from Jack Martin Leith in Bristol, UK:

Barry Owen has established an Open Space Technology group on Facebook, the social networking site. The group already has more than 80 members from a wide range of countries.

If you are unfamiliar with Facebook groups, they are a place where group members can post relevant links, photos and videos, participate in discussions on specific topics, and leave messages for other members. Also, the group administrator - Barry in this case - can message the whole group with news, stories and so on.

Barry set up the group primarily as a repository for Open Space related stories, but I got involved last week (my official role is “UK correspondent” - thanks Barry, I feel like a CNN reporter) and have been busy uploading photos and links. Any member can do that - no fancy title required!

How do you become a member?

If you’re already a Facebook user, click here, log in and click on Join this group, which you’ll see at the top of the right hand sidebar. That’s all you have to. You can start posting to the group immediately.

If you’re not yet a Facebook user, go to www.facebook.com and enter your details into the boxes that appear below Sign up for Facebook.

If you only want to use Facebook to access the Open Space Technology group, you can provide the barest details on your profile and not bother with the Friends bit. But once you’re in you’ll probably get hooked. Many people find it a useful extra way of keeping in touch with their friends and acquaintances.

If you have ay questions or concerns, please contact either me or Barry and we’ll do our best to help you.

Hope to see you on Facebook!

Jack Martin Leith

Worldwide OpenSpace-Online® Real-Time Conference for OST Practitioners:

“Open Space Technology (OST) - What have we learned and where can it lead us next?”

OST facilitators from around the globe are warmly invited to join a 4-hour OpenSpace-Online Conference on Open Space Technology (OST) on June 30th / July 1st , 2007 (depending on the time zone).

What is OpenSpace-Online®?
The general purpose of the OpenSpace-Online Real-Time Meeting Methodology is to enable organizations to consciously act as “life long learning organizations”, to empower interest and work groups as well as change facilitators to independently co-create the future for the greater good of society, and the whole planet by overcoming the limitations of time and space. The self-contained online methodology is setting worldwide new innovation standards for global e-collaboration by enabling holistic and highly participative architectures to link multifaceted ways of face-to-face and on-line activities in business, community, education, health-care, social and governmental settings.

This Global Open Space Community Conference is addressed to OST facilitators, practitioners and sponsors who are interested in sharing thoughts, ideas and resources about Open Space Technology. The conference also provides opportunities for greeting old Open Space friends and for meeting new Open Space colleagues.

*How do we support communities and organizations to become enablers of ongoing Open Space?

*How do local and global crises influence us,our clients and our work today and tomorrow?

These are just two of the questions that could be raised as we consider present and future issues and opportunities for opening and holding space. We look very much forward to your participation and your own specific questions, issues and ideas!

Further information and free of charge registration till June 24th, 2007 (thank you to NEULAND, whose sponsorship enables a free of charge community event):
https ://www.OpenSpace-Online.com/event/070630/index.php

Warmest regards
Gabriela Ender and Co-Inviters

On Runet (the Russian language Internet) Various online forums also report having experiences with OST as people run meetings called OST, but not really run on OST principles.

Might this be a familiar refrain which brings us back to the age-old question of how do we guarantee quality of OST meetings run around the world?

In one example, in an OST meeting, a “training: Our children: child-rearing issues” one participants writes that she “didn’t like” OST.

Others on the forum share other, more positive experiences of OST and invite her to further explore the method.

In another intriguing development, a Moscow coaching program offers training in the “Open Space model,” listing Harrison Owen and Birgitt Williams as co-authors. The material further refers to the role of the Creative Person in this model. Some might wonder, are Harrison Owen and Birgitt Williams teaching something in Russia that the rest of the OST community is not aware of?!

Gabdulla Hamitov facilitates conference on youth leadership development, “Path to the Future”
Ufa, Bashkortostan (Russia)
photos courtesy of Bashtorg, a major regional wholesaler in Russia

Since the 14th annual international Open Space on Open Space conference in Moscow in August 2006, OST has continued to be applied in many different kinds of organizations, especially in companies.

Recent applications include a meeting on personal safety and responsibility with RusAl, one of the largest aluminum producers in the world.

The sponsor, Elena Sochkina, responsible for corporate culture, noted “my most pleasant discoveries with the Open Space method were:

*the number of participants is limited only by the size of the physical meeting space.

*the conditions are created where formal boundaries are erased (status, hierarchical, and professional)

* the participants create the agenda (which is the guarantee of success).”

(Direktor po Personalu magazine)

OST has also been used recently with major Russian political parties, at marketing conferences, training conferences, at a coaching conference (co-sponsored by Open Space Institute-Russia), with Russia’s Central Bank, with cellular phone service provider Beeline, and with a major pharmaceutical company.

Note: PROMT offers a free and relatively good quality Russian to English webpage translation service.

Gabriella Ender, the creator of OpenSpace-Online sends news that her software has been nominated for a Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics award. The nomination text states:

Germany’s “do-it-yourself” OpenSpace-Online E- Participation Real-Time Methodology is a powerful philosophy that has the potential to become one of the most earth shifting Internet meeting and conferencing methods in society, politics, education and other fields. OpenSpace-Online was developed by Change Facilitator Gabriela Ender and her team in Germany (1999-2002). The easy to use innovation enables fast collaboration, knowledge-sharing, problem solving and results-oriented dialogs about urgent topics for small and large groups in real-time without ’human’ online moderators. During the virtual-led and structured working process all participants are equal. It also bridges value-gaps between online and offline collaboration / participation in a wonderful unique way.

You can vote for Gabriella’s contribution at the awards site.

An interesting experiment is just starting in the Open Space Sangha blog. It’s called an Inquiry Circle. It was very powerful in person, at the Open Space on Open Space, last year in Halifax.

The hope is that we might replicate some of that in a virtual platform. Here’s how it works: The first person poses a question. The next person (any next person) in answers it and then asks the next question. This continues until it reaches round the circle to the person who posed the original question.

The opening question is: What is your experience of Spirit and Open Space?

You’re welcome to read, comment or join the circle as a posting member, in the Sangha. Maybe we’ll take a short rest here at OpenSpaceWorld.ORG while the experiment runs over there.

Please join us for the 5th International OpenSpace-Online® Real-time Network Conference for Change Facilitators!

Political and economical crises, new diseases, and the growing ecological unbalance on earth greatly influence us and next generations. Change Facilitators from around the world are invited to meet in an OpenSpace-Online® real-time conference with the title:

Change Facilitation: Issues and Opportunities of Economic Globalization, Ecological Challenges and other worldwide Change Processes

Date: January 28th/29th, 2006 (depending on your time zone)
Where: In the comfort of your own home or office
Duration: 3,5 hours (real real-time event)
Costs: Euro 28,00
Registration deadline: January 22nd, 2006 !

The virtually-facilitated and text-based internet methodology takes participants in real-time through successive phases of shared agenda creation, multiple discussions and cafe talks, summarizing results, prioritizing, action planning. At the end each participant receives an extensive documentation about the meeting at the press of a button.

Complete invitation and online registration

This is a great way to meet Open Space practitioners online, get a taste for the spirit and method of Open Space, and also to test-drive what could be a valuable tool (this online version) for your business or community organization. Please join us!

Judy Gast writes this week, “…the Open Space Institute of Canada is planning an OS Online event on February 3rd and encourage anyone who is interested (from anywhere) to register by January 27th.”

See CanadianInvitation and OpenSpace-Online for details.