Here’s a cool short (less than 2 minutes) video from a health policy open space in India in December, 2006.

Sharon Quarrington shared this, via the OSLIST, on the Toronto Transit event previously reported here:

A group in Toronto held a “camp” for the Toronto Transit System – and
their opening is posted on YouTube:

I found it very interesting – how it was similar to and yet different it was from the OS openings I am most familiar with. I found I missed many of the “traditional” elements that were skipped – and yet wonder if perhaps that is just me being stuck in a rut!

I think not a rut at all. The “camp” and “unconference” movement and language is flourishing in the info tech world, which has embraced “open space”, but seems to have lost some of the “traditional” elements Sharon refers to. I, too, think something is lost without some of these elements, a certain elegance and ease in the opening process and story.

Opening can be easier than it sounds here, I think… and And AND… it obviously still worked. I’m glad to see opening practices seeping into the management of urban transit and other community institutions. I’m glad to see real work getting done with circles, invitations, marketplaces, and references to The Law of Two feet. I’m glad to see people making and sharing videos like this, that show real people practicing in this way. So props for opening practices and public sharing!

See (hear) also our podcasts archive for two (audio) recordings of more “traditional” openings by Chris Corrigan and Harrison Owen.

What do you think? What does it take to make an opening open?

Diana Larsen writes:

Two open space conferences in the same week spells heaven to me.On Tuesday and Wednesday Charlie Poole, Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, Patrick Logan and [Diana Larsen] hosted Agile Open Northwest at the Kennedy School in Portland, Oregon . …

The open space technology format creates a conference that the participants self-organize. It complements our interest in Agile self-organizing teams and just makes sense. We’ll do this again. Plan to join us next year.

A day later, in a big, old warehouse turned creative space in Portland, the wiki community is hosting Recent Changes Camp, a free un-conference which is of, by, and for folks who want to “build communities worth having” both online and off. This especially includes the Open Technology & Open Culture movements. …

If you’ve missed these conferences, you can attend next year. Or, if you just can’t wait for your next open space, check into attending Rococo Camp coming up in May in Montreal.

David Crow: The future will be wikified

Toronto Transit Camp happened today at the Gladstone. It was a fantastic romp using a BarCamp format (based in Open Space Technology ) to discuss the TTC and potential solutions to the web site redesign, rider experience, art in the stations, anything the participants felt should be brought into the open. Mark has been pushing the community to move beyond technology unconferences and into Open Creative Communities. TransitCamp represents our first real attempt to involve a larger group of passionate individuals.

There was fantastic support for the “Toronto Transit Camp is not a complaints department, it is a solution playground” attitude. It helped to allow people to raise issues and propose solutions.

Michael Herman, Claudia Haack and Christine Whitney Sanchez collaborated on the facilitation of two Open Space meetings to address a 37-year-old question about the highway Entrance to Aspen, Colorado. Michael reports here and here, with a link some of what was reported in the Aspen newspapers.

Arlene Goldbard reporting from New York:

…We came together to talk about a particular (and very interesting) art project, Continental Harmony. But rather than following a preset agenda, the meeting’s structure was flexible and inviting, based on an approach called Open Space Technology in which participants’ own questions and interests drive a meeting.

Here is her heartening story of what happened at this meeting.

Michael Herman posted something to get us thinking on the oslist today.

It also may help explain open space to people who are not getting it.

“but i’m going to suggest — especially to all of the “never-been-in-it” and “would love to try it someday” folks out there on the list — that we have all already been there.

“let’s start with the law of two feet, which seems to be the core of everything.

“having “been in open space” many times, i can say that it was a familiar place. the freedom and responsibility are not unlike when i went away to college. power, possibility. not unlike when i am solo hiking in the backcountry, bounded by my physical limits, for sure, but able to go wherever my two feet would take me, to learn about a territory and contribute to reaching some destination that i chose for myself.

“it’s not unlike any vacation where i leave teh computer and phone at home. not unlike the small space of an airline seat, where my range might be severely limited, in at least one dimension, but mind is free to wander and relax as it chooses. not unlike the time after a resignation but before actually leaving a job.

