Hi, all.
I cannot comment on or imagine what Paul feels. He is not here to say
so. But I welcome that you are sharing, Michael, how you feel.
Not that you need me to welcome it ;o) but I just wanted to say I
appreciate your sharing your thoughts and feelings about this.
About hosting OSonOSs and WOSonOSs -
(and if I recall, Michael M Pannwitz started using the W - wasn't it
you, MMP? - and it evolved as a common usage term - yes?)
No, choosing a host / location is not pre-determined - if I understand
your concern about that correctly. And feel free to correct me if I am
wrong on interpreting your concern there.
On the OSLIST here you've seen me say 'if you are thinking of
hosting... / if you would like to learn from past hosts ... / if you
cannot come to a WOSonOS and are thinking of hosting and would like
someone to represent you...'
I do this not because i am part of some pre-determined decision but
because I am one person whose enthusiasm for access and inclusion
inspires me to invite co-learning and a real welcoming for OSonOSs and
WOSonOSs shared across the world.
People think of whether their community feels ready to host - or
whether they want to instead continue growing their OS learning
community to grow local capacity without also dealing with this other
kind of event. The WOSonOS or OSonOS being one part of a chain of
things happening in their region that grow OS capacity.
We (me, others, with and without me) have these conversations all year
'round - whoever wonders about it all and wants to share thoughts - on
OSLIST, one-on-one, in emails, in cafes, and in other places and
conversations I am not aware of.
And then some either come to an upcoming WOSonOS - or ask for support
to come - or ask for someone to represent them - when they and their
community feel ready and / or inspired to do so.
And then someone or someones come - or create something lovely with
their colleague-representatives who are coming.
During the WOSonOS it's useful for those thinking of inviting to tell
the host team so there is time in the program design for however many
invitations there may be plus the conversation that may follow.
if more than one group is inviting the WOSonOS - everyone in circle -
has a conversation about it until they sense with mind and with body
which invitation to select.
When my community felt ready we invited - and invited again over three
consecutive years - because the group did not sense and feel that our
time was the time... until it was the right time. All good.
For some of those years I could not attend. So as I invite others to
do - I asked some really creative and brilliant colleagues who were
going (I love you, Thomas and Eva!) to invite to my country on my
behalf.
In 2003 ('Swenmark') Brian Bainbridge and I had fun inviting the world
to Goa, India on behalf of Janet Pinto, at her request.
Meanwhile, OSonOSs happened, all over the world, and keep happening.
As in the UK - several practitioners met at the WOSonOS who were from
the same region - actually had never known of each other before - and
I think there's an OSonOS bubbling up there in our near future.
It is not a WOSonOS convening manual, Michael - if what you were
referring to was the Wisdom from Past Hosts letter I have gathered and
grown over the years. It is just a collection of thoughts from past
host teams that - again, as someone inspired to help grow OSonOS
learning and community around the world - I had some interest and
energy to create and to add to each year - so that host teams had with
them the voices and experience of others who have done this particular
kind of international co-learning experience before them. There are so
many lessons-learned about access and inclusion - from the way host
teams have learned to generate visa invitation letters - to flexible
pricing on registration, to amazing energy behind-the-scenes - to help
people of different levels of class, power, travel experience,
language and OS knowledge join us. And yes - I host an OSonOS every
year that is much simpler - because I am one person hosting for those
annual OSonOSs. So I do less. But I will say that most of the 'more'
things a host team does - and again: most of that is unseen to
participants - are true passion and lots of amazing ideas and tasks
that result in diversity, inclusion, and to me, true invitation and
welcoming. Very exciting.
And personally, as one who does both events - I do count all OSonOSs
and WOSonOSs as equal. They are all opportunities for a diverse
community to get together to share some precious face-to-face co-
learning. Call them what you will - OSonOS, Learning Exchange,
WOSonOS. They are all opportunities for whoever is near or can get
there (sometimes with help, sometimes on their own) to learn and share
and celebrate. So I do see them as equal, and full, no matter what
they are called. I am not someone who usually counts things. But I
always wonder why there aren't more OSonOSs - bring them on! They are
delicious!
