Without going through a point by point comparison, I would like to believe that Kaufmann and I are looking at pretty much the same phenomenon, albeit in very different realms. And of course, that phenomenon is the process of self-organization. The one thing I missed, but Kaufmann saw, is the necessity for sparsity of connections. I had noticed, however, that groups with a long standing history of association took to Open Space at a marginally slower rate than groups only recently come together. I suspect that the difference may be traced to the sparsity of prior connection.

So if Kaufmann and I are looking at the same elephant, where do we go from here? The answer, I think, lies in a curious phrase which appears mantra-like throughout Kaufmann's work: "Order for Free." Given the reality of self-organization, the presence of order is no mystery, nor the product of great struggle, it is only what one might expect. In short, order is for free!

Switching from the world of biological systems to the very different world of corporations and other human systems, supposing that order is for free there too? If true, this would mean that most, perhaps all of our current activities dedicated to system design, re-design and the like, were suspect, and quite possibly unneeded. Talk about paradigm shift and turning the world on its head!

Now back to Open Space. If it turns out that the global experience of thousands of people in an open space environment is something other than a massive aberration, it would seem that self-organization in the realm of human systems was an every day occurrence. It is in this light that I choose to view the significance of Open Space Technology. It is not about having better meetings, although that certainly takes place. It is about experiencing the mystery and power of self-organization to the end that we might learn to be at home in this rather strange, possibly new, universe (to borrow the title of Kaufmann's book).

And we have a lot to learn. But our learnings will not be of the sort we have experienced in the past. No longer will it be necessary to learn the fundamentals of self-managed work groups, empowered and distributed leadership, community building, and appreciation of diversity as a resource and not as a problem to be managed. All of these things apparently happen as natural acts in an Open Space environment. We might of course, learn to do them better, but when the essential conditions of self-organizations are met, all of the above just seems to happen, almost in spite of ourselves.