Dear OSLIST friends, Please share this around as is easy and feels good... and come!
many thanks, michaelh -- *Please join us for The Practice of Peace... an intimate and advanced Professional Life Development program on June 7-9, 2004 in Chicago (Oak Park, IL) with Harrison Owen and Michael Herman. * *Visit http://www.globalchicago.net/peace for registration and details.* The old is falling apart, a new world's emerging. Though nobody knows the moment. Seems everything's in motion, but where are we going? Clearly we could use some Space. And Now. Open Space... to gather and talk, to work and learn, to solve and resolve our most important questions and issues related to: * Promoting excellence and learning * Engaging people in transformative shifts * Generating new revenues and assuring profit * Enhancing innovation and developing new products * Building a collaborative workplace or network * Focusing on assets and opportunities over problems * Inspiring and inviting people to do best work * Opening communication and connecting movements * Strengthening leadership and effectiveness * Healthy growth in organizations and communities * Getting things done -- in spite of everything! If you work with people, manage projects, convene meetings, lead changes, organize conferences, or teach essential skills... there is something in this for you. Please join us! And please do share it with colleagues who would want to know that this is happening. I have spent a good chunk of the last few years teaching Open Space Technology and helping to form local practitioner groups around the world. In late 2002, Melbourne Australia, I met up with my friend and mentor Harrison Owen and asked him to come back to Chicago. So I am pleased to announce that... Harrison Owen will return to Chicago (Oak Park) -- June 7-9, 2004 -- for a unique and powerful three days dedicated to the Practice of Peace and the process of Opening Space within ourselves as leaders, our organizations and communities, our environment and our world. *Visit http://www.globalchicago.net/peace for details and registration. Early Registration (discounted) and Scholarship Requests by May 7th.* Harrison Owen is the initiator and lead storyteller of the Open Space Technology worldwide practice community. He's worked around the world in all kinds of organizations, from Fortune 500 to African villages. In recent years, through his work with Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, together in Open Space, he has come to understand Open Space as The Practice of Peace. His experience and this advanced program is immediately relevent for every leader and every kind of human organization. Genuine Peace and Resilient Effectiveness can never be attained with the elimination of chaos, confusion and conflict. In fact all three are essential to the continuance of life. Without chaos, there is no open space for future possibilities. Without confusion, old ideas and ways of thinking stick around well beyond their time. And without conflict, ideas and approaches fail to reach their full potential, never having been sharpened in the intense conversation of critical assessment. Peace of the sort that brings wholeness, harmony and health to our lives only happens when chaos, confusion and conflict are included and transcended. The Practice of Peace is the conscious application of the power of self-organization to the healing of our fragmented world and scattering work. It has nothing to do with "designing self-organizing systems," which is an obvious contradiction in terms. The Practice of Peace is the creation and sustenance of the essential preconditions of self-organization and collective effectiveness. And the core of The Practice of Peace is Open Space Technology. *Visit http://www.globalchicago.net/peace for more about Practice and Peace. Early Registration (discounted) and Scholarship Requests by May 7th.* The Practice of Peace is for all of us and every organization -- chaos, confusion and conflict show up everywhere! This is an invitation to lead and learn to surf through them -- an advanced opportunity to deepen your own capacity to... * Understand the essential role of chaos in Open Space and in the life of an organization. * Enable the creative power of emerging new order by letting go of the old (order). * Facilitate and support the organization as it engages the process of grief at work (Griefwork). * Celebrate and sustain the new Spirit of organizations and networks. * Perceive the critical opportunities and empathize with the pain in the moments of transformation. * Understand the function of Leadership as being different than positional power. * Maximize your own power of leadership at the junction of passion and responsibility. * Engage your own role as Peacemaker, including the critical and difficult role of Silent Witness. *Please Join Us! Visit http://www.globalchicago.net/peace for details and registration. Early Registration (discounted) and First Priority Scholarship Requests should be received by May 7th.* Please mailto:mher...@globalchicago.net with any questions! -- Michael Herman Michael Herman Associates 300 West North Avenue #1105 Chicago IL 60610 USA (312) 280-7838 http://www.michaelherman.com - consulting & publications http://www.globalchicago.net - laboratory & playground http://www.openspaceworld.org - worldwide open space ...inviting organization into movement * * ========================================================== 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