Thank you for this conversation, and for this opportunity to share
what my own experience has been regarding process and invitation,
Lisa
On Oct 23, 2012, at 7:43 AM, Michael Herman wrote:
If the experience is one of desiring a simpler execution of the
basic practice, then the solution is to offer to host an wosonos for
yourself. If, however, you're from the UK, for instance, and the UK
has just hosted, that means you don't really have a shot at it for
at least a few years. Further, if the process of choosing a host/
location looks like it's been pre-determined (which it often does,
based on past comments by various participants), then even if
somebody like Paul was willing to host and the community was willing
to stay in the UK for another year, he wouldn't feel like he had
access to the process anyway. Finally, if the pre-determined
processing of the decision, or pre-conversations, about the next
invitation happen someplace other than in the event, newcomers like
Paul are right to say they are excluded.
With all these conditions present, it's quite possible that Thomas'
three ways of using Two Feet only make the situation worse. When
someone comes to the conclusion that they are stuck on the outside
of the group and the best we can say is "Leave if you like," that
would seem a recipe for a bad feeling -- especially once someone has
made some investment to get to this event and might feel stuck there
for the two days, trying to figure it out.
I'm not trying to put words in Paul's mouth or speak for him... I'm
just saying that it's possible that the way we invite and welcome
and include people in wosonos conversations, including the ones
about where the next event(s) might be held, might be ripe for
review. As we go along, and get deeper in our own community
practice and accumulate artifacts and habits, we start to look a lot
like a traditional organization -- in the sense that we have an
interest in stability, continuation, dependability, and such -- even
as we are supposedly all about emergence and making it up as we go.
Like look at our watch midway through briefing the principle that
says "whenever it happens is the right time," the more habituated we
become in our gathering practice, the more we depend on and add to
how we do wosonos -- (even the W that got added a few years ago, for
instance, creates scarcity by giving one event some "specialness"
above all others that year) -- the more we add to our wosonos
convening manual, beyond what's in the user's guide, the more we are
potentially perceived as welcomers who aren't being very welcoming.
What if we didn't have any more Wosonos events, for instance, what
if we just counted ALL osonos events as equal. We wouldn't
necessarily celebrate the "20th anniversary" but could celebrate the
20th osonos and the 30th and 100th... without giving the one somehow
decended from Harrison's original 4 events at dulles airport any
more importance than what lisa does in san francisco, john does in
haiti, or we've done here in chicago in the past? If all osonos
events were allowed to be held as equal, then anyone could put one
on the map and the only side conversations would be among old
friends deciding where they might be able to meet up. And note,
too, that there's nothing that says that if someone is hosting in
australia, i can't host an full and equal peer gathering at the very
same time, in chicago. neither event needs special W-ing, and
anyone can choose between either gathering, and be surprised by who
shows up, from how far or near.
These are things I've thought about for many years, and found few
ripe openings to discuss, in part cuz I've not been able to attend
osonos anywhere for some years. So I can appreciate how somebody
newer to the mix might feel frustrated having made an investment to
join and then come to the conclusion that we're as deep in our
habits and rituals as any other exclusive organization. More
frustrating because we always seem to say otherwise. Having tried
at times from "within" to have these conversations, I can appreciate
how hard it would feel from apparently "the outside."
All of which makes me wonder how many "osonos" events we've really
had. What if we did count them up and start numbering the as we go
forward, as ALL having been descended from the HHO-convened
"originals." And what if we agreed that, in the main, the clearly
visible and open heart of any osonos was a chunk of space and time
where it ran "by the book" and if you don't see it in the user's
guide, then you don't see it in the room, either? Wouldn't have to
be the whole event, but there could be a distinction between "this
is what we do because we're excited, creative people and this is
what we do because it's the heart of open space practice."
What if....?
Michael
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