my friend birrell walsh posted this to an email list i’m part of. it captures well how i think of our work in open space…

>
> “How do I say, in your language,
> to allow a space to open
> inside oneself, no - *as* oneself -
> and in that space to have
> such welcoming that others
> come there too, not as images,
> no, but *as* themselves;
> and in unfolding as themselves
> within the spacing you are being-as
> they find ease and freedom (by the way)
> to be well. How do I say that,
> in your language,” he, moving his tongue
> around unfamiliar syllables, asked
> so he could teach me.
>

if you like this, you might like some of his other poetry. he has a book posted at lulu.com. there are two of his favorite poems there, on the lulu product page.

in case you’re inspired to purchase, it’s worth noting that given the weird economics of publishing right now, he makes more money from the download (US$5.00 to the purchaser) than from the printed copy (US$22.00 plus shipping). but of course, hardcopy is still hardcopy. the book itself is beautiful, very well and sturdily made, and with a remarkable cover photograph from the collection of another friend, one radmila krieger, of munich.

if you want to know what birrell actually looks and sounds like, or just want somebody to read poems to you, he read twelve of his poems into his webcam and posted to youtube.

or maybe it’s enough just to enjoy this one, that seems to understand our work so well.

after i wrote yesterday about network and neighborhood, sally duros shared this this in the nytimes about the emergence of neighborhood news.

makes me think that someday we’ll all be tweeting (maybe slightly expanded from 140 characters?) about what is happening, more than what is happening to us as individuals. all tweets will coded by location, so at anytime, from wherever you are, you can pull in a stream of tweets coded for some radius of your own choosing. a way to listen to the neighborhood, and report into it, from wherever you are.

imagine the reports from a parade or street fair, from a place where someone is running from police, or a school yard on recess. okay, now imagine the kids drop their blackberries and go run and jump and swing.

from the nytimes about hyperlocal news…

If your local newspaper shuts down, what will take the place of its coverage? Perhaps a package of information about your neighborhood, or even your block, assembled by a computer.

A number of Web start-up companies are creating so-called hyperlocal news sites that let people zoom in on what is happening closest to them, often without involving traditional journalists.

The sites, like EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placeblogger and Patch, collect links to articles and blogs and often supplement them with data from local governments and other sources. They might let a visitor know about an arrest a block away, the sale of a home down the street and reviews of nearby restaurants.

<hmmm …> this article in the economist touches on some of what i’ve been thinking about the social networking tools. that despite the wide online connecting, we’re still basically limited by brain. or at least habits of brain-as-brains-currently-are.

the article distinguishes between a broadcast network (100s or even 1000s), a dunbar-sized network (about 150), and a more intimate social core (i’ll say loosely, 5-15). it talks about average numbers, but there will, of course, be differences between individuals — but also within individuals. i picture the variation within my individual network as a flutter in the boundary between the core, the dunbar, broadcast groups. if flutter is the right word for the fluctuation in the opening of my social aperture, then maybe float might be the way to describe the shifting my social aim. that is, as my aim changes, from project to project, the whole aperture pans the landscape of people i know. do i change my focus or emphasize the fluttering on “one side” of my circle, changing subjects in mid-conversation with neighbors who might also be connected to my work.

if maintaining a social core takes energy and attention, takes grooming, then what if i have several very different projects. if my core people in each of those aims don’t overlap, does my work in each suffer for lack of a full core? or do i get overtaxed by staying close and current with several sets of core folks? i suppose this is where hierarchy is born. i need a full core to accomplish things on most projects, but i’m split between projects. in those projects where i’m short core support, maybe i show up just enough to support somebody who’s more present, more connected in that realm, more often, leveraging my limited connections into another’s deeper connections. mostly i go along, vote the way he or she does, and occasionally get the support i need for something.

greater ease and effectiveness, simultaneously, and happiness too, would seem to rely on a stronger core, either by choosing people who are closer with more similar aims, or by gathering a very disparate group that is able to understand the essence of the challenge as similar across many diverse projects and places. we specialize/localize or generalize/globalize.

now, what if distance core is not as strong as when we can share food and drink and all kinds of other physical connectings and alignings? seems as longs as we are bodies, local is going to have some major advantages. what does generalize/locally or specialize/globally mean? is there a social network platform that supports this? seems that it’s possible, but not necessarily directly supported, or at least distinctly supported by facebook, twitter and the like.

