so now the story of our kitchen takeover at the festival. well, okay, so we didn’t exactly take the place over, we barged in 20 mins before the small cook staff was to serve 600 hot meals and they were kind enough to help us.

it was tuesday afternoon, three days into the festival, and we hadn’t met as a whole community since the opening saturday night. with so many concurrent activities, concerts, workshops, dances, and the like, the energy just kept getting higher and higher. there was no apparent way to ground it, and apply it in practical ways for ongoing connection, projects and everyday living. but how to rebel against a dominant culture and structure that might best be described as freedom and love?

we decided to take over the kitchen, even if quite peacefully and only for a few minutes. with the chef’s support, when she rang the dinner gong, we threw ourselves in front of small stampede of hungry people with empty bowls. we explained that soon we would ring a medium-sized roasting pan with a large wooden spoon and that would be their invitation to bring out their news - important stories and announcements that everyone should hear.

the purpose of the open space “track” of the festival was to connect the people and energy of the event with the rest of the world, to make some positive differences, to share the love in practical ways. so we went around the lawn explaining what we were about to do:

…if we want to change ourselves as individuals, we must concentrate our attention. and if we want the “bigger body” that is this festival community to change the world, we must concentrate our attention. in a few minutes we will ring the roasting pan and invite your attention in the center of the lawn. please join us for stories and news announcements…

if it sounds a bit dramatic, i suppose it was. changing the world can be like that. but it worked. when we rang the pan, people came in to listen. we used a small loudspeaker. a number of people announced projects and meetings and invitations, to cheers and applause. for a moment we were one, big, community circle, settling down and paying attention.

the next day, festival organizers discussed plans for including such all-community meetings into next year’s festival. we also discussed larger shifts toward much more open space, after what might fairly be called a rather timid first-run at it this year. we covered more ground this morning, in a workshop about leading in open space.

even it a much abbreviated form, the 40 or so breakout sessions that were posted did seem to result in some remarkable conversations. small groups that really dug into a wide range of issues and left many participants amazed and delighted at what showed up for them. but of course, this last bit is what we’ve come to expect in open space, timid first-run or not.

A few weeks ago, I had a couple of long Open Space coaching conversations with my friend Theresa Williamson, the founder of a successful and exciting community movement, called Catalytic Communities, in Brazil (Rio). Then she went off to try Open Space with her colleagues:

Every three months, CatComm’s staff spends a day away from the Casa or our home offices discussing accomplishments over the previous 3 months and new objectives for the following period. Thanks to a recent brainstorm with Michael we were able to experiment with Open Space for the first time. And the approach was overwhelmingly successful. The level of creative thought and exchange, and the sentiment of collaboration among staff, were all heightened. And I expect this to grow as we train and experiment in Open Space. What most surprised me was what the naturally positive approach inherent in Open Space taught me about how I had been handling things in the past…

…each staff member noted on a piece of paper a topic they wanted to moderate during the afternoon, with the intention of answering the question: “How do we make more good things happen at CatComm?”

In addition to focusing staff attention where staff were naturally interested, and on building on the positive in what we’re doing, Open Space also empowered staff to take control of the meeting. We will be incorporating Open Space into future open meetings held at the Casa with community leaders. Of course there topics will not be as imaginable as among staff with a clear common mission. As a result, we expect that implementing Open Space in open community meetings will result in exciting and unexpected collaborations and discussions.

As the director of CatComm I was refreshed to see staff taking control of the meeting… I was fascinated by the topics that came up naturally, as they are different to those I would have posed, but are perhaps closer to the pulse of what is really important…

Mostly, however, I was amazed to discover that in the past our staff focus has often been on the negative — “what have we not accomplished that we had planned to and why?” By asking the opposite question — “what have we accomplished and how can we do more of that?” — one arrives at the same answers, but through an empowering process rather than one that is disempowering.

Thanks for your work and your story, Theresa! This is just how it’s spozed to be! Now, just keep it going. It never has to get any more complicated than this — even when it’s really complex or conflicted. Just keep Opening!

Raffi Aftandelian and friends are translating on of my recent articles into Russian, for a collection. Not surprisingly, translating what we’ve called the “four practices of open space” and “inviting leadership” has been rather challenging. This from a proposed translator’s note seemed to have some merit on its own…

…there is a certain poetry in open space, a poetry that i have practiced capturing for almost ten years now in how i write. it means that words are often chosen for the specific reason that they mean many things at once. and like poetry, sometimes they are even chosen for the way they sound. so this makes translation very challenging, because these different meanings are intended to be read and heard and considered simultaneously, together. there is meaning in each interpretation and also some implication of having them both be true at the same time.

it is this holding of two states at once, distinct and together, that gives open space it’s texture and power. people are aware of themselves as individuals, and of the group as a whole. they are aware learning (taking in) and contributing (giving out), at the same time. open space is a dance of opposites, spirit and productivity. this is difficult to capture once in any language, and more challenging still to translate into another. in the end, we might say that open space is its own langauge, a language of movement, and the best way to really understand it is to do it. and be it. together.

