I’ve been sharing the story of the essential practices of Open Space Technology with a variety of people in recent months, from facilitators and managers, to physicsts and software technologists. I’m pleased to say that the response has been surprisingly positive.

In April, Chris Corrigan and I will be leading a Practice Retreat to share our learning about the essence of Open Space leadership. The program is experience-based and serves all levels of Open Space, facilitation and leadership experience equally well. The practices are taught in the context of Open Space Technology, but will be immediately applied to all kinds of other work in organizations and communities.

Chris and i have been offering practice workshops together since 2002, but this is the first time we have offered a full three-day retreat together. It will take place on Bowen Island, near Vancouver BC. See the invitation and registration for complete details.

We would love any of you to join us, and of course, please feel free to share the invitation with folks in your network who might be interested.

Celebrate the health and diversity of the internet. The mission of OneWebDay is to create, maintain, advance, and promote a global day to celebrate online life: September 22, 2006. One big day and web of parties, projects, people.

MeshForum is a conference on Networks - bringing together an interdisciplinary mix of academics, artists, business leaders and government experts for three days of learning and collaboration. Our mission is to foster the overall study of networks - across fields of industry and academia.

Confirmed speakers at MeshForum 2006 include Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, authors of Naked Conversations, and Manuel Lima of VisualComplexity.com, as well as a mix of academics and business people. We also hope to once again have experts from the Pentagon (Office of Force Transformation) and FEMA. On the third and final day, the format changes and yours truly leads an Open Space for speakers and audience members to break into small groups and work together on the discussions which have arisen out of the previous two days.

The goal is that MeshForum provides more than just a chance to present and hear great content, that it also provides a forum for interaction and collaboration, especially between people in different fields and industries. Register Now

can you join us on bainbridge island, off seattle, on thursday, february 9th? the theme of the day is practice. so far, we are expecting about 15 people for a full day of learning and connecting.

i’ve been thinking lately about open space practice in terms of opening heart, inviting attention, supporting connection, and grounding the energy. i offer that as some slim subtext. anything that falls into one or all of those buckets is fair game and the rest of the plan is all open space.

email if you’d like to join us. we’re doing a simple, potluck and pizzas sort of lunch.

We’re making final preparations and packing bags this week for RecentChangesCamp in Portland at the end of this week. The conference, with a sub-theme of Building Communities Worth Having, seeks to connect tech tools like wiki and community organizing activists/activities. We’re running it in Open Space and posting our proceedings here. There’s still time to register (it’s a free, community event!) if you’d like to join us.

I’ll be running up to Seattle to visit with a number of friends and colleagues there, next week. Might be light blogging for the next couple weeks.

In January 2006, John Wiley & Sons published Stephen Shapiro’s counter-cultural book, Goal-Free Living: How to Have the Life You Want NOW! Response to this controversial work has been phenomenal, including a cover story in the November 2005 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine and a feature on TomPeters.com.

Maybe you’re already living a goal-free life — in larger or smaller ways. That doesn’t mean you don’t have any goals or dreams or desires… it means you aren’t held captive by them!

We are bringing people together to explore the issues and opportunities for living a goal-free life — personally, professionally, and culturally. I’ll be facilitating this in Open Space, March 18-19, 2006, in Oak Park (Chicago).

Are you looking to collaborate with and learn from others who share a goal-free mindset? Maybe you still feel a bit trapped by your goals, but are finally ready to break free of that pushing? Would you like to meet, support, and be supported by other people who are succeeding in goal-free ways? Please join us in creating a goal-free community of new friends and colleagues!

You are invited to Building Communities Worth Having, and Open Space Conference, February 3-5 in Portland Oregon. Friends and colleagues Ted Ernst and Brandon Saunders are co-convening this event, and have asked me to facilitate. I’m glad to be along for the ride with them. If you’re anywhere involved in “The Movement” (place-based, cyber-space and/or face-to-face) for building a better world, we’d be glad to have you join us!

It’s being co-sponsored by IBESI, OSDL, ICANNWiki, SocialText

UPDATE: new sponsor… ATLASSIAN

Former World Bank executive and master storyteller Stephen Denning joins Chautauqua in November to discuss his book, The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling.

