Beyond Business as Usual: Kenya WOSonOS 2025
A Wake-Up Call for OST Practitioners - Learning to Change, Together

Friends,

Open Space Technology (OST) has always promised transformation. But
let’s be honest: too often, it’s used to manage change—not to /make/ it.
We gather, we post issues, we talk—and then we return to the same
systems that created the problems we came to solve.

If we’re serious about shifting paradigms, we need to confront the
deeper forces that shape our gatherings before the first circle even
begins. That starts with how we write our invitations.

Seven Challenges to the Status Quo

Here are seven provocations—four from Dorian Cave
https://madocollective.org/connecting/who.html, three from visionary
changemakers—that I believe every OST invitation should wrestle with:

Dorian Cave’s Four Denials of Modernity-Coloniality:

1. Denial of systemic, historical, and ongoing violence
   → Are we willing to name the harm that shaped our institutions—and
   our own complicity in it?
2. Denial of planetary limits
   → Are we pretending we can innovate our way out of ecological
   collapse without changing how we live?
3. Denial of entanglement
   → Are we still acting as if we’re separate individuals, rather than
   deeply interdependent?
4. Denial of the magnitude and complexity of the crisis
   → Are we shrinking the problem to fit our comfort zone, instead of
   expanding our courage?

Three Provocateurs to Shake the Frame:

• Paulo Freire would ask: /Whose voices are missing, and how are we
  reproducing hierarchy even in “open” spaces?/
• Buckminster Fuller would ask: /Are we redesigning the system, or
  just rearranging the furniture?/
• Wangari Maathai would ask: /Where is the Earth in this
  conversation? What are we doing to protect life itself?/

A New Kind of Invitation

If we want OST to be more than a clever format—if we want it to be a
vessel for paradigm shift—then our invitations must do more than ask,
“What do you care about?” They must ask:

• What truths have we been trained not to see?
• What questions are too dangerous to name?
• What futures are possible if we compost the cultural “stuff” that
  keeps us stuck?

Let’s stop pretending that neutrality is safe. Let’s write invitations
that disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.

OST practitioners, this is your moment.
You don’t need to copy this word for word—but I invite you to adapt it
boldly, responsibly, and in your own voice. Let it reflect the real
tensions we’re living through. Let it compost the cultural “stuff” that
keeps us stuck. Let it call forth the kind of gathering that Dorian
Cavé,Paulo Freire, Buckminster Fuller, or Wangari Maathai would be proud
to host.

In solidarity—for more fun, joy, love, and less stuff,
Tony

Thanks for “speaking” this, Tony. I couldn’t agree more but couldn’t have put it down succinctly into words.

Marc TrudeauTeam Dynamics Coach
Adjunct Faculty at WPI

LikeBreathin.com

Mobile 774-641-8302

On Nov 25, 2025, at 8:38 PM, Tony Budak via OSList <everyone@oslist.org> wrote:

 Beyond Business as Usual: Kenya WOSonOS 2025
A Wake-Up Call for OST Practitioners - Learning to Change, Together

Friends,

Open Space Technology (OST) has always promised transformation. But let’s be honest: too often, it’s used to manage change—not to make it. We gather, we post issues, we talk—and then we return to the same systems that created the problems we came to solve.

If we’re serious about shifting paradigms, we need to confront the deeper forces that shape our gatherings before the first circle even begins. That starts with how we write our invitations.

Seven Challenges to the Status Quo

Here are seven provocations—four from Dorian Cave, three from visionary changemakers—that I believe every OST invitation should wrestle with:

Dorian Cave’s Four Denials of Modernity-Coloniality:

1. Denial of systemic, historical, and ongoing violence
   → Are we willing to name the harm that shaped our institutions—and our own complicity in it?
2. Denial of planetary limits
   → Are we pretending we can innovate our way out of ecological collapse without changing how we live?
3. Denial of entanglement
   → Are we still acting as if we’re separate individuals, rather than deeply interdependent?
4. Denial of the magnitude and complexity of the crisis
   → Are we shrinking the problem to fit our comfort zone, instead of expanding our courage?

Three Provocateurs to Shake the Frame:

• Paulo Freire would ask: Whose voices are missing, and how are we reproducing hierarchy even in “open” spaces?
• Buckminster Fuller would ask: Are we redesigning the system, or just rearranging the furniture?
• Wangari Maathai would ask: Where is the Earth in this conversation? What are we doing to protect life itself?

A New Kind of Invitation

If we want OST to be more than a clever format—if we want it to be a vessel for paradigm shift—then our invitations must do more than ask, “What do you care about?” They must ask:

• What truths have we been trained not to see?
• What questions are too dangerous to name?
• What futures are possible if we compost the cultural “stuff” that keeps us stuck?

Let’s stop pretending that neutrality is safe. Let’s write invitations that disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.

OST practitioners, this is your moment.
You don’t need to copy this word for word—but I invite you to adapt it boldly, responsibly, and in your own voice. Let it reflect the real tensions we’re living through. Let it compost the cultural “stuff” that keeps us stuck. Let it call forth the kind of gathering that Dorian Cavé, Paulo Freire, Buckminster Fuller, or Wangari Maathai would be proud to host.

In solidarity—for more fun, joy, love, and less stuff,
Tony

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