Interesting poinits Birgitt... I'm about to embark upon my first long term OS relationship (all the rest have been short term affairs...fun for a while, but not MEANINGFUL...:-) ). This is with three urban Aboriginal youth councils from BC and Alberta. We have used Open Space in Vanocuver with one coulncil to get at some community priorities and we will be doing another one with all three councils as part of some training I'm offering. The intent, especially here in Vancouver, is to use OST to create proposals for action from youth in the community that can then be funded by the youth council.
For the training, they will be getting a half day crash course in OS, what it is and how it works, and then an afternoon and next morning in OS to experience the process and work on opportunities for leadership in their communities. The councils want to develop the capacity to first of all work in Open Space, and eventually run them for themselves. Everyone's excited about this because it will give us a chance to see how OS can work over the long term with a community. I don't know if others have looked at this, but it seems to me a variation on the OS organization: the OS community. As for value...I couldn't begin to fathom how to measure that. On dissipative structure, let me quote from my bible on this stuff, The Web of Life by Fritjof Capra: "During the 1960s, [Ilya} Prigogine developed a new non-linear thermodynamics to describe the self organziation phenomenon in open systems far from equilibrium. 'Classical thermodynamics,' he explains, 'leads to the concept of "equilibrium structres" such as crystals. Benard cells [highly ordered thermodynamic areas spontaneously appearing when water is heated] are structrures too, but of a quite different nature. That is why we have introduced the notion of dissipative structures to emphasize the close association, at first paradoxical, in such situations between structure and norder on one side, and dissipation on the other.' In classical thermodynamics, the dissipation of energy in heat transfer, friction and the like was always associated with waste. Prigogine's concept of a dissipative structure introduced a radical change in this view by showing that in open systems dissipation becomes a source of order." And further... "According to Pigogine's theory, dissipative structures not only maintain themselves in a stable state far from equilibrium, but may even evolve. When the flow of energy and matter through them increases, they may go through new instabilities and transform themselves into new structures of increased complexity...Prigogine's detailed analysis of this striking phenomenon showed that while dissipative structures receive their energy from outside, the instabilities and jumps to new forms of organization are the result of fluctuations amplified by positive feedback loops." Sound familiar? CJC -- CHRIS CORRIGAN 108-1035 Pacific Street Vancouver BC V6E 4G7 Phone: 604.683.3080 Fax: 604.683.3036 (GO LEAFS GO!)