In his hands-on guide, Denning explains how you can learn to tell the right story at the right time. Whoever you are in the organization CEO, middle management, or someone on the front lines you can lead by using stories to effect change. Filled with myriad examples, The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling shows how storytelling is one of the few available ways to handle the principal and most difficult challenges of leadership: sparking action, getting people to work together, and leading people into the future.

In the Group Jazz virtual chautauqua session, he will converse (tell stories?) with us about the book for the next two weeks. I’ll be tuning in to hear what he has to say about Invitation, the practice of telling visionary stories that bring people together.

Registration is free.

Matt Homann and Dennis Kennedy have put together a great group of speakers AND had the — what should we call it, courage? vision? wisdom? — to let them say their piece and then sit down in self-organizing work groups, for some active conversation with conference attendees.

BlawgThink2005 is a two-day event offering three tracks of speakers and workshops for most of the first day, and then a wide-open second day in Open Space. The value of the first day is that we’ll cover a lot of core issues. The value of the second day is that we’ll get to do something with those issues.

In Open Space, we’ll name our own working sessions — repeats, sequels and spin-offs from the first day — and tap into the talent and experience of everyone, including the speakers, on the issues and opportunities that are most important to us. It’s not enough to just hear new stuff. We need some space and time to take it in, process, plan, and work together with others to apply it in our own situations.

The official focus is legal blogging, but anyone interested in more general business blogging will surely fit right in and find plenty of learning and application. I’m grateful to be along for the ride, as the facilitator of the Open Space portion of the program. There is much to be done — and gained — in connecting the practices of Open Space and Blogging!

Join us for BlawgThink on November 11th and 12th, at Catalyst Ranch in Chicago! Mailto:Matt@LexThink.com to register.

The second annual Chicago version of the Omidyar Members Conference is on the calendar and posted in the Invitations roll in the sidebar. Please join us! …July 14-16th, 2006 in Oak Park (just outside of Chicago). See our past proceedings and our new invitation.

technorati:smallchangenews

Lisa Kimball sent an invitation yesterday for a new Virtual Chautauqua event, September 15 (now) though the 30th, with author and teacher Michael Ray. I”m finding his book, Highest Goal, to be both brilliant and helpful. Some of my favorite bits from Jim Collins’ foreword:

…the story of a businessman who visited a Zen master seeking enlightenment. They sat down for tea, the businessman blabbering on about all the issues and challenges in his life, and his quest for achievement and direction and meaning and purpose and . . . the master said nothing, pouring tea. With the cup full, the master kept pouring, the tea flowing into the saucer, onto the table, and finally into the man’s lap.

“Hey! What are you doing?” yelped the businessman, leaping up as the scalding hot water seeped into his pants.

“Your cup is too full,” said the master. “You add and add and add and add and add and add to your life. There is no room for enlightenment until you empty your cup.”

…I’ve come to believe that there are two approaches to life. The first, followed by most, is the “paint by numbers kit” approach to life. You do what other people say. You follow a well-traveled path. You stay within the lines. And you end up with a nice, pretty—and unimaginative—picture. The second, followed by few, is to start with a blank canvas and try to paint a masterpiece. It is a riskier path, a harder path, a path filled with ambiguity and creative choice. But it is the only way to make your life itself a creative work of art. To paint a masterpiece requires a concept, a place to begin, a guiding context in the absence of the comforting numbers and lines in the premade kit. That guiding frame of reference is the highest goal, and bringing it into your life with the help of Michael’s discoveries is what this book is all about.

…A core process—both in the course and in this book—is the idea of “live-with” heuristics. These are mantras of living that you implement for a period of time (usually a week or more), and reflect on the experience. At Stanford, we were challenged with such livewith assignments as: If at First You Don’t Succeed, Surrender. Pay Attention! Ask Dumb Questions. Destroy Judgment, Create Curiosity. Don’t Think About It. Be Ordinary. And the hardest livewith of all: Do Only What Is Easy, Effortless and Enjoyable.

You can join, or just read through, the two-week conversation with Michael at the VirtualChautauqua.