This question just in from Menlo Park, California…

I am doing a bit of reasearch on if it would be possible to conduct an open space type meeting with the participants not located in the same room, but geographically distributed and connected via the Internet through instant messaging and other communication tools.

In your experience, have you seen anything like that in the past and/or do you have any thoughts on the viability of doing that?

Any thoughts that you could share would be appreciated.

Please use the comments link to offer your views and experience.

Note to email subscribers: This message will publish while I’m in the middle of a loooooong airplane flight. Would one of you alert the OSLIST and invite comments on this? Many thanks, Michael

Entendendo uma Desconferência | Cabala 1001 Gatos de Schrödinger

Os princípios que guiam uma desconferência são diretamente influenciados pelo trabalho do autor e consultor Harrison Owen, que descreve um método de organizar grupos de interação, chamado Open Space Technology. Owen em seu artigo “Opening Space for Emerging Order”, explica os Quatro Princípios do Open Space:

1. Seja quem for que veio,é a pessoa certa,
2. O que quer que aconteça, é apenas aquilo que deveria ter acontecido,
3. Quando quer que comece é na hora certa, e
4. Quando acaba,acabou.E acompanhando a Lei dos Dois Pés afirmando que, “Se a qualquer momento você encontra-se em qualquer situação onde você não estiver nem aprendendo ou contribuindo – use seus dois pés e dirija-se para um lugar mais ao seu gosto”.

O método Open Space foi utilizado com sucesso para organizar os encontros da Fortune, de 500 executivos.cientistas, e mesmo políticos rivais na África do Sul.

HawaiiBreeze writes:

OST is a gem, embodying the concept of minimal structure — just enough to get what’s ready to happen, out and into life. Kinda like a baby being born. Mostly you just want to allow it to happen smoothly without making too many requirments on baby or mom.

Chira Humanitarian Research Institute is blogging about us! A quick look around reveals lots of other interesting posts, about Corrigan’s Tao of Holding Space, Deliberative polling, Exploitation and True Sharing, Relationships and the economy, Open Space and keynote speakers and more!

Interesting reference to OST from New Zealand 2007:

I also don’t use ‘happy sheet’ evaluations but two post-its – on one they write what was ‘good’ and on the other what they want ‘more of’. One of the ‘goods’ was ‘responsive style, no set agenda – great’ much like the feedback I received from ACES when we used Open Space Technology on their LTA Co-ordinators Retreat.This open, facilitative approach is more risky but has much more meaning for the participants as it addresses their needs rather than our agenda. However, there are still some who just want to be given ‘the answer’ or ‘how to do it’ – a bit like students really!

Something about a 15 year anniversary, I think (In Rot@tion!: 15 Anos Rota Jovem):

A Ana Paula e o Quim foram os anfitriões de serviço e recorreram à Open Space Technology para agitar as ideias mais adormecidas.

On Runet (the Russian language Internet) Various online forums also report having experiences with OST as people run meetings called OST, but not really run on OST principles.

Might this be a familiar refrain which brings us back to the age-old question of how do we guarantee quality of OST meetings run around the world?

In one example, in an OST meeting, a “training: Our children: child-rearing issues” one participants writes that she “didn’t like” OST.

Others on the forum share other, more positive experiences of OST and invite her to further explore the method.

In another intriguing development, a Moscow coaching program offers training in the “Open Space model,” listing Harrison Owen and Birgitt Williams as co-authors. The material further refers to the role of the Creative Person in this model. Some might wonder, are Harrison Owen and Birgitt Williams teaching something in Russia that the rest of the OST community is not aware of?!

Howard van Rooijen attended last fall’ Scrum Gathering for Agile programmers. His post is a great description of OST from an attendee and he notes:

Instead of being confrontational and pouring on vitriol in order to justify their own job or methodology, attendees of the Gathering were so open minded. More often than not the reaction was “Wow, my experience of doing X was completely different. How did you handle situations like Y?” Ideas were cross-pollinated and people came away with a myriad of new techniques to try.

Loving Work and Leading :: Workshop on Facilitating Organizational Transformation:

Here’s a great chance to learn more about using large group processes to facilitate organizational change. You’ll learn through practicing a variety of powerful group processe including Open Space Technology, Technology of Participation and others. The facilitator is Mark Pixley for Leadership Inc, who is highly experienced and masterful at using group processes.

Typing in the Russian equivalent of the word, “unconference,” “неконференция,” in a search engine now yields hits as Russian IT bloggers report on the “camp” and “unconference” movements in North America.

Note: PROMT offers a free and relatively good quality Russian to English webpage translation service.

MarketingBytesMan.com writes about Open Space Technology and more:

What struck me as one who has facilitated meetings—I hate this word so can we just say made communications and problem solving possible until we can come up with something more human—was this by Michael Herman: “Open Space Technology is a simple, powerful way to catalyze effective working conversations and truly inviting organizations — to thrive in times of swirling change.” Herman further defines the process as conversations being work. How true. What everyone I know has observed and experienced is that often the conversations outside the retreats, offsites, regularly and impromptu meetings are the most meaningful and productive. Why? Because they’re the most honest, open and genuine and because people feel empowered to say what they really think and feel.

Wirearchy:

Opening Space as a process for identifying, surfacing and addressing thorny issues has been around for a long time … long, long before Winer offered up the term “unconference” … and is more robust and better thought through than what has been suggested as “unconferencing”. And there are other group processes that address the same or similar objectives that have also been around a lot longer … World Cafe, Conversation Cafe, Dynamic Facilitation, Appreciative Inquiry, Speed Geeking, The Fishbowl, Dialogue Circles and so on.

