Thomas Herrmans questions from sweden

[Michael M Pannwitz]

Dear Thomas,
1. How to arrange the center of the circle.
I have tried different things. What I thought to be a great
breakthrough were clipboards in the A3 format (you swedes
know what that is, to you noneuropeans, it is approximately
double letter size). What I thought to be disruptive was
people carrying the clipboards back to their seats
(actually the clipboards invited that, nice to hang on to).
Well, out went clipboards. Now I am back to putting nothing
in the center except for the markers and the A3 papers. The
secret is to have a small carpet or a nice blanket, that
seems to invite people to stay in the center and do their
writing there.
I also tell them, show them this way.
There is a nice long shot in the video that we took at the
training with Harrison last November in Berlin where you
see people performing that way (come to think of it, there
was a participant from Sweden, Eva Schwarz,
eva.schwarz at swipnet.se, she can tell you about it). If you
like the video ( isnt this a great pitch), I will send it
to you, get in touch.(the video is in german, european
format).
I tried low round tables. It violates the center.
2. Why are you interested in motivating the participants to
do something with those wonderful ideas and to stay in
contact?
One thing I do is to have the participants produce a
detailed list with names, addresses, fon, fax, email during
the day that is then run through a wordprocessor and added
to the proceedings.
3.I think the talking stick is a wonderful ceremony for
closing an open space. It is not a procedure for
evaluation. For evaluation I have used the medicine wheel.
It has worked well everytime. Its described in the BOOK.

When you are in Berlin, come visit our Learning Exchange
"Large Group Interventions in the process of
transformation", we discuss exactly those and other
practical questions of the nitty gritty of open space.
hugs, and say hi to Ingrid Olauson next time you have your
training sessions that she reported on recently to all of
us
michael




Michael M Pannwitz
Draisweg 1
12209 Berlin
Germany
Tel.: 49 30 772 8000
Fax: 49 30 773 92 464