Tomorrow we start messing with the deployment of family cars, in preparation for the wedding on the 24th. Might be getting close to the end of productivity and posting here.

I leave you with two new gems that I’ve just finished polishing. Not all new, but both significantly expanded from their last editions.

Open Space Technology: Inviting Leadership Practice - reviews the basics of Open Space, considers its evolution, and points to its dissolving into the ongoing practice of Inviting Leadership.

Open Space Technology: An Inviting Guide - a short guide for Inviting Leaders, with new meeting/event planning worksheet and notes on sustaining action after the big meeting.

Slow blogging ahead…

Somebody called today with a situation, an opening, a “better-than-zero” chance to propose a plan to take an old bureaucratic program to a new level using Open Space Technology. What to do?

I referred him back to the four questions from the Inviting Philanthropy post two days ago, re-framed a little bit into the context of him going to his boss and boss’s boss to inquire:

• What do you want (to see in the world, or in the program)?
• What do we already have (what’s working, what to keep and grow)?
• What do you need (to have, or see, or show, to support a shift)?
• What are you willing to do (approve, support) if you get what you need?

I suggested he make his own list. Run through it with his boss, adding the boss’s list to this. Then take it higher up to check their list against the chief. If nothing else, these four questions cut through a lot of potential crap. And saves my buddy from busting it on a proposal that goes nowhere.

Meanwhile, I see these four could be the very active punchline to the Inviting Leadership story that Corrigan and I are cooking:

• Embracing Heart: What do we really want? Do something that matters.
• Inviting Focus: What do we have to work with? Find a place to start from.
• Supporting Flow: What do you need? Ask and offer the things that make the difference.
• Making Good: What will you do? Got what you needed. Good. Use it. Do something.

My favorite place of action just now, by the way, is a new blogging project for Chicago Conservation Corps. Oh yes, and wedding planning… T: -1 weekend and counting. Blogged our organic wedding cake bakery today over there at C3. Yum!

No Mind Festival, that is. Last week we put together a nice little design for a series of Spaces to be opened as part of the No Mind Festival in Angsbacka, Sweden next month, for 600-1000 participants. Registration is open to all!

The first week of the Festival, July 7-13, is the tenth annual, with a theme of “Celebrating Life”. This year they’ve asked me to run the second week mostly in Open Space, July 15-21. The theme for the week is “Living Our Gifts.”

The (rough draft) design is rather unique and runs like this…

On the evening of the first full day of the conference, we’ll do the first of four openings, setting the agenda for each of three breakout sessions the following day. The first three rounds of this will be on three sub-themes that are still being crafted, each articulated along the lines of “Inviting _____ “.

The last of the four sessions, will be a sort of Open Space on Open Space, the theme of which will be “Inviting Leadership”. This theme will let us do some brief teaching and noticing about what Open Space is, how it works, and invite people to consider the implications and possibilities for using it elsewhere, after the Festival. The nature of Inviting Leadership also generalizes away from Open Space, so to include all the other methods and views and approaches that will percolate around the Open Space sessions all week.

In making the distinction between the Open Space sessions and the pre-determined sessions, we thought about it in terms of viscosity. The pre-planned sessions are a little bit thicker, more viscous. The OS sessions, a bit more fluid. This helped us find the edges of each, with the pre-planned structures ultimately containing the OS sessions, like oil caps the water underneath it in a bottle.

Because the whole of the Festival runs on the contributions of 150 volunteers, willing invitees, we articulated the edge between the OS and other sessions in terms of time: the Invited festival is everything already invited and established, the Inviting festval is the OS part, the fresh, growing, edge of the invitation, where the structure is still taking shape.

Chris Weaver shared a bit of his model for “State of Grace Philanthropy” today, by email. His approach focuses on projects and retreats and leads to “State of Grace” documents for sustained project funding and action — all of which got me thinking about my own model for what I might call Inviting Philanthropy. What follows is distilled from my work on Small Change News over the last two years, since the Giving Conference which Phil Cubeta recently summarized.

