.. To this multi-lingual Open Space site where practitioners can exchange information, where people wanting to know more about Open Space Technology can find starting points for further exploration and/or can shop around for practitioners that provide Open Space facilitation services, and where practitioners can share resources and collaborate on marketing Open Space Technology events.
From The Campaign Company Blog:
As the facilitator gathered us in a circle (everyone is equal in OS) and asked us to close our eyes as she explained the principles behind it, I did wonder whether I should take the opportunity to scarper there and then and save myself from this hippy nonsense.
First impressions are great, aren’t they?
Jonathan Burrows curates a season of discussion, enquiry and debate in a program called Parallel Voices. Through February to the end of March 2007, Jonathan Burrows has been invited to curate a series of artists’ talks as part of a public art season at Siobhan Davies Studios, St. Georges Road, London. The program(s) will welcome leading dance and theatre artists, where, over four evenings, three artists will discuss their passions in an open session of enquiry and debate.
On Saturday 31 March, the season will culminate in an Open Space meeting called THE BIGGER PICTURE, for everybody interested in dance. Open Space is a method of running a large meeting in a more flexible and lively way, to approach a subject without an agenda, and allow the people there to create their own conference. We see it as an opportunity to look at where we’ve come from, where we are now and what we might wish for in the future.
Diana Larsen (facilitator) points us to Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, one of the hosts of Agile Open Northwest, who had never (knowingly) participated in an OST event.
Rebecca, who hosted entirely on faith and with a few nervous moments about whether it would really work, wrote a blog post about her take on the event.
A great look at how newcomers experience open space, complete with Green Eggs and Ham (photo). This session? Overcoming Resistance!
DATE: Monday, April 23, 2007
TIME: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
PLACE: Burlington Art Centre, Burlington ON
CONTENT:
Following up on our very successful MUSEUMS+SOCIAL RELEVANCE PART ONE in Nov/06 at WAHC ….
Questions to be addressed this time:
How do we as “museum” workers …
– Identify effective practices in social relevance?
– Put social relevance into action?
APPROACH: Small discussion groups & reports using Open Space Technology
GOAL:
To promote and support socially relevant philosophies/ strategies/ programs/ services amongst museums/galleries/parks in Hamilton/ Burlington area.
Diane Gibeault écrit:
La Haute Ecole fribourgeoise de travail social de la Suisse vous invite à une formation Forum ouvert les 29-30 mars prochains en Suisse.
Forum ouvert : La démarche est peu à peu prise en charge par les participants et participantes. Le cadre discret de ce processus et la confiance manifestée aux participants suscitent une responsabilisation de chacun, l’émergence des intérêts réels et un engagement profond.
Vous apprendrez comment le rôle de facilitation diffère des autres modèles, quand utiliser le FO, des processus pour déterminer priorités et plans d’action, comment préparer l’organisation et vous ferez l’expérience d’un FO.
Diane Gibeault, facilitatrice professionnelle accréditée (IAF) a été formée (FO – Open Space Technology) auprès de l’auteur Harrison Owen. Ancrée sur une longue expérience en facilitation, elle se spécialise dans les méthodes participatives pour grands groupes et démarches de transformation organisationnelle.
Inscription : www.hef-ts.ch nelly.plaschy-gay(at)hef-ts.ch
Renseignements : www.dianegibeault.com diane.gibeault(at)rogers.com
Here’s a cool short (less than 2 minutes) video from a health policy open space in India in December, 2006.
Training: Holger Nauheimer, Peggy Holman and Gilbert Brenson-Lazan will offer their Introduction to Change Management, an International Change Management Training Event on April 19-20, 2007, at the Process Work Institute, Portland, Oregon. They will offer an introduction to different thinking styles in Change Management, the basic principles that apply to any complex change process, and practical applications on how to work with individuals, teams and organizations to master change.
Conference: Peggy Holman and more than ninety co-authors have announced a new, second edition of The Change Handbook, an astounding collection of short, practical explanations and examples of tools and methods for leading Change in large systems. They invite you to join many of the authors, a veritable who’s who of organization development, in Bowling Green, Ohio, March 22-23, at their Nexus for Change Conference. This promises to be an unprecedented gathering of practitioners, researchers, leaders, activists, and educators for participative change.
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?
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”
We’re pleased to announce that This Blog can now come to you by email. We’ve stepped up our efforts to post news from other practitioners’ blogs, too.
No more excuses for not keeping up with what’s Opening around the world! If you put your email address in the subscription box and click ADD in the sidebar, all that news will land in your email inbox, or wherever you filter it to.
Not more than one brief posting per day. And your address NEVER used for ANYTHING other than sending you items posted here in the blog.
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
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.
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:
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!
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.
