In the OSLIST discussion on circles and presence, I added some thoughts, which I thought I’d republish here… My experience of the circle is first of all, that there has never been a group I have worked with – not business people, airplane engineers, entrepreneurs, government officials, community members – that hasn’t been just fine in a circle. No one has ever asked me not to set the room up a different way, although plenty of people have expressed their doubts that any of it would work. I’ve also done OST in other formats as well, like lecture halls, semi …
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Harrison Owen muses on circles, presence and Open Space on the OSLIST: As I have listened to this conversation (a very rich one!) random thoughts came to mind – which may actually fit together? The first one went something like this. We speak, understandably, about “doing an Open Space” – but I suspect that may box us into a corner we need not be stuck in. “Doing and Open Space” implies that we are following a certain set of prescribed procedures, after all Open Space Technology is a method. This is true, but it may also hide a larger truth, …
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Nick Smith has a nice post on common vision and team building in which he offers a few useful approaches for building common bonds, prefaced by this: I’ve never been comfortable with the word ’empowerment’. It’s speak to me of something manipulative and I’ve never found that motivation works that way. I tend to agree with what Henry Miller said, “The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.” I like that.
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On the OSLIST, Doug wrote: Chris and all– Fields work… Hosting… living in open space… You seem to have these evocative phrases swimming about you, Chris. Would you be so kind as to wax a little more poetic about them, put some more meat on the bones? They are, I think, getting to the heart of the question that started this thread…. The thread was about whether or not the facilitator can take an active role in an Open Space meeting, and what or why not. It has been a good thread. I responded to Doug this way: Well Doug, …
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I’m just tucking into to David Weinberger’s Everything Is Miscellaneous. (I chose to start reading at the beginning by the way!). In the second chapter, on alphabetization, Weinberger talks about the arbitrariness of classification schemes for organizing knowledge. Everything ordered by human beings is done so arbitrarily, and no one scheme is going to capture exactly the right kind of order that needs to happens. This is why tagging is so important (and I confess to being a lax lately with tags. Perhaps this is a good time to change that practice). “Knowledge is what happens when the joints of …