Participant Driven Open Space Principles and Laws

[Don Ferretti]

If you did that (ask the participants to define groundrules) it would not be Open Space. It would be something else. The beauty of the 4 Principles and 1 Law (as I see it) is that once you state them and the theme, the group is good to go!  Self organization around topics that people care about really doesn't require anymore facilitation than that - Don Ferretti

>>> "Francoise Coupal, Mosaic.net International"             <coupal at MOSAIC-NET-INTL.CA> 11/27/00 12:21PM >>>
I am wondering if any of you out there on the list serve has ever
facilitated an open space event where the participants themselves determine
the principles/laws that will govern their open space event.  Maybe this
type of approach would build a sense of ownership as to what would be
important to respect and would take into account different cultural
priorities.  I have thought about Francis Gastman's email about her/his
experience in Berlin (which I found very illuminating).  Maybe if there was
a space to consider key principles participants felt were important to
respect during the Berlin open space event, something like the Law of Two
Ears would have been deemed as important for all the participants to fully
consider/respect.
I use the concept of a Group Contract in non-open space events where
participants are asked to define the ground rules they feel would be
important to respect to ensure a successful workshop. We usually revisit
the group contract every day to see how we are doing and if we need to add
anything to the contract.

Why not start an open space event asking participants to define the guiding
principles that will govern the Open Space?  Has this been done before and
what were the results?
Francoise
____________________________________________________
Francoise Coupal
Mosaic.net International, Inc.
705 Roosevelt Ave.
Ottawa, Canada K2A 2A8
Tel:  (613) 728-1439; Fax:  (613) 728-1154.
Visit us on the World Wide Web at: http://www.mosaic-net-intl.ca

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