Dear friends and colleagues in Open Space,
A little bit of history. I was going to take the time to actually write a
story that began with "A long time ago and not so very far away..." however
this led me to procrastinating as I reflected on the longer story behind
this brief note.

I wasn't in on the beginning of OST around 1986. My entry was in 1990. How
OST is viewed today has a connection to when you entered the story. The
story of how Anne Stadler as a videographer of the first official OST in
India was instrumental in how OST got brought out into the world. This
story is in the archives.

Let's go back a little further. Harrison was an Episcopalian Priest...an
authorization that he probably didn't give up. I had the joy in 1997 of
watching him in his priestly role officiate his son Barry's wedding.
Definitely still a priest.

When describing the start of OST, sometimes he talked about his university
studies in comparative religions. He wrote a thesis. I believe I have a
copy still. The theme was about Spirit, and making space for Spirit to do
the work of Spirit. His book Spirit: transformation and development in
organizations was based on this thesis. He also participated in the
Organizational Development Network (OD Network) and was among the first and
very small group of the ODN to focus on organizational transformation in
1983 when organizational transformation was first being thought about as a
particular field within OD. Harrison, along with Ralph Copleman and others
whose names I cannot remember started the annual Organizational
Transformation Symposium that convened annually for 20 years. It was in the
responsibility for this OT Symposium that Harrison and friends realized
that they were putting too much work into it. Where was Spirit? And in a
post-Symposium conversation, likely over drinks, the group came up with
ideas for an easier way to do the conference the following year turning the
planning of it into something that had the same feeling as was experienced
in a coffee break..they had noticed that Spirit was high at the Symposium
only during the coffee breaks.

When I got involved with OST in those early years, there was a lot of
excitement about making space for Spirit to do the work of Spirit. Today,
we don't need to use the word Spirit. Instead we can use 'conscious
energy'. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to regularly participate
in the OT Symposium, the OSONOS (that preceded WOSONOS), and repeated
experiences of the four day OST training that Harrison did first as a
participant and then (along with Dr. Larry Peterson) as a sponsor. My
interest in how to transform organizations was the initial attraction for
me, understanding that there were others as passionate about this as I was
(and am). My curiosity about how we opened space for Spirit (conscious
energy) to do the work of Spirit (conscious energy) was also satiated over
and over, yet raising new aspects to be curious about.

I encourage people who facilitate OST meetings and conferences (or who want
to learn how to do so) to consider the importance of opening space for
conscious energy. When the space is open for conscious energy, the energy
itself creates what needs to be created by inspiring people's mind, spirit,
heart, and action. Real change by people happens when these are aligned,
fueled by conscious energy.

There are not many of us left from those early days. For those that have
passed on, you are remembered with gratitude. For those from that time who
are still active in transforming organizations and systems by opening space
for conscious energy, I am grateful. And for those who have joined in along
the way and are helping to shape the future, you are part of the hope of
the world.

Warmly,
Birgitt

Birgitt Williams
*Senior consultant-author-mentor to leaders and consultants  *
Specialist in organizational and systemic transformation, leadership
development, and the benefits of nourishing  a culture of leadership.
www.dalarinternational.com

Upcoming Workshops
Holistic Leadership Development | January 5-10,  2026 | Online

https://www.dalarinternational.com/register/hld-2026/ for any of these
workshops here.

Go to www.genuinecontact.net http://www.genuinecontact.net to see the
public Genuine Contact training and mentoring options by Genuine Contact
trainers internationally. If you wish to schedule an "in-house" training
for people in your organization, please contact me, Birgitt Williams
birgitt@dalarinternational.com, via email to set up a consultation to
discern what is the best option to meet your development goals.

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Hi Birgitt. It was 1995 when I found Open Space and 1996 when I first ment
Harrison and I think 1998 when we finally met. Your training grounded me in
OST and taught me some of the lessons of experience that have stayed with
me since, like, “there is always grief in the room.”

