Open Space is the number 1 method I recommend for getting up to 1000 people to convene for a day, and network totally differently everafter. Imagine if we could get a few world leaders, youth's superheros and the most authentic conflict resolution and ethical people networked around deep contextual challenges - what might that space and network evolve to be?

Harrison Owen originated Open Space. Here's an extract from his latest book : The Practice of Peace.

"Peace. It is a wonderful word in any language. And strangely it seems most commonly used in that part of the world where there is no Peace, virtually all parties greet each other with "Peace". Shalom in Hebrew and Salaam in Arabic. At time of meeting and again at departure, both Jew and Muslim invoke peace. And they are not alone in the practcie. Christians know the kiss of Peace, and politicians run on Platforms of Peace. And people everywhere have gone to war in search of Peace.

Obviously the word, and what it connotes, has great importance in our lives, but its meaning at least in common usage is a little elusive.

For many of us the word Peace is defined by the absence of opposites such as chaos, confusion, conflict. Absent any, or all, of these and we have Peace, and the way of Peace would obviously be the elimination of this unholy trinity. But what sort of Peace would we have? Unfortunately, I think the answer would be pretty boring, and quite dead. Peace in these terms would amount to some static, frozen, idealized state. In the hot moments of living we might look at such a state with envy, but as a long term reality, we might just have thrown the baby out with the bath water. In the name of preserving life, we have removed precisely the elements that make life possible. ...The truth of the matter is that chaos, confusion and conflict are integral to te process of living, without which life in the fullest sense of the word is scarely worth living. Let us look more closely at each... posted by ..., 12:33 PM  permalink