romy shovelton emailed today, from her farm in wales, asking about mixing open space and appreciative inquiry. it turns out i have a pretty good story of such mixing, from grassroots to new national government, that i’d been meaning to update here.

on my third visit to nepal, i helped convene and facilitate a third open space event there, this one a first national summit for peaceful development. the first two meetings were a classroom presentation/demonstration of open space technology, for about 20 students and faculty at kathmandu college. the second was a city-wide event, organized on the success and with the skills gained in the first session, looking at the 20-year future of kathmandu.

at this second event, i made a point of having side conversations with as many of the 40 participants as i could, suggesting that we might do 4 days the following year, two days of open space, followed by two days of ost training. this was a model we’d used elsewhere and i thought it could give the depth of experience needed to accomplish the things that were being discussed for the next 20 years in kathmandu.

when i contacted my colleagues about returning for a third visit, they began organizing the event we’d discussed the previous year, with some important changes. it was to be four days, but it would be national in scope. it would be held in open space, but it would be based also on AI principles and the 4-D process. it would include training, as well, on both ost and ai.

i never would have believed it was possible, but my nepali colleagues never thought otherwise. so we did four one-day open space events, one on each of the four D’s, the first one shortened by opening speeches, the last one shortened by a grand closing ceremony that included gifts and acknowledgements and official thank yous in addition to the usual comments in a circle. the middle days opened with ost training observations and closed with evening sessions on how to do AI. we also started a blog that they used for several years.

since then they have had second, third and fourth national summits, sometimes in open space, sometimes with appreciative inquiry facilitated by ai originator, david cooperrider.

along the way, in the midst of the sometimes violent maoist resistance, a 6000(?)-year old landmark gate was destroyed in an explosion that also destroyed part of one of the organizers’ homes. the village where this happened was devastated by the loss, but this organizer emailed me almost immediately, saying that they were planning an open space to talk about rebuilding gate. i don’t know if that event ever formally happened, but having it there as a possibility in such a moment is surely worth something.

and now, after a fifth summit event just held in january, this one also in open space, and run totally on their own, without outside facilitators or consultants, they are planning a sixth national summit — this one for the 601 members of the soon-to-be-elected “constituent assembly” that is the budding solution to more than a decade of political, sometimes armed, in-fighting, and the governmental structure that will replace the ages-old nepali monarchy. the sixth summit will seek to infuse the new government with open space and appreciative inquiry.

Last Fall, we did a one-day summit event in Open Space to help establish a central Ohio contribution to the national Leave No Child INSIDE movement. Nice to see them growing the KidsAndNature weblog we started with the conference notes. This is my current favorite example of how to keep the Spirit of an Open Space meeting alive and working.

Recognizing that creating a universally meaningful logo graphic for such a diverse group would be difficult, we opted for a flicker badge of four photos, pulled from a kids and nature tag at flicker. This means that the logo actually shows what they mean by kids and nature. It’s able to be displayed by any member organization, the main criteria for membership being that you’re helping to spread the word, or really the vision, embedded in the photo badge. And anyone with great pictures of kids and nature can add them to the tag group, and thus add their view of kids and nature to the emblem and the sites of every member.

Alison Murdoch sent word yesterday of the upcoming Essential Education conference in California, October 2006. The announcement came with an invitation to volunteers for website maintenance. Later in the day, Julie Henderson asked about adding some photos to the Zapchen Somatics site. I said yes, both times, and then got back to work on updating the Imagine Chicago site for Bliss Browne. All of this after I talked with Rebecca Blazer and Marissa Strassel, walking them through the new weblog we are starting for the Chicago Conservation Corps. Late last night, I posted a note from Roq Gareau into the writing notebook, not yet public, where Chris Corrigan and I are developing our book on Inviting Leadership.

Depending on how you count them, I am working on eight to ten different websites, many but not all of them weblogs. Today, I can see them clearly as working conversations and overlapping groups of colleagues. It’s easy to imagine the lot of them as so many flipcharts and breakout groups scattered around a big meeting room. Some of them are sites of active documentation. Some of them don’t get much writing but do mark and hold a space for our meeting. A few of them have side conversations going on, a listserve or or sub-site, nearby. In all cases, I care about about the issues: education, philanthropy, community, environment, food, well-being — and the opportunities to connect these conversations with each other. It strengthens me to see that I am indeed walking my talk… noticing, inviting, documenting, and doing. Open Space Practice and Open Space World.

