if you are interested, tell us as we will try and iteratively improve this document once amy's accompaniment of founder harrison owen of open space to china is completed in a weeks time -all errors solely mine chris macrae
while what goes on in beijing will be fully documented in chinese, being in the position to translate it int english may be the greatest opportunity to understand china americans and other china-millennnial friendships ever seen in one uptodate single source
contents: 1 cheeky claims for open space; 2 overview of how open space is facilitated; 3 practices neighbouring open spaces such as hubs and hackathons; 4 some resources that may get you closest to harrison owen; 5 opportunities to debrief people amy could do most valuable work with in empowerment and leaning fileds; 6 some remaining questions
1 some cheeky slogans on why those who have not experienced open space should not be trusted to innovation, conflict resolution or empowerment ( Obituary: Colin Morley - BBC News in memory of colin - friend and mentor of mine, trainee in open space, londons host of empowermentillustrated, killed in 7/7)
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1.1 you havent lived if you havent experienced open space- experiencing 1000 people making most of each other brains and flows- particularly when they were at war with each other before the open space started is joyful, unites all the positive emotional and social intelligences, for some people the first time they really experience community or love of extremely diverse peoples (peace)
1.2 children are as capable of open space as adults- if open space had been freely practised in education then we would not be trapping the net generation in broken education systems - joblessness would not cause whole generations to be lost
1.2a mass media wouldnt have taken away the commons and destroyed diversity of culture if local government championed open space- politicians could be servant leaders; intergenerational investment would celebrate joy of change congruent to spending 4000 times more on borderless connectivity than the industrial era's borders and zero-sum exchanges and extraction- peoples would map how healthy society generates strong economy not vice versa
1.3 open space is practically about both system transformation and action networking; its values are bottom-up and open collaboration, purposeful, passionate, engaged. self-organising and aligned to natures evolutionary rules (in fact in the early 1980s harrison owen was annual convener of global summit of system transformation faciltators- their feedback they hated podium, format. preferred coffee time networking- think of 1000 people 2 day podium conference say 16 hours= 960 minutes -even if Q&A time of speakers maximised that's less than 1 minute per person )
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22222222222222222222222222222222222222222 simple overview of open space
OS has 3 parts though often only the second middle part is described
part 1 is innovation process- one issue is the reason for coming- famously part 2 empowers by saying the people who come are the right people (to communally solve the challenge , t transform beyond the broken system) but clearly the breadth and depth of people assembling in one place all at the same time is interdependent with innovation process
part 3 is what actions continue from the second that the open space is declared closed - and if this had been a worldwide event as people return home all over the the wrld
the "main" part 2 of a harrison owen open space takes 3 days and 2 nights
day 1 starts with people assembling in a circle or concentric circles- so that everyone can see and respect each other - circular attendance equality in every way that a podium design cannot
the open space facilitator is in the middle- joyfully celebrating good news of why people came - reminding them of the common challenge; declaring only one rule - the law of 2 feet - if you find yourself in a gathering where you feel negatively energised politely/quietly leave and go to another gathering where you can bring positive energy
people are asked to stand up and declare in under 60 seconds (preferably 10) a discussion they would like to host
the first wave of such discussions might produce in the case of 1000 people 180 discussions- these are arranged on a wall perhaps 6 by one hour sessions 30 concurrent choices of where to participate per session
actin notes are taken from each session so that everyone is uipdated on what went on at all the concurrent meetings
often day 1 is used to raise confidence in each other- note before the open space in some cases people have literally been at war with each other); day 2 may look like a repetition of day 1's process but usually its iteration takes people to breakthrough ideas; much of day 3 is spent back in a circle but this time with a talking stickj so one person at a time can report on what they have experienced and will take responsibility for beyond the space itself
333333333333333333333 neighbouring methods to open space
hubs whether run by open source technologists or hosts of public spaces much talked about in SDG 11 -sustainability of cities and communities- almost always build memberships through some kind of open space- over time this may get more technological eg bootcamps or hackathons- unfortunately very few hubs have been fully associated with 360 degree understanding of harrison owen open space
open space origin in 1984 pre-dates the existence of the worldwide web- though harrison owen was a lead connector of the well and other west coast gatherings through which early pen-everything etiquettes of www were first empowered
4 some resources that can get you close to harrison owen quickly
Harrison Owen linkedin
listserve - historically very active less so now http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
practice of peace booklet attached
5 opportunities to debrief (or introduce harrison owen to) people who amy could do most valuable work with
people who invite us to share challenges of scaling insanely treat stuff - eg noah, naila, hiro would likely find meeting harrison valuable
people trying to mediate conflicts, way above zero sum models, loss of sustainability or devaluation of cultural respect could alsog ain
6 some remaining questions on urgency of system transformation and human sustainability goals
this is just a personal cents worth -so given open space has been practised in 100 countries and pretty much every social challenge why isnt it more truly known-
harrison has his reasons for refusing to certify experts- also i find some muddles between the insistence that a pure faciltiator doesnt bring their own views int the space and consulting/coaching sponsors if its a big event that someone clearly put a lot of resources in with aim of leading innovation around it- ultimately if open space is underused then so is the awareness of how broken our education (human development, sustainability) systems are