As so often happens after OpenSpaceTech meetings, where apparently nothing is really “happening,” there is a flurry of individual conversations still taking place… and all kinds of tiny actions, old habits and new moves, large and small, are all being informed by the talking, learning and connecting that started during the conference. The trick, it seems, is to not try to control it or otherwise make it conform to some single personal or pre-determined agenda or purpose. As long as we all just keep feeding the flurry, it grows on.
Gerry Gleason has set up a GivingCommunityEmailList for conference participants and others interested in giving-related issues like those addressed at the conference. Lenore Ealy posted to the new list this commentary on post-conference action:
I learned a tremendous amount at the Giving Space conversation. I came home and immediately took some new initiative with my own projects, such as getting my web designers working on converting the front page of thephilanthropicenterprise.org to a blog rather than a static page (which I hadn’t been updating at all). What happens there will grow from my ability to engage one or two more people in various smaller projects that I am already working on to make them better.
I have to strongly resist the desire to be everywhere and do everything. Priorities are important and help us actually get some things done. And it thrills me to proceed working on my own small space in the world better informed about what others are doing, how I can link up with them when desirable, and to have confidence that I’m not alone out here and that there are other projects that might attract my time and energy at some point that would be even better uses of these resources under my scope of responsibility. That might be enough.
Somebody else has started a ConferenceResults page and I’ve added some stuff to it, though I notice that the time I spent documenting actions and results on this new page actually took time away from actually taking more actions, in my case adding a bunch of new clarity and next steps to the BetterWorldProjectStoriesOnlineGivingAuctionMarket page (impossibly named so as not to get too stuck on a name that must be temporary!). Hoping to get my notes posted today or tomorrow. And so the movement(s) continue(s)…