First, philanthropy is about love, care, and people. We might generalize to include all beings. We might acknowledge current use and practice and allow that it now means something about money and resouces, action and results. Inviting Philanthropy is about all of that.

Next, the basic model. Start with some people with projects, and also some people with funding. These can be all from one project or issue area, or a diverse group. Projects and funding at any level are okay, what matters is passion and a willingness to commit. Recognize that the project people have some money, and the money people have some ideas about projects. Ask everyone to write the answer to four questions, providing whatever one-on-one coaching is needed in order for them to articulate:

• What do I want (to see in the world)?
• What do I have to offer now?
• What do I need to move forward?
• What will I do when I get what I need?

Now, invite everyone together, in Open Space, to work on Philanthropic Action: Issues and Opportunities. All manner of caring and commitment are welcome, actively invited. The ticket to enter is that you’ve answered these four questions. Copies of everyone’s 4-part statement are available on a table. In the course of the conversations, people pass out these statements like business cards, and refer to them like we refer to websites… “oh, yes, there’s a bit about that there in my answer to #2.” In this way, what is wanted, what is available, what is needed and what is willing are all mixed together.

In the last segment of the Open Space meeting, imagine Sunday afternoon of a 2-day weekend program, there is an invitation to focus on specific projects that might go forward. The invitation is to merge any number of individual statements into one project statement. Add to that a “State of Grace” spin on things that will help the group ride out any potential conflicts.

Rinse and Repeat. Do this on an ongoing basis, probably quarterly, and allow all of the statements, for individuals and projects, to be updated and shared in a new round of Open Space.

Publish everything, the notes from breakout sessions, the personal statements, the project statements, and especially the project news reports, as things actually get done.

Invite care. Invite coherence. Invite conversation. Invite collaboration. Publish everything and everyone point friends and colleagues to the website, and bring colleagues to the retreats. Inviting Philanthropy.

It sounds like something called Unity ‘08 could be the first internet political party, nominating a presidential ticket through an entirely online process. Its leaders are for real. Peggy Noonan and Margaret Carlson commenting today on the venture in WSJ and Bloomberg.

Noonan thinks they’re missing the mark. Yes, she says on polarization, no on it being Dems and Reps. I think she’s absolutely right on calling the split as being between People and Politicians. I think they missed another point as well.

The internet is cool, and helpful, but it’s not the innovation we really need in politics. If we’re going to organize the people, well enough to run the joint (the country), and really take it away from Washington, then we’re going to need real conversation. Buzz beyond the hard drives. The Pols meet face to face, and so must We the People.

This brings me back to what we were talking about at the Practice Retreat in Vancouver a few weeks ago. One of our participants was asking about how Open Space could be used in political campaigns. She wanted to use it to run the campaign, but I thought the real power was to run the district or state or country that way. Here’s how…

First, we need to blow up the notion that candidates need to get elected to before they can do anything to change the world. They’re spending big money and talking to tons of people. That is the game. If they are running, they’re already in.

Next, they are putting out all kinds of information and messages. One of those messages needs to be: “Come meet with your neighbors, fellow constituents, to discuss a theme like Democracy in Action: Issues and Opportunities for Ordinary People, Elected Officials, and the Future of America.”

When the vols go out knocking on doors, they distribute this invitation, the message being: we’re not waiting, we’re going to start changing things right now. This is not business as usual. In this day and age, that is already a point won for this candidate! People don’t have to show up to the event to get the message.

When the people show up for an all-day convesation on this, lots of remarkable conversations happen. People take notes, which get posted to the candidate’s website. Clearly not conducting business as usual. People get connected. Energized. Some of them pass out more invitations to the next event. Others just go do some of the things they got to talking about with their neighbors. This is not your father’s town hall meeting… this is We the People, talking to We the People, about what We the People.

News of that goes on the website, as well. Suddenly, the candidate is at the center of a whole new movement, linking people and government. If that doesn’t guarantee some free media coverage on the 10 o’clock news, I’d be surprised. Momentum builds. I think we should give it a name harkening back to the First Continental Congress… call them something like Community Congresses.

Now who wants to pull the plug on that when the election comes? Even if that guy loses, the person who wins is going to have to answer to the organization that this candidate has built. Win or lose, that candidate has changed the game. Win or lose, that candidate IS the political leader of that district.

Now where is one of those candidates so that we can give this a proper demonstration? Granted, it probably works better in a district or statewide contest, but that could include races for US House and Senate.

Try on this updated version of the four “anti-practices” suggested in the last post…

• Analyzing, the opposite of Appreciating;
• Facilitating, the opposite of Inviting;
• Problem-Solving, the opposite of Supporting; and
• Making a Good Case, the opposite of Making Good.