“sleeping in has a certain spacious quality for me, bucking the pressure of a world that says work starts early. staying up late has a certain quality. stopping in at churches or rivers or other quiet places when travelling. sitting at outside cafe’s in the summer time, even better with a sunday newspaper.

“in all of these places, there is a quality of being active and doing nothing. and these are just a few of the examples that come to mind. so i wonder… where else have you (and probably many others of us) already been there???

“not to mention the four principles, which i often summarize as “how things work when they really work.” what ordinary life conditions and circumstances might remind you of the states that these lines remind us about???

“as i look outside, there is a raging blizzard here in chicago. my wife’s flight out to a big client meeting was cancelled, at 5am this morning. suddenly the whole of chicago and a bunch of places connected by planes and phones and the like are running on “whenever it starts” or “whenever you can get here” …is the right time. i’ve experienced a similar shift in other storms, like having my dad in the hospital for heart surgeries, when we actively take things one day, one moment, at a time. like one step at a time when hiking.

“thinking spatially or kinesthetically for a moment, it seems more about stacking and scrambling than ladders and climbing.

“so i’m wondering if we can say some more about where it is that we’ve all already been in open space. where does or has space already open in life as you’re living it?

“michaelh”

Harrison Owen shared this old story recently…

…but what really delights me are the comments from the Psychology Professor, “who gave high praise to the ‘therapeutic properties of this process’ evidenced by, in his words, ‘the positively healthy dynamics so unexpected in such a meeting of highly disparate interests’….”

I am reminded of a situation in Canada when the senior staff of a large sheltered workshop program for the “developmentally disabled” came to a training. After the training, the staff returned to their facilities and resolved to put OS to work in a much larger staff conference on the future of the program. To save some money they held the gathering in one of their facilities. Accordingly they set out the chairs in a circle and were surprised to find that their clients joined the party. To the staff’s credit they just added more chairs and proceeded with the business.

I am not sure what they thought would happen, but as it turned the clients took a very active role in the OS, offering a number of sessions and attending sessions offered by others (surprise!).

Some months after the gathering, I got a letter from the director, who had attended the training program much against her better judgment :-). She told me of what happened, and then we on to say that a major impact of the OS had been a doubling of services for no increase in budget. It seemed that just about half of the previously offered services were neither wanted not needed by the clients — but nobody had ever talk to them before. And of course in the open space, everybody talked.

More than a year after the original training I got another letter from the director who said that a totally remarkable thing had occurred. Every year the program tested its clients in terms of their capacity to cope in the world. I am not sure how these tests worked, but I guess there are some sort of standardized versions. Anyhow, when they administered the test they discovered that for all the clients who had participated in open space there was the largest increase in test scores anybody had ever seen. The director’s conclusion was that OS was the most effective therapeutic modality they had ever employed.

With that story in mind, combined with the remarks of your Psychology professor — it strikes me that the good professor might find open space a fruitful field for research. I can just imagine what the results are likely to be, and then we would really be in trouble!

via OSLIST

Thanks to Zelle Nelson for compiling a new collection of stories about Open Space being used in conjunction with keynote speakers, pre-planned breakout sessions, powerpoint presentations, and other traditional confereance structures.

Meanwhile, Tenneson Woolf has started an interesting thread in the OSLIST email community, retro-fitting a traditional conference with all kinds of new spaces, some of them more and some less specifically like Open Space. When you get to his post, click the arrow/lightbulb button to read more posts in this thread.

Larry Peterson announces an OSonOS: Open Space on Open Space Gathering is scheduled for Friday, April 27 (evening) and Saturday April 28th, 2007, in the Toronto Area (Location to be announced).

What are we learning about the use of Open Space Technology? What ideas or theories help us understand it? Join us for Great People, Great Conversations. Costs will cover venue, food and materials (To be determined).

Mark Your Calendars. More information will arrive in about two weeks. This event follows directly the workshop that Diane Gibeault and Larry will be leading from April 25-27th, also in Toronto.