Between clicks on all of these websites yesterday, I got an urgent email from a friend and coaching client. “On my way to an open space client meeting. Need to talk, if you can.” It turns out that he’s been doing quite a lot of work in Open Space, and he mentions something about using it in more and more different places, and discovering that “it” can work in all of them. The way he said “it” really caught me and I see: “it” is “me”. Open Space isn’t an abstract or academic process. It’s personal. It’s me appreciating, inviting, supporting, and making good on the issues and opportunities that matter to me. We say that Open Space can work in so many different situations, and now I see that the real limit or caveat, the qualification that could be added is this: Open Space can work anywhere, on any issue, and with any people that I/you/we can genuinely appreciate. In other words, IF you can find some good in the situation, there is always some way to invite, support and make more of it.

This comes from Alistair Cockburn’s book on Agile Software Development, via Deborah Hartmann’s RichDistributedCollaboration page in the BarCamp wiki.

I guess it goes without saying (or drawing) that effectiveness goes stratospheric when you get 2 people together at a bar, with a pile of cocktail napkins to scribble on.

Shel Israel this morning, talking about business blogging at MeshForum:

Blogging’s not the revolution — the conversation is the revolution.

I’d say the same about Open Space Technology — and that’s why the two go so well together. Have a meeting that is many meetings at once. Blog all the notes and plans. Comment on the progress. Blog the milestones. Repeat until full resolution, of everything.

This morning is my first experience with trying to listen to conference presentations, following thoughts that pop up for me, and blogging highlights all at once. Think I’m getting a brain cramp!

Tip of the morning: Robert Scoble uses newsgator.com. I setup a free test account and in the first 10 minutes it looks way better than bloglines. Think I’m sold.

Last call to register for next week’s MeshForum in San Francisco. It’s all about working together. Join us if you can! Sunday and Monday are packed with speakers from technology, community, business and academic views of networks. On Tuesday, I’ll facilitate a day of Open Space to make more of the connections that make our nets work.

Been talking with Chris Heuer about the Open Space dimension of this…

BrainJams New Orleans - Big Announcement!

On Thursday May 4th we are going to bring the best of Web 2.0 to the New Orleans small business community in what could be one of the biggest Unconferences of the year. This will be a day of conversation, peer to peer learning, and developing a better understanding of how the technology community can serve the needs of this vitally important city as it comes back from the trajedy that was Katrina. Our goal is to help small businesses understand how they can make the most of blogs, social networks, tagging, wikis and other collaboration tools - but I have a feeling that much more will come of this. More…

I’m impressed with the work Chris is doing on the ground, but also the depth or background of his work, as he’s just back from an Art of Hosting workshop, working on these sorts of questions…

• When have I truly lived my passion and what in particular was powerful about this?
• What do I now sense is the next level of my passion and practice?
• If this is the next level of my passion and practice, what could stop or come in the way of this?
• What is the burning question that will help me step more fully into the fire of my hosting?

This marriage of depth and action, internal and external, personal and social, seems essential now, in all of our work.

thanks to ashley for sending along this complete list of del.icio.us tools.

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.

Reporting today from Day Two of the Rockford and Four Rivers Regional Food Security Summit, the latest in a line of events that dates back to the original summit that was convened in Open Space by the Chicago Community Trust in November, 2001.

More than 60 people, ordinary citizens that is, have gathered here at Rockford College, raised and discussed more than 30 issues, including land use, farming and gardening, food pantries, organics, community education, marketing, school lunches, fair trade, among many others.

We are using a weblog to post all of the proceedings and will be experimenting with that as a platform for sustained community action. There’s a lot of life in this circle. Maybe it’s all the organic food. Whatever the explanation, meetings like this give me hope for the future.

Blogs are about being changed, more than changing others.

Bonk. This Johnnie Moore line really smacked me. Still reverberating in mind, a week after I read it here. And the whole notion of blogging for the disruption of it, for the internal and indirect effects it has, as illustrated by Hugh Macleod in the case of doubling of sales for Stormhoek wine.

Fascinating to consider what we’re disrupting in the Open Space practice community with the blogging we’re doing at OpenSpaceWorld.ORG. Perhaps the notion of who really is the open space practice community anyway!

Challenging in my own practice, two… disrupting myself and what I have come to think my business is all about. Consultant, facilitator, teacher, manager, practitioner, coach, writer, partner… running together in new ways these days.