Building Bridges: OpenSpace-Online The (r)evolutionary Global Demension of Co-Creative Excellence by Gabriela Ender The interview was conducted by Gertrud Graf Each day, millions of people travel around the globe to attend meetings, workshops, trainings and conferences. The cost for organizing, traveling and time are enormous and the CO2 exhaustion levels are gigantic. What can we do? Should our "globalized" world renounce its most valuable kind of communication, the meeting of people face-to-face? No, says Gabriela Ender. The question is not one of renunciation but of how to consciously create sustainable bridges between our offline and online modes. Gabriela Ender is a visionary, a progressive thinker and an enabler. She puts the people squarely into the center of her internet-based conference method and initiates on a global level totally new processes for learning, finding solutions and initiating change in society, economy, politics, education and research. Gertrud Graf: Gabriela, I met you just a few months ago via our initiative "Country of Success" when you introduced your OpenSpace-Online® conference method to us. When this issue of the ab40 was conceptualized, you came to my mind immediately because you are a pioneer who creates access to new worlds of learning. Could you please introduce your method and the development of your concept? Gabriela Ender: Yes, I'd love to. I have developed a new internet conference method for a new form of participatory-oriented real-time collaboration for small and large groups. The online method can be applied in all kinds of processes for projects, solutions, and transformations in all segments of society worldwide. Imagine some organization, an enterprise, a workgroup, a project or a learning team has an important topic, an urgent task or a burning question to tackle, and the people who have to deal with this topic in a solution-oriented way are located all over the place. This internet technology enables each person and each organization to run their own conference for solutions, ideas, future planning, for a team meeting or a lively community conference, and all this fast and totally independent via the internet. It is irrelevant whether the meeting is just a small internal one or a broadly organized public conference. There are practically no limits for the creative use of this tool. Gertrud Graf: VERY INTERESTING. AND HOW EXACTLY DOES THIS WORK? Gabriela Ender: We are applying for each single use a conference software which can be installed and started up quickly. The real-time method leads between 5 and 125 participants through a work process which is divided into special work phases. Depending on the planning of the conference organizer, this conference process lasts mostly 3-4 hours. The group does not need a human moderator, because part of the OpenSpace-Online® concept is an integrated virtual Open Space Facilitator. Together with an intuitive and graphically pleasing conference environment each participant feels well guided through the whole internet meeting. Ideas and knowledge are being exchanged, common solutions are created, and further steps are planned. An underlying code of values makes sure that contributions during the real-time conferences are appreciative and respectful. All this together creates in turn a lot of fun and a joyful cooperation among the participants. This method strengthens each participant's initiative and responsibility as well as the responsibility of all participants for their common goal. It is important that the organizer is passionate about the topic and invites people who are very interested in this topic as well. The higher the interest in a topic, the more this method will develop and unfold its full potential. Any topic works, of course. It could be a big corporation whose teams organize regular meetings, and who use this tool to support team spirit, to create solutions and to facilitate change in their work. It could be an university which combines offline and online learning. It could be a city, a community, a region. For example, if citizens are to be gradually involved in regional planning. But the tool works also well for single one-time-events. Topics can be pushed publicly with OpenSpace-Online® and then discussed nationally and internationally. New areas for dialogue and connection are opened, even very well between people who did not know each other before. Recently, the OpenSpace-Online® tool has been increasingly used to create follow-up conferences several weeks after a face-to-face conference. This helps to keep organizers and participants working on the topics and utilizing the contacts that were started during the conference. Already during the conference, participants look forward to the announced follow-up online-conference. Usually, enormous costs have been invested to create interest, engagement and motivation for conferences, events, meetings and workshops, and more often than, all this energy disappears quickly once the conference is over. The OpenSpace-Online® method, if consciously applied as a follow-up segment or as initial event, creates a lot of advantages, far beyond the enormous savings of time and travel costs. Climate change will surely require corporations very soon to document how they shape their meetings and business travels in different ways. An new environmentally-friendly meeting-culture, a conscious mix of offline- and online-meetings, will become the basic standard for future-oriented enterprises. Gertrud Graf: RECENTLY YOU HAVE BEEN PUBLICLY HONORED AND HAVE RECEIVED AN GLOBAL AWARD FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THIS METHOD... Gabriela Ender: Yes, last year, in 2006, I was one of the winners of the Top 10 World Changer Award. It has been given for the 7th time last year, an international award given by "PoliticsOnline", USA and the World E-Government Forum in Paris. This award is given once a year to the top 10 internet projects which show the potential to change the world. The organizations as well as the people behind them, the enablers and pioneers, are being honored. Gertrud Graf: You have once told me about the birth hour of your idea - this was a very interesting story for me! Would you like to re-tell this story for the readers of 'ab 40'? Gabriela Ender: It happened during a time where I had been facilitating face-to-face meetings and conferences in corporations as an independent change facilitator since years. On July 17, 1999, as I had returned exhausted but happy, from a business trip and was just relaxing in my lawn chair, I suddenly had a deep visionary flash of inspiration. Like a flash of lightning, I saw this new method in front of my inner eye, the complete software with each phase, each important detail, the whole process was there in its total complexity. I also realized that this process must have a virtual moderation