>Is conveneing a session whilst facilitating the event abandoning (albeit >temporarily) the role of space holder. Is it confusing for the participants? > I have seen Harrison doing it although that was at an OS on OS for >facilitators.....ANy responses?
>Andrea. ***************************************************************** I rather suspect that we are in a territory susceptible to no one right answer. It is very clear to me that the facilitator assumes what I can only call a "sacred trust" to hold the space for all participants, and so Joe's comments are quite to the point. This is particularly true when it is a first time experience of a group in Open Space. But as the group moves from the status of "first-timers" to "old hands," my experience is that the situation changes a bit. There is in fact a learning curve, and groups do become more proficient in the subtle arts of Open Space navigation -- which I take to be a very good thing. For the next stop is Open Space "mentality" and eventually, I suspect, Open Space Organization. For me, Open Space Organization is the brass ring. Get that one and you really have something. And Open Space Organization is not about using Open Space Technology every day (or whatever) -- it is a fundamental shift in the understanding or what it means to be organized, and who "we" are anyhow. The only word that captures this shift for me is Transformation. This shift is less about "doing Open Space" that a recognition that all of life is Open Space, and the sole contribution of Open Space Technology is to allow us to perceive what is already there. Nothing new, nothing added -- just what's there. If we replace the words "Open Space" with "self-organizing system" -- or in the words of Stuart Kauffman from the Santa Fe Institute, a Complex Adaptive System -- things may be a little clearer. For me there is no such thing as a NON-self organizing system. There are just a number of people who think (I believe erroneously) they did the organizing. The sticking point is control and the hope that we might have it in some absolute or total manner. I believe the world is showing us our error, and Open Space Technology enables us to see that the loss of control is not such a terrible thing. So -- to bring all this to something like an end -- I suspect the day will come in many organizations when having an Open Space Facilitator is about as useful as teats on a boar, as a good friend from Kansas used to say. As for Open Space Technology, I believe the sooner it disappears the better. Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, MD 20854 USA 301-469-9269 (phone) 301-983-9314 (fax) email o...@tmn.com Website http://www.tmn.com/~owen Open Space Institute website http://www.tmn.com/openspace