assistant capacities which I then didnt have to make changes in the room...), even if he wants to do the office work in his way and without your help. * Coordinate well with the sponsor, also during the event, not only before, and even if he doesnt want you in the office! * Bilingual events need a translator who is not the responsible facilitator. To do both is exhausting. * Clarify roles before the event: of people who make the transition from having been members of the preparation group to becoming normal participants (they had expected certain outcomes, but they didnt put their related topics up on the wall because they wanted the space to be truly open but then, who will see to ith that their burning issues get addressed?), and of people who make the transition from assistant to co-facilitator and have not been part of the preparation group. Yes, to be repeated, definitely. On October 20 22, the same sponsor is having another OS for people living with AIDS to find out about their needs, and I will facilitate again, this time with a translator. Its copy-paste, in the same place, partly with the same team. We do welcome assistants who speak German and/or French! Thank you all again for being such a wonderful support and community! Love, Catherine Catherine Pfaehler Senn Open Space-Begleitung Kellersriedweg 8 CH - 2503 Biel T/F/B ++41 - (0)32 - 365 68 41 c.pfaeh...@bluewin.ch * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