i think what feels like strongest support, and the group i’ve been part of that has been most interesting, helpful and alive, is a small (7-10) group of people, with diverse aims, in terms of projects and places, but a common or super aim, something ranking up there with love, compassion, joy and common scope, in that we were wishing and working on these things to blossom on a similarly large scale, even as we all were local enough to gather in the same room with some dependable regularity. many individual aims, shared vision/language, large spanning/spilling scale, local gathering.

local gathering and diversity of aims happens naturally, just look around the neighborhood. but less likely to find local in an online neighborhood. unless neighborhood expands toward global, in which case body starts to get confused, as perception still seems to happen very locally. but the neighborhood might lack a larger mission, a higher purpose, and the energy of a rising dunbar- or broadcast-sized network tide. but but but.

how to find the great waves in a neighborhood, make local connections in facebook, change the world in a small group, or invite far-flung activists to a monthly potluck dinner? can we grow facebook legs and arms, twitter hands and feet, using distance tools to take local steps into embrace? does broadcasting scale heighten elevate otherwise small local purpose? where does the great heart rest down into soft earth? forgot your password? </hmmm …>

the open space approach is best known for inviting meeting participants to craft their own agenda by taking personal responsiblity for issues they care about. the “world cafe” approach to “conversations that matter” is characterized by larger groups gathering in few-somes around bistro tables for several short rounds of conversation. usually there are several rounds, with table-mixing in between each, addressing a series of questions. sometimes the ever-shifting groups take successively deeper cuts on the same basic question.

last weekend we did something a bit different.

we hosted 100 scholarship finalists (high school seniors) and another 20 scholarship recipient students and alumni, in four rounds of conversations, each lasting 25-30 minutes, in a 20-table cafe. we had several purposes to accomplish. we wanted to promote the two hosting universities, give finalists a good taste of what it would be like to be part of this leadership scholars community, have conversations that mattered so that they would be genuine and useful (even to those who didn’t win the scholarships), and finally, this was still part of gathering data for evaluation and selection of scholarship winners.

the process

in the first round, we did something rather like open space. the question was, essentially, “what are the question(s)? or what should they be?” the task for each table was to generate a list of questions about leadership, community, how the world is, and how it should be. we asked, “what do young people know that nobody else seems to be noticing? what questions you are already living in, caring about and looking for ways to do something about? what questions do young people need to address on the way to leadership? what questions are you wrestling with and want to raise with your peers? what questions must young people raise in the organizations and communities you come from?” during this round, i went from table to table with a small tray, noticing progress and clearing away the last bits of box lunch trash. this round and three subsequent rounds lasted 25-30 minutes each.

in round two, each table chose one person to stay on at that table, and choose one question from their table’s list for the next round of discussion at that table. everybody else changed tables and twenty different, but important, conversations sprang up. notes were taken on flipchart paper, one sheet per table.

in round three, a new host stayed put while everyone else moved. the new host chose a new question, from the questions list at that table, from the list at their original table, or they could choose to recap and continue the previous conversation with new tablemates. again, 20 different conversations sprung up, as i pulled and posted the session two notes from each table. where a topic was continued, the group often kept their old notes for reference.

in round four, we changed hosts and tables as before, and asked one person from each new table to visit the snacks table, bringing some of everything to their tablemates. we also asked that the questions be chosen and conversations proceed with special emphasis on taking action in the next year or so, the first year of campus life.

at the end of that round, we invited everyone to turn toward the center, creating so many loosely concentric circles, sort of one big huddle. the task for the next 30-40 minutes was proposed as a whole-group conversation about “what happened here? what did you see, hear, feel, think, …notice? what did you learn? what do you want to remember or do as a result of what happened here today?”

as a finishing exercise, everyone was asked to reflect and write briefly on two questions… “what will you remember or do as a result of these conversations?” and “who were the 2 or 3 people who were most important to your experience today?” in this way, all of the scholarship finalists were included in the evaluation and selection process.

results …and replication

the individual tables buzzed through each round and i thought the plenary was remarkable for the level of ownership, engagement, and the genuine sense of community that had emerged. days later, my client confirmed a resounding success. turns out that several university and scholarship groups, and even some of the participating students, are eager to replicate what we did. the notes from each round will be shared with all participants, as fodder for reference and replication.

having a room full of “high potential” scholarship-seeking youth certainly didn’t hurt the quality of the conversation, but judging by what i’ve seen youth do in other places, this sort of competition is not the essential element for success. i’d expect any replications to meet with similar success, and the absence of the competition would allow for some tweaking of things like the evaluative writing task, which could become more of a moment of recognition, thanks and appreciation.

