Open Space session on Connecting Our Conversations

HOW TO CONNECT AND SCALE UP OUR CONVERSATIONS?

This Open Space session was convened by George Pór at the Art of Hosting training in Belgium, March 2008

Participants: George, Mushin, Erik, Louise, Andries, Minke, Toke, Simone

George: The collective intelligence of circles needs to be guided by their collective wisdom. If not, they may birth monsters.

Why we need to connect our conversation? The global transformation that we're going through is accompanied by much unnecessary, man-made suffering. For example, when millions are dying of hunger, that's not because there's not enough food for all on this planet.

Meg Wheatley co-authored a seminal essay  with Debbie Freeze, in which they outlined a path for scaling up social innovation. It goes from loosely connected networks to communities of practice to systems of influence. We are a network of practitioners. Connecting our conversations, we can become a community of practice. Connecting with other communities of practice, we can become a system of influence.

What are the conversations that we, in this circle, are involved with and want to connect with other conversations?

Mushin
Involved in meta-conversations. Conversations that center around questions like, how do we make the values we care for more transparent to others so people can get involved with; conversation about creating systems that would make those values more transparent.

Erik
Involved in effort to connect conversations in Belgium for changing consumer behaviours towards more sustainable behaviours.

Dirk
Involved in a project that is about better communication between translaters in the EU Commission with 23 departments for the official languages and the institutions that produce the legislations. So for each document you need 23 languages and 3 on each. So try to bring them together and let them realise that they are part of the chain, To not re-invent the wheel.

Frauke
Conversations at different levels and different places. One of the questions is how do I facilitate self organisation? I would like to apply in different places and organisations what is happening here. Involved in Pioneers of Change - phone calls every Wednesday. Will go to the intergenerational gathering in Greece in September. Conversations also on consumer behaviour. "We are what we do". 15 simple things that you can start doing. Most important conversation at the moment is how to be in the creation process of creating chaordic organisations based on dialogue.

Dieter
Works in the Hub in Brussels. Involved in the process of creating a hosting team to welcome the people to work in the Hub, who are social entrepreneurs, people with good ideas to change things in society. In the initial phase of this it is important to learn to ask the right questions.

Louise
Pioneers of change, being in the cultivating team. How to link the local and global level in the network? How to enable self-facilitation and connect all these people and make something happen to have the sparks fly from these connections?
How to create a Hub in Copenhagen? How to connect top-down and bottom-up sustainable development to channel the right resources to right people!

Andries
How to design and facilitate the creation of sustainable human settlements? More than 50 percent of human population live in urban regions. Many problems out of that: transportation, family life, eco villages, ... many stakeholders and many scales.
How to deliver sustainable cities in the future?

In current professional practice: How to enable the current global network of AISEEC to become a stronger self organising community? How to add scale and learn from the past? There's is a yearly turnover in management - 8000 managers are shifting every year. That can hold back the network from developing. How to enable a new design based on self-organisation to become a smarter global community?

Minke
Holding meeting with 120 persons next week.
The era governed by knowledge, statistics and spreadsheet is ending... a new knowledge form coming up.
One of the questions is: How can we create space in order to let people step really freely in to experience what needs to be experienced?

George
My question right now is how can I contribute to make all those conversations successful beyond our wildest dreams? That is really the idea behind Evolutionary Nexus: a now-forming network of communities with transformation projects .The purpose is to increase connectivity in the ecosystem of world-changing initiatives. The way we go about it is by combining social technologies with the electronic technologies, and helping the development and interaction of communities of practice (CoP). It is something that you may be able to use in your work.

Members of a CoP learn from and with one another because they want to become better at what they are doing. We are here a potential community of practice of people who are connecting conversations. How do we do that? How we can become better at it, together? What are the good practices and tools that we know of?


Erik:
Why don't NGO's create their own communities of practice? We have different conceptions of change and therefore do things differently.

George:
In a CoP, every participant represents him/herself and not an organisation. Organisations are not capable of being members in CoP's.

Mushin:
There's a list of 120.000 NGO's in the world, see: www.wiserearth.org.
There is a large-scale movement but how do we connect the conversations?

