Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Fwd: Mechanisms for Resolving Community Challenges

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

There is sometimes a structural meeting problem which focuses most of the
meeting time on agenda items of business and where relationship issues and
even issues of the moment end up getting pushed down  to the end, then as
time runs out, not addressed, or inadequately dealt with.  There are many
ways to work on this, eg, a second meeting of relationship issues, a special
relationship forum within a meeting.  One of the things we have found useful
is called open space.  We sometimes allot the last half hour of a meeting
for member designed discussions on any topic they want to propose.  There
are usually three or four topics, which members declare and then the group
breaks into smaller groups for discussion, brainstorming and relating over
the topics.  These open space sessions allow us time and space to deal with
anything that comes up, and it's entirely open ended. If a topic is proposed
that nobody is interested in, then when the groups break up, that topic goes
unattended. People freely choose what topics to join, or just hang around
socializing.  Open space is turning out to be a good seeding place for ideas
which later turn into future meeting or other action items. 

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood Cohousing
Snohomish Co, WA