which guides the users and leads them and the organizers towards a high degree of independence and self-organization. I saw which areas of application would be possible, which users, which fields; I realized which synergy effects could come from this method, and I even saw the name and the logo for it. This was such a powerful moment. I felt as if each cell of my body was touched by what I had seen. Immediately, I jumped out of my chair, went back to the house, got four big sheets of paper and started writing. I did not have to think, I just had to write. After an hour, all four sheets were filled on both sides, and all was written. I was too exhausted to read through it again, and in the following couple of days, I started to take care of my usual tasks. And gradually, despite the nice memory of this crazy and beautiful experience, the voice of my inner critic got louder and louder. "What a crazy idea! For sure, something like this already exists! And even if not, why should it be me to start up something so big?" 14 days passed. Another weekend with nice weather saw me become curious as to what I had written two weeks ago. I took the sheets of paper and read through them again. And I started to be amazed beyond belief about the gigantic scope of my vision. Could it really have been me who wrote all that? Where does all this come from? True, it was connected to my previous work, to my life, my studies, my wishes, my mission in life. There was a lot of me in it. But this precision! I suddenly knew that this vision would become reality one day, and that it was me who had to make it so and that I would do this with all my might. This was eight years ago, and my life has been changed ever since. I had to renounce some things which I loved and which gave me financial security. I had to go into full risk and I did not have enough rest. But I could also experience what it means to follow a vision and to make it a reality. This flow, this creative unfolding are a true gift. The best is, however, when I realize where and how OpenSpace-Online® is already used and which wonderful effects are being connected with its use. Gertrud Graf: I BELIEVE THAT EACH PERSON IS IN THIS WORLD BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO FULFILL A CERTAIN TASK. I BELIEVE YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED THE BIRTH OF YOUR OWN MISSION, OF WHAT YOU CAN GIVE TO THE WORLD, AFTER IT HAD NOURISHED YOU FOR OVER 20 YEARS. YOU HAVE FOUND YOUR TASK OF GIVING AND THAT IN ITSELF IS THE WORLD'S PRESENT BACK TO YOU. Gabriela Ender: This is an interesting way of looking at it! In retrospect, I can see a pattern in my adult life which I was not conscious of before. I first chose to become an educator. Then, as a young mother, I went again to school and finished the 'Abitur' (the German prerequisite to studying at a university), because I wanted to study socialwork and economics. How did this go together? This was not a usual combination at that time. You either studied this or that. It made me insecure and doubtful. I questioned whether this combination was just due to the fact that I did not know what I really wanted. But even though I was not clear within myself, I had the wisdom to follow my inner voice despite its chaotic feeling. When I read Fritjof Capra's "Wendezeit" in 1985, this seeming contradiction suddenly cleared. This book was an important key experience in my path. It opened to me the world of interdisciplinary interrelations. I never wanted to see the world split up in separate areas. I have always felt that inner guidance very strongly. Capra, in his book, describes so beautifully how everything has to do with everything else. It was the time when more and more people became aware of this. Gertrud Graf: ...AND YOU HAVE ALWAYS TRUSTED THE SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS WITHIN YOURSELF... Gabriela Ender: Yes, over time I got more conscious of it. I somehow always wanted to build bridges, detect the connecting spaces between different areas, and enable new developments. In all this, however, people have to be at the center. OpenSpace-Online® is also building bridges between interdisciplinary fields, between different cultures, hierarchies, countries and languages, between young and old, structure and independence, passion and responsibility, offline and online, and between serious result-orientation and joyful community. Gertrud Graf: YOU HAVE DEVELOPED A RELATIVELY SIMPLE SOFTWARE SO THAT PEOPLE IN AFRICA, FOR EXAMPLE, WHO MAY WORK ON JUST A SIMPLE COMPUTER, ARE NOT EXCLUDED BY TECHNICAL BARRIERS FROM PARTICIPATING. Gabriela Ender: Yes, this was part of my vision from the start. Technical support should be as easy as possible, independent of the speed of one's internet connection, independent of one's operating system, independent from the country from which it is used. The software should be applicable in no time and without extra and unnecessary auxiliary devices. It should be usable in several languages. At the moment it works with 16 languages. It was much more important for me to work on the HOW of cooperation, the underlying philosophy, and that in the end ALL content and results would be immediately available to all participants. This called for a text-based first generation of the OpenSpace-Online® method. Other forms will surely follow. But highest quality, also in regard to performance and security of data, and super-easy application are very important criteria. I learned about a world which was previously foreign to me, and also my software developers got excited about my "the people in the center vision" and gave their best. Meanwhile, they are proud of their results. In May 2007 we have finished the second version of the conference system - another two years of concentration and high investments. Oftentimes, the things which seem the easiest to the user require the most complex programming in the background. But one cannot get intimidated by this, you have to stay true to your dreams, otherwise you get frazzled. Gertrud Graf: GABRIELA, THANK YOU THAT YOU GAVE OUR READERS INSIGHT INTO YOUR LIFE AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. WHERE CAN WE FIND YOUR SOFTWARE, AND HOW CAN PEOPLE CONTACT YOU? Gabriela Ender: www.OpenSpace-Online.com brings you to our internet site which provides extensive information in German and English. I recommend for starters to check out our flash presentation, look into the section 'news and events' and to download our cost-free eBook. If you want to contact me directly, please just write an email to contact@openspace-online.com. Gertrud Graf: WONDERFUL, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. IT WAS FUN TALKING TO YOU. Gabriela Ender: Yes, I feel the same way. Thank you and the ab40 for your valuable interest and the nice interview atmosphere. I feel honored and thank you for that very much! : :