Brewed Fresh Daily

In a conference room in Lamont Library, Dave Winer is evangelizing, doing his best to convert to his cause the University's far-flung Webmasters who've come to this monthly meeting of the Harvard's ABCD committee. Earlier in the week, the Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics was his pulpit, and a few hours after his ABCD sermon, he'll reel in a few more believers at the Law School. He's a preacher with a projection screen, and, in his jeans and sneakers looking more like a software developer than a gospel-sayer. In fact, Winer is a software developer; as founder and CEO of UserLand Software, he created software that facilitates Weblogs. Not coincidentally, it's the wonder of Weblogs - simple personal Web sites that authors frequently update - that Winer is preaching as a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School (HLS). Not only are Weblogs ("blogs" to those in the know) getting a buzz as the Internet's next big thing, but Winer and the Berkman Center think blogging might change pedagogical practices at the University and create community on Harvard's famously decentralized campus.

Open Space would be an ideal way to spawn a whole nest of weblogs in an organization, as each person leaves the meeting and enters the office to begin blogging the outcomes, next steps and results. With comments on each blog, people could begin linking ideas and knowledge and recreating the Open Space environment on a constant basis to share knowledge about whatever the organization is working on.