Open space technology, principle 1: “Whoever comes is the right people”

"Whoever comes is the right people."

I love the slight awkwardness of this sentence as it describes what happens when people (plural) become a people (singular). A people as a process, not as a shuffling, muttering crowd of individuals.

I can think of only two contexts where I’ve experienced this “peopleing”—

1. Open space technology. This is a lightly facilitated, carefully organized format for a gathering. Open space is convened on a challenge so puzzling that people are compelled to show up to work and listen. It is the most direct, accessible format for group self-organization I’ve ever encountered: both a chapel and a chainsaw.
2. The Buddhist sangha, in its various permutations. I keep a mailing list of 75 of us who sat weekly for some years in a frigid room before COVID sent everybody home. Over time, I learned some incidental details (occupation, class, family composition, neighborhood, etc.) about maybe 1 out of 8 of those people. But in terms of the topic at hand—styles of meditation, preferred traditions, favorite teachers, etc.—I still recall where each person was and where they were headed, even though we haven’t met since early 2020. Similarly, I sat on a week-length retreat with 50 people and felt like I came to know them so deeply, and shared something so precious, even though what we shared together was silence. These groups—this sangha—is vital, even though it is transient or ‘incomplete’ in a conventional sense.

We’d all benefit from more spaces where two people, or two hundred, could gather and say—“I don’t know anything about you, and you don’t know anything about me, but we have what we need to get this sorted.”

It is an antidote to the social atomization inhibiting our lives under capital.

And until we get there, it’s a hell of a way to organize a meeting.

Open space technology series:

1. “Whoever comes is the right people.” → now reading
2. “Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.”
3. “Whenever it starts is the right time.”
4. “When it is over, it is over.” (forthcoming)