I still use the word Spirit. It works for me. Works for many of my clients,
even in secular spaces.

Whatever it is, it started my long journey into thinking about and
practicing the arts of using contraints to generate depth, meaning, and
possibiiity. Helped me fall in love with complexity and self organization,
and brought me into a beautiful group of really eccentric humans who have
enriched my life immeasurably.

Chris.

CHRIS CORRIGAN
Blog and resources: http://www.chriscorrigan.com
Harvest Moon Consultants: https://www.harvestmoonconsultants.com

Upcoming events and workshops and online courses:
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Located on Nex̱wlélex̱wm (Bowen Island), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh-ulh territory,

On Sat, May 16, 2026 at 9:53 PM Birgitt Williams via OSList <
everyone@oslist.org> wrote:

Dear Chris,
Great conversations over the years on a variety of topics, OST and
deepening our understanding, grief, leaders as toxin handlers, the ICHING,
and then your willingness to sponsor a training in Whole Person Process
Faciltiation as a complimentary meeting process for doing pre-work and
post-work for an OST meeting.

It was a time of exploring, experimenting, deepening our understanding of
how we wanted to be of service in the world, revolving around space for
Spirit and how we each interpreted what and how we would carry our our
service to humanity and the planet.

It remains my belief that learning OST based on opening space for Spirit to
do the work of Spirit is an exceptional foundation for understanding what
is at work, and the foundation of the field underneath OST and underneath
concepts of self organizing.

With deep heartfelt memories,
Birgitt

Birgitt Williams
*Senior consultant-author-mentor to leaders and consultants  *
Specialist in organizational and systemic transformation, leadership
development, and the benefits of nourishing  a culture of leadership.
www.dalarinternational.com

Upcoming Workshops
Holistic Leadership Development | January 5-10,  2026 | Online

https://www.dalarinternational.com/register/hld-2026/ for any of these
workshops here.

Go to www.genuinecontact.net http://www.genuinecontact.net to see the
public Genuine Contact training and mentoring options by Genuine Contact
trainers internationally. If you wish to schedule an "in-house" training
for people in your organization, please contact me, Birgitt Williams
birgitt@dalarinternational.com, via email to set up a consultation to
discern what is the best option to meet your development goals.

16 Sunny Acres Dr., Etowah, North Carolina, USA 28729
Phone: 01-919-522-7750
Like us on Facebook
https://dalarinternational.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=35ed818c946a88ba7344da05f&id=6677c35b38&e=e7zyhHfiqG

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On Sun, May 17, 2026 at 5:35 AM Chris Corrigan chris.corrigan@gmail.com
wrote:

Dear Birgitt, dear All,

Thank you very much for sharing your OST story/ies, it is inspiring, and it
helps me to understand its origins and the thoughts behind the structure. I
am quite new to OST, as I first encountered it in 2023. I plan to conduct
one at the end of this year. I am very emotional and excited. I fully
believe it will come well because of conscious energy  😊🙏

Greetings from Italy!
Best wishes,
Alessia

Alessia Strozzi
Restauratore.Facilitatore.Futurista
Conservator.Facilitator.Futurist

Disaster Risk Reduction Specialist for Cultural Heritage
Senior Paper, Book, Photography Conservator

On Sat, 16 May 2026 at 21:54, Birgitt Williams via OSList <
everyone@oslist.org> wrote:

Welcome Alessia! Always wonderful to hear new voices on the list! It’s a chance to learn and be of service around the questions and issues of most interest now. Do bring your questions to the list as you prepare for the gathering you’re planning. We all learn from the questions people ask!

I discovered Open Space in 1994 when I was exploring organizational learning for U S WEST - the telephone company where I worked. A friend told me about this experience she had in her graduate program at Antioch University Seattle, where I live. (It wasn’t until later that I discovered it was Anne Stadler who brought OST to Antioch Seattle.) I was primed to learn more because after interviewing about 25 leaders and innovators for my work research, I’d come to the conclusion that organizational learning and innovation was most likely to occur through chance meetings among diverse people. Sure sounded like what happened during an Open Space Technology gathering!