Email Larry for more on the OSonOS or the training.

Local OSonOS Toronto Planning Team: Meg Salter, Judy Gast & Larry Peterson

More About OSonOS…
More OSonOS Events…

Gerard Muller announces the completion of his 250th Open Space. Reason to celebrate, and so he is organising an Open Space on Open Space (OSonOS) in the Netherlands on March 2nd.

He expects mainly Dutch collegues to turn up, but we have been surprised before — and who knows who of you might be nearby and in the mood to come?

Email Gerard for complete details and registration, before February 23rd, if possible. It will be held at Conferentiecentrum de Hoorneboeg, Hoorneboeg 5, 1213 RE Hilversum. Cost is € 47.60, payable upon arrival.

What’s on our agenda? Take any newspaper and you’ll easily find 20-30 issues which an Open Space would really move forward, yet in most cases that doesn’t happen – even though there’s plenty of experience in the Netherlands, and there must be some 200 collegues who can facilitate a meeting. How do we create a breakthrough? Today, that’s a question I’d post.

But of course our agenda is totally empty until March 2nd. Email Gerard.

More About OSonOS…
More OSonOS Events…

Dennis Embry sent this question from PAXIS Institute in Tuscon, Arizona…

I am looking for peer-reviewed, published studies on Open Space procedures. I am looking for either randomized control group studies or high-quality interrupted time series studies showing actual impact on outcomes of organizations or communities. What I have found so far are discussions of processes and proximal outcomes. I see for example Open Space is often used for community problems, and I am curious if there is evidence that it actually leads to reductions of those problems or increase in related positive outcomes.

The only research I know of is posted in the ResearchActivities page of our ResourcesCollection… but maybe we can shake out some other responses for Dennis? Please comment here for Dennis and others interested in this sort of research. We’ll be glad to add any new materials to our Research page, as well.

I had the pleasure of co-facilitating this weekend with Kaliya Hamlin. She has a great post in her unconferencing blog, Open Space: what happens & why does it work which includes these sections:

• So What Happens?
• Space Needed for Open Space
• Agenda Creation
• What happens During Sessions?
• End of the Day – Beginning of the Next
• Modifications for Technical Communities – On Ramps…Next Action Circles

Phelim McDermott, of Improbable (theatre company) in London updates his previous story…

Things have been busy at Improbable. Here is an Article in the
Guardian about our now seemingly annual open space event for theatre.

Stay tuned for Improbably Open Space, the movie.

Looks like the Kiwanis Club of South East Cleveland is off to a great start with their new blog!

here we go!

This is the first post of the new blogsite of the members of the Kiwanis Club of South East Cleveland. Every member has the privilege of sharing publishing rights on this blog. This blog will be self-organizing in the best traditions of open-space technology. I will not presume to have the standing to lecture any of my fellow Kiwanis members on deportment or blog conduct. You know the drill; the same rules of civility and gentility apply here as in our club.

harvard came to san francisco in the form of a mobile identity workshop – an unconference

Travailler en Forum Ouvert: Petite Visite Guideé, une observation d’une réunion hypothétique en Forum Ouvert, illustrant les conditions et les possibilités de ce genre de réunions, réalisée par Michael Herman, transduction nouveau par Esther Matte. Plus de Forum Ouvert en français…

Last year, on a whim, I invited a wonderful select group (whoever cared to come) to join me in Camden, Maine for OSONOS-by-the-Sea.

OSONOS, as most of you probably know, is an acronym for Open Space on Open Space, and for a number of years in various places in the world, people have gathered to consider the space of their lives, and ways in which that space might be expanded (opening space).

Each gathering has been rich and wonderful, but I have recently found myself somewhat restricted by a sore back which keeps me off of long plane flights. So, said I to myself, if I can’t journey to foreign parts, why not invited everybody who might care to come to the beautiful town of Camden. And it felt so good I have done it again – and you are invited!

The dates are September 6-7, 2007 and COMPLETE DETAILS ARE POSTED HERE. If you have some friends who you feel might enjoy and contribute, please pass this invitation along.

