I want to thank Peggy Holman and David Swedlow for their rapid response to my invitation that we take some time to consider and then share our personal and collective learning after 20 years in Open Space. I particularly enjoyed the fact that David, a relative newcomer to out midst, was the first to respond. For my part I have opened a space on openspaceworld.com as the temporary archive for our thoughts. You can check it out by clicking on http://www.openspaceworld.com/os%20learning.htm Eventually I will move the whole thing over to openspaceworld.org, but for the moment it just easier to manage on a website I can easily access.
I must confess that posting this invitation was pretty much of an impulse, but upon further reflection, and after having seen the initial responses, I believe that this little exercise can be of enormous value to the whole community and beyond. You might think of it as an Appreciative Inquiry on Open Space, and as such will constitute a useful piece of the nascent research effort that Larry Peterson, Chris Corrigan, Peggy Holman and others have begun. There is no rush to completion, and I believe you will find that creating a considered response will be a rich and rewarding opportunity. Our lives are busy both in general and on OSLIST in particular - and it is so easy to get buried in the immediate details that we miss the overall picture. As they say - "We've come a long way, Baby," and taking a moment to consider just how far and how deeply we have traveled can be a rich moment indeed. For newcomers and old hands alike, observations on our personal experience can only enhance our collective wisdom, I believe. I look forward to whatever comes next as a birthday present from each of us to all of us, after 20 years. Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, Maryland 20845 Phone 301-365-2093 Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com <http://www.openspaceworld.com/> Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html * * ========================================================== 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