I have lots of knowledge - why don't I change? I change easily if I get acknowledgement from the world around me. What would be needed as a kind of knowledge and feedback systems to us.

George:
Acknowledging comes easily when there's a deep caring about evolution of each other. When we care about each other's success in becoming your best in the way that you want to become, then ourselves become better by it. I know that I cannot be totally free to realise my best unless you all are.

Otto Scharmer is talking about "presencing circles." In a circle like that, we stand for and support the realization of the highest aspirations of each of us. It is so natural; it is a common way of being in healthy families. Why can't we have a society where all institutions are designed to support the blossoming of each individual and their communities.

One element of CoP is the sustainability. To not only have one-off conversation but to deepen these conversations. A way of continuing the conversation is to uncover our connections and make new ones. A CoP is, primarily not about knowledge but about how we care about each other.

To connect and scale up conversations there need to be a core. There need to be something that we can scale up. The CoP exists for the members. If it doesn't provide value for them, then it falls apart or never comes into being. We need to make sure that our members' needs are met.

We could continue this conversation it by set up a community in Nexus and start inquiring the questions. The community thrives on a creating a common learning agenda.

Minke:
I am a member of a CoP that has been in existence for 25 years. All attention and focus is around four core values. We gather together once every month. 25 professionals. What made this community last? Sharing the same values and the same dream. There is a connectedness of the soul and therefore it is strong.

George:
Based on what I hear, it seems that the strength of a community is proportionate to how central its shared domain is to the identity of its members.


Erik (?) What do we need? CoPs don't seem attractive or juicy enough for many people. I am looking somewhere else. Things like Facebook and YouTube have caused a massive change.

George:
We can upgrade the idea of CoP, to communities of co-creation. Not just learn and practice but create together! Similarly, instead "scaling up," we can aim at enabling the conditions for self-organisation at increasing levels. How? Facebook and YouTube are creating new social practices. These kinds of technologies have evolutionary opportunities when we use them smartly.

How many meaningful conversations can I sustain at the same time? For the young people it is almost limitless, while for elder there is a limit. It is as if they have another nervous system.

Erik:
What is needed to make large scale self-organising of wholesome organisations sustainable? What is the minimal needed structure for self-organising?

Toke:
Becoming more conscious. Not just intellectually but in a wholeness of experience that many here know and trust. I have experienced that when I enter that it is like an osmosis with the universe or with how things work.

What if at every single moment. The osmosis and the opening in me and the we-ness in the universe... At every moment, it self-organises to a higher level. Osmosis understood as the letting go and giving into... that the osmosis is happening all the time as we speak. I am in service of organising an osmosis where what is already happening can take place. Let that begin to take place and be conscious rather than fearful. There is both diversity and oneness.

Andries:
It is about awareness and people awakening. But is there a more systematic, a more integral approach?
What made Google, YouTube and Skype big? Can we learn something from the large organisations that have taken over the playing field in the recent years? How can I create the Google of sustainable settlements?

George:
"Integral" is a good term. It includes the inner dimensions that Toke is talking about with osmosis. It also takes into account the social structures, systems, and technologies. Facebook has thousands of applications created by people, many of which quite silly or even annoying. But what if we could come up with a Facebook application for collective intelligence? Facebook was not created for that but there is an opportunity to use it for cultivating collective intelligence.

Andries:
Why am I using Google? Because it is extremely convenient. And I choose to be part of communities that give me something with identity. But it must be convenient and easy to bump into again. Must be complementary. Curious of the next Google revolution.

Simone:
The Hub's are creating a space for hubs with self-organising and emerging.

Toke:
A community of practice to be successful it must support me in creating my livelihood. Not directly making money but to contribute somehow to one's livelihood.

George:
The answers will need to be found in principles and not in technology

Erik:
Benefits - the more people join, the more value
Everyone can participate

George;
If there's enough interest I will set up an online space on Evolutionary Nexus ror our poten tial community of practice, to continue our conversation and take it to the nnext level, whatever it may be.

Who would consider to participate in our online "Connecting Our Conversations" CoP, at the rate of 30 minute to an hour per week?

Initial CoP members: Andries, Dirk, Erik, George, Minke, Mushin