I look forward to seeing you!

–Harrison Owen

A team of Ukrainian and International open space facilitators is happy to invite you at 15th Worldwide OS on OS, that will take place on May 24-26, 2007 in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

Complete details and REGISTRATION FORM: OSonOS-Kiev.pdf

For 15 years now, worldwide open space community gather together in order to have a privilege to become participants of Open Space event, to experience chaos and create new reality out of it.

Open Space Technology is the way to enable all kinds of people, in any kind of organization, to produce inspiring results. During OS on OS you will experience its different aspect such as chaos and creativity, learning and doing, fun and inspiration, change and innovation, passion and responsibility. You will have an opportunity to raise and discuss issues which are really important to you, share your ideas, concerns, questions and receive input from other people, and finally make up your own “next steps” out of it.

IF YOU ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT…

* Creating space for inspiration at government, business, and community projects
* Reaching extraordinary results on regular base
* Discovering one of the most powerful worldwide leadership practice
* Having fun while experiencing all mentioned above

PLEASE JOIN US!

Venue: Congregation Hall of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, first university that was founded in Eastern Europe. This is an ancient building from 17th century, which is placed in the downtown of Kyiv, not far from Dnipro river. It takes 3 minutes to walk to the Congregation Hall from metro station “Kontraktova Ploscha”. It is also very close to famous ancient street, where you may find traditional Ukrainian souvenirs – embroidery, pottery, woodcrafts etc.

Language: Open space will be held in English. However, the participants will self-organize their work in any other possible languages (Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Arabic etc.).

Complete details and REGISTRATION FORM: OSonOS-Kiev.pdf

The 6th Annual Open Space on Open Space practitioners’ conference in Haiti will be June 28 – July 1, 2007. Email John Engle to learn more and see photos from last time (June, 2006). International practitioners welcome!

Mashups are web applications that combine content from more than one source, one common form is when a data list of some sort is merged with a map. This story from zdnet about the Third Mashup Camp makes no mention of Open Space, but obviously that was the format…

Many popular mashup applications involve plotting information, such as a calendar entry, on a mapping Web site. But Alan Taylor and others at the third Mashup Camp are looking to push far beyond maps. Hype Machine, for example, tracks discussions of music on blogs, aggregates that information and allows people to listen to mentioned songs.

Because Mashup Camp is considered an “unconference,” discussion topics were proposed by attendees and scheduled on the first day of the two-day event. Perhaps as a reflection of their enthusiasm, participants were able to decide on the conference content within 20 minutes.

The semi-structured format is particularly well-suited to mashups, which many attendees likened to a grassroots cultural movement.

via Peter Perera, who’s planning an Open Space Camp of his own, called ThinkCustomerDataCamp.

Rob at Transition Culture (an evolving exploration into the head, hearts and hands of energy descent) writes as part of an ongoing series, “Open Space Technology is an extraordinary tool. … In theory it ought not to work.” He goes on to describe the some functions of OST in his community:

• It brings together the majority of the people interested in a particular subject (i.e. food)
• Within that, it brings together people interested in particular aspects of that subject (i.e. allotments or veg. boxes)
• It is a great research tool, for drawing out ideas and visions within the community
• If timetabled properly, it also creates time for people to just be with each other, to chat and eat.
• If you run an event a few days before with a dramatic title (i.e. “How Will Totnes House Itself Beyond Cheap Oil?” or “Feeding Totnes; Past, Present and Future”) and then the Open Space, and promote both heavily, it can bring that issue to the forefront for a lot of people. This can be very powerful for the TT process in terms of identifying what is already happening in that area, and who are the main movers and shakers

.

Jevon MacDonald writes in his Manifesto for an Emerging Consultant Counter Culture writes about Johnnie Moore and Open Space Technology:

[T]he law of emergence means that those of us who work on a project, and invest heavily in it, must most often step out of the way at the last minute, because by then we have our own ideas, and we have to trust the people involved to come to the truth themselves.