When is OS not OS?

Murli Nagasundaram rismurli at cobfac.boisestate.edu
Mon May 8 14:10:49 PDT 2000


The recent Open Space I facilitated in Belgium was a challenge and left me
wondering whether or not to even call what we did Open Space.

The challenge actually started when the program was being designed. The OS
process kept getting little pieces picked away here and there. I managed to
keep six sessions (1/5 hrs each) although they were interspersed throughout
a 6 day conference -- one the first day after the introduction, one the
second day, and two each on the third and fourth day. A few of us on the
design committee tried to get a block of time to open the space, and
proceed without interruptions of other activities, speakers, etc. No luck.
I got to keep the morning announcements for two out of the three mornings,
but had none on what turned out to be a key morning on the first of the two
session days. I also lost the struggle to have evening news except at the
end of the whole conference for closure to both OS and the conference
experience. (BIG mistake in my opinion)

But the real challenge came when I arrived at the conference site. There
were two meeting rooms. One (room A) was more lovely, could seat the 250
attendees, but with no extra space for moving around (chairs were to the
edges all around.) The second space (room B) was not as beautiful (but
certainly acceptable with large windows looking out on a treed and
flowering lawn) and had plenty of space to spread out the six sessions
along one long wall, and room for marketplace with all the 250
participants. So we settled on doing the introduction/marketplace in the
large space. Most of the rest of the whole group events were in room A.
Because we did not have access to room B for morning announcements, we had
to move that part to the smaller room.

I was still trying to figure out how to move our walls full of the schedule
(into room A which had NO wall space at all) and how to manage the lack of
space for the announcements, when we discovered that we could not move the
new translation equipment to the large room. (It used infrared beams and
there was a good chance we could not get it operational in the large room.)
That meant that even the introduction and market place had to be done in
the smaller room A.

There was NO space to have marketplace. So here is what I ended up doing.

Fortunately the conference facility had three whiteboards on wheels which
had room for one session's offerings on each side. The three board just fit
onto the stage. Anyone who wanted to convene a group had to decide in which
session they wanted their offering. I had assistants tape them to the
appropriate side of the whiteboard -- flipping them to the back sides for
sessions 4,5, and 6. Then after the sessions were announced and taped to
the appropriate time slot, we wheeled them out into the hallway, while the
group sang some songs. During lunch everyone signed up for their choices.
Then I (reluctantly) assigned the rooms, using the sign-up numbers to give
them a adequate size room (the choices varied from a large auditorium for
185 to small rooms for 20)

On the second day, I sort of opened a mini market place, by suggesting that
people could try to get the convenors to move their sessions to make a more
workable schedule for their personal needs. This again had to be done
during the lunch break. A couple of convenors actually moved their sessions
and two offered a repeat of their topics, but it was a pretty minimal
marketplace.

While the process was successful for having the participants create part of
the agenda, the space did not develop the potential I have seen in other
OS. There were controversal topics in the air, and they didn't go very far
with them and some were not even brought up in a public forum. I am
convinced that if the space had been open, they would have.

I did not introduce the principles. I thought long and hard about this
decision. There was absolutely no place to post them, and by the time I did
the introduction, I was feeling like we were pretty far from a truely
opened space, so I did not bring them up. Also, with translation of my
intro and sometimes double translation when convenors announced their
topics, it took a full 2 hours to do this whole process--any more time was
too much. (I will post the collection of the various translations of the
principles when I get all my materials unpacked.)

I did introduce the bumblebees and butterflies, stressed the Law of two
feet (which everyone there had a pair of), and let the convenors know they
could move their group to wherever they wanted to be. Some convenors posted
notes from their sessions (although the translation of these was not very
satisfactory) More reporting will happen in the followup newsletter.
(Feedback process has room for lots of improvement.)

In the introduction, I did not feel comfortable calling it Open Space. It
was called OS in the program and I had written a preparatory article
explaining the "promises" of OS. So I did a brief disclaimer saying that
because we were limited by our physical situation, we would be using only a
small bit of the OS process, and to honor the work which is being done all
around the world, I wanted to use another term (we call the groups --
circles) I felt strongly that this somewhat unopened space not get
identified in their minds with OS, when I knew they could not really
experience the full potential.

I am ever hopeful that we will be able to truely open the space next year.

While I know there is flexibility in the OS process (I have flexed it
around quite a bit other times!) this seemed to go too far for me.

So what are your thoughts? When is it no longer OS? How much freedom can
you take away and still hold the space open? Would you have called this one
an OS?



More information about the OSList mailing list