OST’s potential as an excellent process for networking, visioning and problem-solving, has been discovered by Moscow trainer and consultant Elena Buryakova, who has created an “HR space” for mid-sized companies. Her HR-space has been operating for over a year. Buryakova is posting the results of their meetings online.

A Gathering Of Tech Brains in Sydney Australia:

For BarCampSydney…

1. We’re making topics open to those beyond software in particular to include creative uses in entertainment, art, marketing, podcasts and so on. Other camps that have explored this as a theme include: ArtCamp, MarCamp and BlogCamp. Rather than see BarCamp as a technology-only event, we’re using the term to encompass all the possible conversations that could be had about digital media.
2. The other approach we won’t be employing is the invite only model. Indeed, this is why BarCamp was invented.

Open Space is mentioned in this post: Evolving Ideas: Open Source and Change through Improvisation which also says:

The image of organization built around improvisation is one in which variable inputs to self-organizing groups of actors induce continuing modification of work practices and ways of relating.

Harrison Owen recently shared on OS list about a retreat he facilitated for students at Columbia Business School. As is often the case, the meeting was so fruitful that “opening [the] space…just wouldn’t stop– [it kept] getting deeper and richer.” Indeed so rich, that one participant sent Harrison a poem afterwards:

Open Spaces
Tibetan bells
Open spaces
Safest people
Safest places
Magic creeping…
(rest of poem here)

by Carol J. Morley, CFA, Managing Director

In conclusion, Harrison writes, “Maybe we ought to keep this one around for the next time somebody asks us for a
recent client evaluation of Open Space, particularly an evaluation from the Business World. :-)”

Might it behoove us to start a new resource called “Client evaluations-alternative formats”? After all, this is definitely not the first time that a participant has written an “evaluation” of an OST meeting as a poem!

From the Change Management Blog:

I owe a lot of learnings to the international community of Open Space practioners, so here is my dedication to them: a reader with nine stories of successful application of this methodology. The stories come from Russia, Israel, Mozamique, Canada, Haiti, Italy, Colombia and Bulgaria and show the full spectrum of Open Space applications: Open Space Technology – New Stories from the Field

Open Space Institute-Russia is convening a stammtisch (local gathering of OST facilitators and people interested in the method) March 17th in Moscow.

Veteran Australian spaceholder Brian Bainbridge will be among the attendees. Galina Tsarkova invites us to “collectively reflect on our experience of holding space in the wide open spaces of Russia. This invitation is for all, including those who have just started out on this path.” For more information, you can reach Galina by email.

The lively Ukrainian OST facilitator discussion list also regularly lists stammisches in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities.

IOSBrussels:

The Identity Open Space event following the Liberty Alliance Meeting in Vancouver was a big success. Liberty Alliance invited us to cooperate once again and so immediately following their April meeting we will again be co-producing an Identity Open Space.April 26-27, in Brussels.

Can anyone help me with the Italian here?  Declaration of the Millenium?  It seems whatever they’re doing, they’ll be using OST between other events, I think.  March 30-April 1.  ISF TRENTO:

con l’organizzazione dell’Open Space Technology, assieme agli ex-studenti del corso di Metodologie Partecipate e a tutti gli interessati. L’evento sarà incentrato sul tema della “mobilità sostenibile” ed inserito tra le attività della 3 giorni di fine marzo.

Here’s a point of view from Renaissance Woman:

While Open Space is a concept applied to the corporate world, its four key principles and one law are certainly philosophies that you can live your life by

Gabdulla Hamitov facilitates conference on youth leadership development, “Path to the Future”
Ufa, Bashkortostan (Russia)
photos courtesy of Bashtorg, a major regional wholesaler in Russia

Since the 14th annual international Open Space on Open Space conference in Moscow in August 2006, OST has continued to be applied in many different kinds of organizations, especially in companies.

Recent applications include a meeting on personal safety and responsibility with RusAl, one of the largest aluminum producers in the world.

The sponsor, Elena Sochkina, responsible for corporate culture, noted “my most pleasant discoveries with the Open Space method were:

*the number of participants is limited only by the size of the physical meeting space.

*the conditions are created where formal boundaries are erased (status, hierarchical, and professional)

* the participants create the agenda (which is the guarantee of success).”

(Direktor po Personalu magazine)

OST has also been used recently with major Russian political parties, at marketing conferences, training conferences, at a coaching conference (co-sponsored by Open Space Institute-Russia), with Russia’s Central Bank, with cellular phone service provider Beeline, and with a major pharmaceutical company.

Note: PROMT offers a free and relatively good quality Russian to English webpage translation service.

Raffi Aftandelian writes from Russia:

Phillip Guzenuk, a young St. Petersburg (Russia) trainer saw OST applied at an Intertraining (professional association of trainer and consultants in the NIS) annual conference in Moscow last year.

OST was something he had been looking for, which led him and colleagues to start a “Director’s Club”, a professional networking space for St. Petersburg CEO’s.

This first meeting, which brought together 60 CEO’s, was titled “In the fight for talent”.

I love the contrast of the handwritten signs and the hotel space

Guzenuk made a video which you can see here.

I love the way the pre-conference conversations mimic the in-conference conversations.