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OSI-US Board Meeting September 30, 2005 Thank you for your comments, adjustments, corrections.

Present: Peggy Holman, Lisa Heft, Douglas Germann Sr., Gabriel John Engle, Karen Davis - - Absent: Kerry Napuk, Mikk Sarv, Michael Herman - - Notes-taker: Lisa Heft

1. Bylaws rewritten and presented for final approval and posting on wiki (Doug, Kerry)

Before this meeting Doug emailed all Board with final text - an approval vote from 6 members passes / finalizes Bylaws. Text of proposed amendment to articles was also emailed to the Board. An approval vote from 6 members is required.

Actions / Decisions / Agreements :

Regarding revisions on Bylaws - All 6 present approved final text - revisions on Bylaws are approved.

Regarding text of proposed amendment to articles - All 6 present approved - amendment is approved.

Doug will send documents to Peggy to sign and send along with check to Secretary of State. Doug will talk with Michael about how to clearly label old Bylaws as ‘former version’ on wiki. Congratulations to Doug and Kerry for all their hard work.

2. World Service Market (Michael)

At OSonOS Halifax, Kerry convened a session on World Service Market - this was combined with the topic of OSIs meeting together. When World Service Market was presented, people had questions about whether this was a US project or were we interested in all institutes being involved in some way. Chris C. offered to work with Michael on some of the technical aspects. John feels the level of issues and concerns raised at OSonOS Halifax indicate a need to spend more time for more dialogue about World Service Market (what it is, how it’s going to work, who’s doing it).

This links to item 4: Answers to this come from asking the question: what would be of service to the community (and is there a way to tie revenue to that).

Actions / Decisions / Agreements :

Continue discussion - keep this on the Agenda

3. Dee Dickinson / New Horizons stories on OS & education (John, Kerry)

Nothing to report - except that there was a UK conference that Kerry’s colleague participated in - perhaps she would have a report or something to send to Dee.

Actions / Decisions / Agreements :

John will send a message to Kerry to find that out.

4. Income generation, e.g. look at Michael Pannwitz's map model (Kerry, Peggy)

Peggy has noticed how MP has a remarkably simple and service-filled way of generating ongoing income - the OS World Map. There’s a lesson for us to be learned in that. How might we be able to do something similar? Is there an arena in which we might be able to generate ongoing income for OSI-US? We would like to look for diversification in the way our money comes in - let’s brainstorm about new ideas for income.

See item 2: The question to ask would be what would be of service to the community - what are the emerging needs - and how to tie revenue to that.

Actions / Decisions / Agreements :

Continue discussion - keep this on the Agenda

5. What people want to happen under OSI umbrella, inviting responsibility to seek passion (Karen, John)

Karen had intended to convene a session on this at OSonOS Halifax - however after discussing, Kerry convened a session on World Service Market - this was combined with the topic of OSIs meeting together. In that session, people from the different OSIs shared what they were doing. Karen also got some great ideas from OSI-Canada - but doesn’t recall any talk about anything that had moneymaking potential.

We can ask what we see are the emerging needs (based on some of our impressions at OSonOS Halifax and in general). The website, OSLIST etc. are all good - people indicate their appreciation for promoting more face-to-face OSonOSs? (regional as well as international OSonOS).

Community was mentioned - what ensures that we have a healthy, ongoing community - even if in future Harrison isn’t around anymore? Exploring this question could give us insight into what kind of services serve the community. Answer could be to do nothing…or answer could be there are things we would want to do; to plan for.

How to ensure the long-term viability and evolution of this community? How to retain the values we treasure in Harrison’s gifting of OS to the world - nobody owns it, we are all teachers to each other (nobody has to tell anyone else they are ready to teach or to facilitate), anyone can walk into a training workshop at any price they can afford (and/or learn on their own with coaching/mentoring relationships from OSLIST community or individuals)? All different approaches to Open Space can indeed include these values. We feel that as individuals, as a community, and as OSIs we are responsible for keeping and ensuring these values.

What else wants to emerge as evidenced by OSonOS Halifax? Doug noticed several sessions on non-verbal contexts (silence, graphics, movement, etc.). Multi-modal forms of interaction - there has been more experimentation going on with that (at OSonOSs? and in our individual work). Karen notes Angeles Arrien’s comments about universal healing salves: singing, dancing, storytelling and silence - if those elements are present everything is doing well.

Actions / Decisions / Agreements :

This conversation is to be continued - Keep on the Agenda

Agreement that we will begin our own Board meeting conference calls with a moment of silence as a way to further share the depth of experience that comes of including these different modalities.

6. Thinking about our webspace (all)

More on how to best serve - John mentioned that he sees the website as a key resource in serving our community and newcomers interested in learning about OS. He heard some comments at OSonOS Halifax from people who have had a difficult time accessing information they wanted via the wiki website. He reflects that we don’t really have a systematic approach to evaluating our website and the wiki format - and while John finds it easy, he’s hearing from others - including e-commerce experts, that there are many people who don’t enjoy navigating wiki websites. Others on the call resonated with these observations.

Lisa shared how different people are used to different ways of presentation and organization on the ‘net. Some people absolutely hate using wiki sites - it doesn’t fit how they absorb things and they find it hard to navigate. Others really like wiki. Lisa has heard that the text-based, linear nature of wiki (lines of text all down the page) - is hard for some folks to cluster / take in info. Non-wiki formats often help these kinds of people to cluster and absorb info better.

Regarding our own website(s): we mentioned it is also hard for people to understand the difference between .org and .net.

Another element of our discussion was about community - some people don’t go to visit sites for community -- they want information ‘pushed’ to their in-box, or they’d rather ask a question for example on OSLIST and have that conversation with people than search for data on the wiki. We noted that Michael’s intention about changing to wiki was to reflect an open ‘commons’ where people could share responsibility to co-create - all reflecting OS values. And, there’s much evidence to suggest that our website is helping us do that with all the new wiki pages and the fact that if you ‘google’ (do a search for) “open space” our website comes up first. At the same time, we agreed that the website tries to serve 2 very different functions - tries to be an information source for new people who don’t know about OS -- and tries to be a community resource. We wonder if we should explore having a non-wiki website for newcomers who are not comfortable in wiki environment.

Actions / Decisions / Agreements :

John will contact Michael (our site’s webmaster, who has don an extraordinary job at building and nurturing our community via an ever-evolving and expanding website) to learn his thoughts on all this.

This conversation will continue - it is rich, productive exploration - and it is a good time to do this reflective work - Keep on the Agenda

7. Estonia wiki on education (Mikk)

Actions / Decisions / Agreements :

Keep on the Agenda


Karen requests someone helping her reconstruct notes from August meeting - she lost the file with those notes and was going to post them. Doug is sending her an email with notes.


NEXT MEETING: October 28 11a PST / 7:00 GMT (usual time)

BIN for October 28 OSI(US) Board meeting:

1. World Service Market (Michael)
2. Dee Dickenson / New Horizons - stories on OS and education (John, Kerry)
3. Income generation (Kerry, Peggy)
4. What people want to see happening under OSI umbrella / Inviting responsibility to seek passion (Karen, John)
5. Thinking About our Webspace (all)
6. Estonia Education wiki (Mikk)