Welcome to Open Space! If this is your first encounter you are standing at the beginning of what thousands of your colleagues around the world have found to be a most excellent adventure in which common people regularly produce uncommon results. Along the way these same people have found deep inspiration from the community of their fellows and the quality of their thought and actions. Open Space Technology is in fact a very simple way to enable more effective and productive meetings. And, as it turns out, Open Space is much more. Be prepared to be surprised!
If, on the other hand, you are an old-timer in the world of Open Space, I believe you will find that this third edition is more than a simple update. To be sure the essential approach appears unchanged, but you will find much that is new, including a fuller discussion of holding space—what it means and how to do it. Of particular importance is the use of intuition—your intuition. Everybody has it, but some of us never notice, and if we do notice it, we often don't trust it. Our intuition plays a special role in the fine art of doing nothing and holding space. You will find some helpful hints on how to bring your intuition fully into play.
You will also find expanded material on working with the client before and after the event. While it is true that facilitating an Open Space requires little overt action on the part of the facilitator, the same cannot be said for the essential work that must be done with the client in preparation. And after the gathering has concluded, equally essential work must be done to ensure that all the good ideas and fine plans hatched in Open Space have a reasonable chance of implementation. There are no guarantees, of course, but you can do a lot to raise the probabilities, and you will find substantial suggestions as to how all of this may be handled.
Between the covers of this book you will discover the distilled wisdom of a twenty-year-long collaborative effort—and I really mean collaborative effort. It is true that the words are mine, and I alone bear the responsibility for what they say or don't say. But it is equally (perhaps more) true that virtually everything in this book carries the fingerprints, insight, and inspiration of literally thousands of friends and colleagues from around the world who have deeply shared their experience. From the very beginning we all understood that Open Space Technology is free. Nobody owns it; it has never been patented or trademarked, nor will it ever be. But there is a cost and an expectation–that we will share what we are learning. And so if there were to be a dedication of the book it must be to those marvelous people who have given so much and shared so deeply.
This book, like all books, comes to an end, but that is by no means the end of the story of Open Space. In fact it is safe to say that we have barely begun. The total simplicity of Open Space (sit in a circle, create a bulletin board, open a marketplace, and go to work) contrasts radically with the quality of results and speed of achievement. The conventional theory and practice of meeting and organization would suggest that what happens in Open Space should not occur. But it does, not once but thousands of times in all parts of the world. So the continuing story of Open Space is all about this wonderful anomaly. Why does it work? How does it work? And perhaps most intriguing–if “it” works in Open Space (whatever “it” is) why couldn't it work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year?
My best guess is that the “it” is the primal power of self-organization, and if so the real significance of Open Space has little to do with better meetings, and everything to do with a deepening understanding of who we really are and how we might most effectively get on in this world. But all of that is an unfolding story and, as I would see it, a wonderful, ongoing natural experiment. And you are invited to participate.
Harrison Owen
Camden, Maine
2007
