Facilitators often share thoughts and experiences about whether their particular interventions or methods when used with organizations or communities lead to sustained change. Certainly Open Space facilitators discuss this quite often.

For more on the facilitation method of Open Space Technology,
see this website: http://www.openingspace.net

Did our intervention assist some positive transformation? Was there follow-up activity that kept up the momentum of the great accomplishments a group achieved together during a retreat or conference? Are we engaged by an organization or a community to provide ongoing 'wellness' work or are we just brought in for crisis intervention, a one-time 'emergency-fix', or a single 'feel good' experience?

Many of us believe that even a single event gives participants a chance to breathe; a chance to see and experience a new model of interaction and collaborative thinking. Even a single event creates change by planting seeds of a different, healthier way of communicating.

If change happens post-event, was our intervention the catalyst for that change? How do we measure change? This is an ongoing conversation between facilitators in electronic conversations, at conferences and within learning communities of many kinds.

I also have a background in health education, and in this field we talk quite a bit about behavior change and risk reduction. I would like to sprinkle into our facilitators' conversation a way that human behavior change is looked at by many behavioral scientists and health educators…