Open Space Technology

“Open Space Technology” (OST) will be used for Module 2 of the symposium.

OST is a participatory, emergent way of organizing meetings and conferences. While “technology” has the connotations of machinery and equipment, it is used here in its broader sense to mean a process or way of doing things. OST has been widely used in a diversity of settings, cultures, groups and situations all over the world, for meetings, conferences, knowledge exchange, interdisciplinary thinking, and conflict resolution. It is has proved to be a particularly useful approach when there is complexity of issues, a diversity of thoughts or people, and a desire to achieve meaningful results quickly.

OST has been attributed to organizational consultant, Harrison Owen, but while acknowledging that his name is closely associated with the design of OST, Owen describes its creation and development as very much a collaborative project drawing on the contribution hundreds of participants and practitioners from many parts of the world. The original impetus for the idea came from Owen’s experience in a West African village, and many concepts from other cultures, including Native American traditions and the Wisdom of the East, have been added.

OST embodies the principles of intentional self-organization; chaos and creativity; and participatory decision-making. Directed by a set of simple principles, participants create and design their own agendas and work plans. The meetings may appear unstructured, but what occurs instead is the emergence of complex, durable structures perfectly suited for the task at hand.

As described in “InterChange: Philosophy, Form and Process in a Peacebuilding Organization” (Goodman 2006), a paper presented to the International Peace Research Association, InterChange has applied many principles of OST in its own work and organizing. Moreover, in a manner that is especially fitting in an organization interested in linking theory and practice, we have begun to see these practices as reflecting theory appropriate to the aims and philosophies of Interchange.

John-Paul Lederach’s description of peace as a “process-structure” (1999) borrowing language from quantum physics, indicates that we need to see peace both as a change process and structures conducive to peace. Margaret Wheatley (1999, 2002) is among those who have applied the ideas of self-organizing systems and openness to chaos to work toward improving the human condition. And Harrison Owen himself has come to understand the integrative holistic approach of Open Space Technology (1992) as conducive to peace or even equal to peace. In his new book, The Practice of Peace (2003), he describes peace as a process of dynamic interrelationship to produce health and harmony, and the practice of peace as the creating the conditions for this to occur.

Given the international nature of InterChange and of the symposium, and the philosophy of valuing different kinds of knowledge, it is appropriate to use a design that draws on ways of knowing and acting from a number of cultural sources.

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