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my own working definition of leadership is “practice made visible (to others).” which is to say, invite by vivid example. so what is practice? this guide from last week’s retreat with julie henderson…

notice. continue. stabilize.

this is true for any practice, but we might say that inviting leadership practice will notice, continue and stabilize “what’s working” or “what’s most inviting” in the practitioner’s group, organization or community.

this weekend i did a number of small things that i’d like to think must be part of some grander solution. perhaps you’re doing some of these same sorts of things.

on saturday morning, we woke up to a pile of new snow. so i shovelled our house and six or seven neighbors, plus the park on the corner and the lawrence avenue bridge across the chicago river.

later that day, we bought faucet parts from a tiny little local 30-year-old family shop where adam runs a service counter almost buried in every imaginable faucet part, old and new, as a steady stream of customers line up six deep for his help fixing or finding parts for all kinds of old faucets. on the way home we stopped in at the riverbank neighbors mid-winter planning meeting. then we loaned our folding chairs in support of a baby shower across the street.

tonight, i wrote and mailed a letter to our new governor recommending somebody for appointment to the metropolitan water reclamation commission (the folks who manage the river at the end of our street). this week i’ll send out an email reminder for our block’s next monthly potluck dinner. last weekend i distributed 1000 neighborhood newsletters to 30 block delivery people. it’s also time to make and distribute flyers for the neighborhood winter social event.

less locally, this week i’ll also have conversations about organizing meetings for the future of buffalo new york, the future of the credit union industry, and some other important projects where i might make some small contribution to others’ larger success. more personally, we’re still chipping away at a number of plumbing projects (with some borrowed tools) as we refinish an old house, still slogging away at the triathlon challenge mentioned a few posts back, and just getting started on painting the kitchen so we can finally order cabinets and counters.

mostly this doesn’t seem so much like working as just living. and when i stop long enough to notice, it seems quite lucky that i’m able to do any of these things.

olympic champion buddy lee teaches jump rope. unbelievable moves here. there really is a jump rope in that picture somewhere! power and ease. linear and circular motion. mutuality. flow. a few more buddy lee videos at crossfit.com.

it’s been almost 20 years since i ran three marathons in 12 months, but i haven’t worked out regularly since i fell of a small cliff ten years ago — unless you count bicycle transportation (sporadic and seasonal, at best) or all the demolition and rebuilding work i’ve done around the house in the last 18 months (not exactly cardio).

so running a real ironman triathlon is just totally out of the question in this lifetime. even my new gym’s invitation to cover ironman distances (2.4/112/26.2 miles) over the course of three weeks is going to take some pacing. in the last three days i’ve managed almost a mile in the pool, six miles running and 10.5 miles on the bike. not breaking any speed records, but hoping i can keep it going through this little contest. by then the new routine should be well established, anyway, and spring should be inviting running and riding along the river.

better, faster, stronger… or bust.

Being visible in the practice of open space technology brings a number of inquiries and requests for training and coaching and such. Being visible on this web, these come from everywhere around the world. It’s been a fun way to connect with people, or sometimes, discover connection.

Today I was chatting with Pete terHorst about open space and invitation. I mentioned that some of my approach to that comes from what I learned from my Dad, who worked at Ford in Governmental Affairs and Public Relations. He used to write things ended up in state legislation or on the bronze marker at Henry Ford’s birthplace, stuff where words really matter. So this is some of the sensitivity I bring to the crafting of invitations.

Well, it turns out that Pete’s dad worked for Ford, as well. Same group, different city, a ten-year overlap with my dad. I call home and ask, and sure enough, Pete’s dad is somebody well-known to my people. And this is some of why I don’t blow off any of these random requests for training and coaching.

The S&P 500 rose or fell more than 5% on 17 trading days in 2008. You’d go back another 50 years to count 17 more. So you might say we’ve had 50 years of volatility in just one year.