I have one more thought to share with you, Chris. . . well, one last thought on this subject this morning. . . .
DannemillerTyson did an amazing intervention with a school district in Washington State, Mead District, I think. They used WholeScale, of course, since that is their core approach. They held a very large whole-scale gathering with representatives in the room of all constituentcies of the school system, including students and janitors and every other category of people in the system (taxpayers without kids, business people, politicians). They listened to each other, the system shifted and at the end of just two or three days they had many amazing plans to implement in the school system. There is a video available at www.dannemillertyson.comabout the amazing transformation. It's been a few years since I thought about the Mead District event so the details are fuzzy but I think the event was two days, on a Saturday and Sunday, because that was when the event could happen. This means that everyone at the event gave up their weekend, a powerful fact, don't you think? A central tenet of WholeScale is that it is possible to cast the participation in an event to ensure that there is a complete microcosm of the system in the room. Open Space, with it's 'whoever shows up are the right people' is a different container but an invitation to an OS event can be made to a 'compelte microcosm' of the system. . . and then trust that the right people will come. I think some clients (many?!) might find WholeScale with its more explicit structure to be a bit more familiar and, therefore?!, more palatable. I mention this approach Chris, because you indicated you were wondering if OS could serve in a high conflict context. I think OS a la PoP is just fine but if you have a client who wants a different container. . . . take a look at whole-scale. * * ========================================================== 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