I went through a workshop with Harrison in New York in preparation for an opportunity to be part of an Open Space Technology convening at U S WEST in Arizona.  A union member had convinced management that to deal with the failure of the phone system (a major no no), bringing together 250 labor and management people was a must! At Harrison’s suggestion, I was able to draw on my Learning Organization project resources to make a video of the 2 1/2 day Open Space Technology meeting: U S WEST Open Space https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/25251316. This first real experience of Open Space was off the charts amazing. I saw real conflict handled by in-your-face conversations, I saw breakthroughs in relationships between warring departments, I saw people seeing themselves as a system and making changes for the better, and I saw the emergence of an overwhelming agreement that focused everyone like a laser on “rehabilitating the basic plant” — the root cause of the outage. That led to things like union people giving their support to hiring contract labor to handle day to day issues so they could focus on replacing old tech with new tech.

Needless to say, and, as others have said, I was hooked. And curious about the “secret sauce” of why OST worked.

This list came in to existence in 1996. Early on, Harrison wrote to the list about At Home in the Universe by Stuart Kauffman, an evolutionary biologist and early member of the Sante Fe Institute. Harrison started using the language of complexity and self-organization to explain open space.  I love that the dynamics of open space can be explained through science and spirit! I use both frames depending on the context.

In 1998, I co-hosted a workshop with Harrison. While participants were in breakout groups, he told me the story of writing the thesis Birgitt and Chris mentioned. Harrison described it as making sense of what, at the time, was generally seen as contradictions in the Old Testament. He told me that the general attitude was the contradictions were explained as shoddy work. What Harrison pursued was, given you would put your very best people on the task of creating this sacred text, what if the contradictions were on purpose? That God was both immanent and transcendent? That was the focus of his PhD dissertation turned Master’s thesis when they started burning churches in Birmingham where he was living and he left his PhD work to join the civil rights movement. Creating conditions for holding contradictions may have been instrumental to Harrison’s conceptualizing Open Space Technology.

So much of our work enables us to hold contradictions and stay connected. Perhaps that is conscious energy in action. I think of open space as liberating human spirit. By any name, it seems to me to be a critical capacity in this current age of uncertainty.

Peggy

P.S. Some other historical elaborations.

In The Change Handbook, Harrison dated the first use of Open Space Technology as 1985. Tom Chase was Harrison’s partner in doing the Organization Transformation conference that took a year to plan and led to the comment that the best part was the coffee breaks which led to the birth of OST.

Michael Wood - I love that insight that “wherever space is opened, peace breaks out.” Opening space IS a practice of peace. BTW, Harrison was not physically at OSonOS in San Francisco. He got sick and cancelled at the last minute. That was quite a gathering! I remember Anne Stadler taped some flip chart paper together and invited everyone to make it into a big get well card to send to Harrison. She put it in the center of the circle. Things got rocky in the morning circle on day 2. Some people new to Open Space had showed up at at a session Birgitt had posted demanding she train them in that session. There was a sense in the morning circle of an in-group and out-group. Ralph Copleman moved the card for Harrison out of the center of the circle because even though he wasn’t physically there, he was taking up a lot of space. I don’t recall Harrison speaking the quote. But it certainly sounds like something he would say.  I’m guessing he must have said it when he joined us by speaker phone to say a few words to everyone.

Birgitt--

It might be of use to the community, if you could find Harrison's thesis and post it on a couple of the prominent long-term Websites dedicated to all things OST.

If you please.

:- Doug. Germann

Sent with Proton Mail secure email.

On Saturday, May 16th, 2026 at 3:54 PM, Birgitt Williams via OSList everyone@oslist.org wrote: