I’m struck today by the swirling currents of self-organizing showing themselves in interesting places.

At The World We Want, Phil Cubeta details an almost-two year lineage from the Giving Conference to the first and second omidyar.net members conferences in Chicago and inviting Karloff to cultivate 75 more local open-space events in conjunction with his book release.

The driving force is the one “on the ground” in the local community who finds the space, talks it up among a few key influencers, and talks them into finalizing the agenda and emailing it around. It may be that Open Space facilitators, like Chris Corrigan and Michael Herman, could be among the ring-leaders. Giving people the freedom and encouragement to make the meeting their own is critical if they are to “buy in.” The World We Want is one in which we are active citizens, not just spectators or guests, much less subordinates.

At the same time, Kaliya Hamlin gives us a step-by-step planning guide for Unconferences, a seemingly-new phenomenon where people are all-of-a-sudden discovering open space. She also says:

I also must say it is disturbing to see the Law of Two Feet decontextualized out of the context of Open Space Technology’s principles and practices. Open Space Technology and the face-to-face process to create the agenda has played a critical role in making the best unconferences so successful.