Large-scale Open Space

[Murli Nagasundaram]

Joe,

Sounds like an interesting project. Chris Schoch (schochchri at aol.com)
ran a two day Open Space for just under 1000 people, for Robert Bosch
(electronics manufacturers) in Caen, France. I was one of his many assistants.

The main thing to consider is that you will need a lot of wall. A lot.
However much you are thinking of, double it or treble it. The sign-up
sheets need to have lots of space around them. And only one sheet high,
if you understand what I mean. After the marketplace you can move the
sheets closer together to free up the wall for session reports etc.

You will probably need a few assistants to direct session convenors to
the *right* bit of the wall. (Harrison screams loudly at this point!).
Yes - you'll need to divide the wall up into a.m. and p.m. sessions to
ease logistics.

It's also worth having a room tsar during the marketplace, to make sure
that people have big enough rooms, move chairs and so on.

I usually put the approximate room capacity on the Post-its. This tends
to eliminate a lot of unnecessary room 'allocation' problems. (Harrison
screams again!).

If you need any more info please send an email or phone me on +44 1273 605061.

Good luck!

Martin