About

OpenSilence.org exists to protect local meetings, not to organize them. 

The site publishes and preserves the core texts of Open Silence, holds the name, answers external inquiries, and refuses uses that which would alter the form. It accepts no funding, sponsorship, or institutional support, and does not provide services, training, certification, or guidance.

Its primary function is refusal: of money, representation, professionalization, optimization, and claims made on behalf of Open Silence that exceed what the texts describe.

Meetings are autonomous, temporary, and disposable. This structure does not correct, govern, or intervene in their operation, and does not attempt to ensure quality, consistency or growth. Its purpose is not expansion or network-building.

Open Silence was founded to acknowledge that people sometimes need to be together without having to explain, process, or make sense of it. This intuition is widely shared, and there is no need to intellectualize it here.

It was partly formed in response to less traditional schedule structures in contemporary life. For many people, shared working schedules no longer provide reliable opportunities to be together. Open Silence offers a minimal, ad hoc, no-cost way of gathering that does not require those structures to be in place.