Yes, I think that Inviting might just be the opposite of the sort of facilitation that coddles, protects, defends, assures, and tries to make sure that everyone gets to speak… and that everyone else has to listen to them. This might explain why some really good facilitators struggle so mightily with Open Space Technology.

Fixing might be generalized to problem-solving in general, and problem-finding in daily practice. ‘Nuf said.

And then, Making a Good Case wants to suggest that the opposite of Good is Best, as Making the Good Case so often means proving and assuring we have and have done what’s Best. This one might end up being called Making Sacrifices, as so much life energy and good work is lost, or wasted, in the process — sacrificed in the name of Best Practices and Measurable Certainty. How much is wasted making sure, , instead of just making good. We chase the ultimate sure thing, free lunch, perfect fit, and best practice — in exchange for the good life we already have and can practice every day — just in case. Maybe it would be more to the point to just say Making Excuses, which happens whenever we don’t think we’re doing good.

OR: How about Playing it Safe?

Nah… I think it’s Making Excuses.

Chris Corrigan and I have been refining our thinking and language for open space leadership. We have it down to four inter-informing and inter-supporting practices: Appreciating, Inviting, Supporting and Making Good.

While the practices themselves are each quite whole and robust, tolerant of description but not of disecting, that’s not actually how it is when we try to practice them as bodies. Incarnation is more discrete. On and off, in or out, dead or alive, male or female. More or less. Appreciating, Inviting, Supporting and Making Good.

So it occurs to me that naming their opposites, daring to notice their dual nature, one might say… could be helpful. Here are my proposals:

• Analyzing, the opposite of Appreciating;
• Protecting, the opposite of Inviting;
• Fixing, the opposite of Supporting; and
• Wasting, the opposite of Making Good.

These four meet two criteria for me. First, they are sort of obvious literal opposites of our four practices. More importantly, I have some felt sense of what each actually feels like. I can feel when I am doing them. This matters, because it means that I can feel when I’m not doing them. It’s great to notice when I am practicing well, but perhaps more important to be able to notice when I’m losing my way.

I can hear them, too, in the language of colleagues and clients. I know Appreciation gets things moving and I can hear others talk about the “paralysis of analysis.” I know that when people resist using Open Space Technology, they often explain their resistance in terms of protecting others. Or they attempt “modified open space” and speak explicity about fixing and improving the experience of their colleagues. And I hear people decrying business as usual as a waste of time, waste of money, and wasted chances to do good. So these are things I find in the territory, not theories I’m making up out of nothing.

I should add that it’s not that we should stop doing these opposite things altogether, but rather be more conscious of our habits, assumptions, and balance about these things. These opposites have their place and value. And they are all very well supported in western, industrial cultures. The new practices are not. So it’s the balance we need to reconsider, each of us personally, consciously, actively.

These four words aren’t magic, any more than the last four were magic — and I haven’t worked out the all the details. But somehow the marriage of these opposites, the rebalancing, or mutuality of them, allows us to handle in local, personal ways the enormity of what Dave Pollard and author Derrick Jensen are talking about?

Thoughts?

Bloomberg’s Caroline Baum sums it up the recent market movements pretty well yesterday:

Copper up, stocks down, bonds down. No, wait, it’s copper down, stocks down, bonds up. Can someone please help me get a handle on these inter-market relationships?

As I think about movements and relationships, in markets and in open space meetings …and organizations …and communities… I notice that I can indeed understand, or at least explain to myself, why things are happening. I can know, too, what is is happening now, and even what is happening next. The challenge is knowing what to do — because these two kinds of knowing, what is happening and why it’s happening — seem to happen in two different sides of brain or, perhaps more accurately still, in brain and in heart. Brain can’t really calculate what comes next. And heart can’t explain it.

What Julie Henderson calls “mutuality” is a practice in letting other(s) be as real to us as we are to ourselves. Chris Corrigan and I have been teaching Open Space and Inviting Leadership as the practice of being mutually aware of self and group, or self and organization, letting body be source of information about how I am as well as how “we” are. Today I’m remembering that this same sort of mutual awareness scales down, to where I can know what is really happening and why it is happening, simultaneously. When I can do this, I make better decisions, wise and kind, in markets and meetings.

What’s that you say, “Kind decisions? In the currency markets?” Ah yes, even in something as apparently solid, objective, measurable as trading, there is room for kindness. So easy to second guess oneself, destroy confidence, grow fear, lose focus and money and more. And, of course, it’s always dangerous to argue with a market.